Cutting Edge by Allison Brennan Page A

why he hated college. He couldn’t stand his peers.
I wish I had my parents alive to not understand me
.
    “And you’re… Sean, right? From Social Justice.”
    “Good memory.”
    She smiled. She really was pretty, Sean thought. Though he was only twenty-three, he felt a decade older than most of the students here, had felt that way even back when he’d been in college. But he still admired pretty coeds. “I really liked how you stood up for the innocent.”
    Innocent? Sean searched his memory … right, during a discussion during the two-hour class, he’d made a point of taking an extreme position on protecting the rights of animals, living creatures who couldn’t protect themselves or their own rights. It had sounded good at the time, but Sean didn’t remember exactly what he’d said. Something about how people couldn’t be saved on the dead bodies of animals because we’re just animals, too.
    “Thank you,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds.”
    He couldn’t believe his plan had worked so well. He’d hoped to draw out the activists, but after one day?
    “You’re new. Where’d you transfer from?”
    He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t. It’s a long story, but I had this jerk professor who flunked me. I graduated in June — or, I would have, except for him. So I have to take this class to get my degree.”
    “Who was it? Brigger? He’s an asshole.”
    “Not here. I went to school on the East Coast, as far from my family as I could get.” That was true, but not because he wanted to leave Sacramento. Duke said the MIT opportunity couldn’t be missed. Maybe he was right, but Sean hadn’t fit in there any more than he’d fit in at high school or at Stanford. True, unlike high school, at MIT he had intellectual peers, but few people he connected with. He’d been restless and bored. He tended to get into trouble when he was bored, and Duke always bailed him out. Like when Sean had hacked into the dean of students’ computer and pulled out the porn the jerk had downloaded, then sent the files to the college board and student council. The dean was fired, but Sean had been expelled. That was Stanford, when he’d been a seventeen-year-old freshman.
    Sean thought it was grossly unfair. The asshole
had
been surfing porn and downloading disgusting videos. Sean was all for looking at gorgeous naked women, but not the violent sex acts this idiot had jerked off to. Sure, Sean had illegally hacked into the computer — originally as an April Fools’ Day joke — but it wasn’t like he’d been changing grades or putting the porn on his computer in the first place.
    The dean had even tried to accuse Sean of planting the movie files. Duke stepped in and proved that wasn’t the case. But in the end, though the prick was fired, Duke had been disappointed in Sean’s conduct, and Sean hated when Duke was disappointed in him.
    “Hey, Sean,” Anya said.
    “Yeah?”
    “You look sad.”
    He grinned widely. “Me? Naw, I’m a party animal.”
    “I’m in this group — you might be interested. We meet a couple times a week, write articles for the paper, do some demonstrations, help keep the campus green. It’s not easy.”
    “I know,” he said, though he had no idea what she was talking about.
    “You’re a great spokesperson. We could use someone like you.”
    “I have to catch up in the class — Professor Cole said he wasn’t giving me extra time just because I enrolled late.”
    “Leif is a softie.”
    “Leif?”
    “Leif Cole. No one calls him Professor Cole. I’ll bet he loved your speech today, he just tries not to play favorites.”
    “He seemed preoccupied,” Sean said.
    Anya said nothing for a minute. “Maybe a bit tired. We all have those days. But he’ll be at the meeting tonight, he always comes. Once you sit down and talk to him, you’ll realize how brilliant he is.”
    Did professors have groupies? If so, Anya led the pack. Sean suspected she had a crush on the guy.