Page 126 of Pucking Bad Boys

Professor Cantucci’s office looks similar to every administration office on campus; with the standard desk and office chairs and the same bookshelves lining the walls and pleather couch pushed against one wall. The biggest difference with any other office is that the professor put her personal touch on her space.

Framed photos of several archeological digs Professor Cantucci participated in draw attention to their exotic locations.

The one that hangs behind her desk is especially stunning. A younger, heavily pregnant Professor Cantucci is standing with a shovel stuck into the ground beside her. In the background is a very famous Ancient Greek temple.

“Talia. Good morning and thank you for coming.” Professor Cantucci isn’t the one who greets me.

Sitting at her desk is Victor, her T.A.

“Oh, Victor. Good morning. Did the professor want to see me?”

Professor Cantucci’s T.A. is a grad student. I sort of know him in a social context because he briefly dated Fiona, one of my Zeta sisters, when he was still an undergrad.

Victor wasn’t very popular in the Zeta House for a few reasons. First of all, his relationship with Fiona started as an affair when Fiona was dating Connor, one of the Cove Knights at the time.

Our sorority is officially affiliated with Gamma Delta Tau, the fraternity most of the hockey team is in, so Connor had our solidarity.

But Victor’s lack of popularity was also due to the fact that he was boring and very pretentious. He looked down on everyone who didn’t gravitate in his same intellectual circles. That didn’t earn him much favor among the Zetas, and when he finally ended things with Fiona, no one shed any tears. Not even Fiona, to be honest.

No one ever understood how she could cheat on a hot, smart, lovely guy like Connor with someone like Victor.

“Take a seat, Talia.” He gestures to the chair opposite his desk; his tone is more commanding than inviting. “There is something I wanted to discuss with you.”

He opens a brown folder in front of him, pulling out a few A4 sheets of paper.

He hunches over the desk, as if to get closer. Victor is skinny and not particularly tall, but the office feels suddenly too small and I rear back, pressed against the back of my chair.

“How did you find last week’s pop quiz?” He asks, and I realize that’s the content of his folder. He has last week’s quizzes in there.

“Good. I felt prepared. Why, did I fail it?” I crane my neck to try to sneak a peek at the papers in his hands, but Victor holds them at an angle that makes it impossible to see anything.

There’s a beat of silence, and he looks at me with a strange intensity in his brown eyes. “No, you didn’t fail it.” He finally says. “You did really well, actually. I was just grading these quizzes yesterday, and you got ninety-eight percent on the multiple-choice questions. And your mini essay was one of the best in the entire class.”

Some of the tension seeps out of me.

Maybe the professor is looking for a second T.A. If it’s a paid position, I could really use the extra money.

But Victor didn’t call me into the office to offer me a job. “Take a look at this.” He slides two quizzes in front of me.

One has my name written at the top and the other one says Genevieve Bergen.

“What am I looking at?” I ask, but my pulse starts to quicken.

“I was hoping you’d let me sit behind you in class and make sure your quiz paper is positioned so I can take a look if I get stuck on any questions.”

Gen’s request echoes in my ears. My stomach plummets at the memory of the way Gen smiled at me at the end of the pop quiz, when she sat right behind me.

I rifle through the two tests in front of me, feeling sicker with every passing second.

“You’re looking at two identical tests, Talia.” Victor’s glare hits me like a ton of bricks. “Like you, Genevieve got question number eighteen wrong.”

“Ok.” I say cautiously.

That in itself means nothing. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but Victor cuts to the chase.

“That got my attention, but it could have been a coincidence. What doesn’t look like a coincidence is that you and Genevieve chose exactly the same everyday item that was used in Ancient Rome and is still used today. You both wrote about aqueducts. That got my attention too, but again, I didn’t want to jump toassumptions that something wasn’t right. But the two essays are verbatim, Talia. Identical, down to the commas and down to the one typo you both have. When you describe the public baths in Ancient Rome, you both wrotethermsrather thanthermae, which would have been the correct plural fortherma.”

Victor rises from his chair, rounding the desk to come and stand behind me.