One Hot Fall Term (Yardley College Chronicles Book1) by Sharon Page Page B

no. I didn’t fight to make it stop.
    I haven’t changed. I haven’t grown. I’m making the same mistakes again—assuming things, being too scared, and not confronting stuff.
    This time it’s going to make me fail.
    They’re still waiting. I have to be honest. “I can’t say anything in my defense. The model didn’t work. I didn’t do it right.”
    There’s a gasp. I guess I was supposed to talk my way out of this. But I can’t do that. I’m not glib and confident.
    “Are you certain, Miss Reynolds?”
    “I—I guess.”
    Then he launches into a general speech about people who don’t belong in the program, people who aren’t creative enough, who aren’t going to cut it.
    I stand there, listening. They haven’t told me I can sit down and I won’t walk away until they do. It would look like I was fleeing. Even though I really want to run.
    I’m sitting there thinking: I’ve failed. Already.
    They finally tell me I can sit—after all, my humiliation is over and they need to bring the next person up. I stay, listening to every other presentation, but I don’t hear a word.
    I’m done.
    At the end of class, Anton Brut asks me into his office. He leaves the door open. “I don’t like to be in my office alone with a female student. Never with the door closed.”
    It’s a repeat of his warning during my presentation. Some people aren’t good enough. He means me.
    “It’s a crowded profession,” he says. “Only the best succeed. There are other things you can do that don’t involve design work. You could be a technologist and do drafting if you have those skills. You could be an administrator. You could—”
    “Brew the coffee,” I mutter. It’s only the first project. He isn’t giving me a chance.
    As if he reads my mind, he answers the question. “Chances are for high school. Here, you should be ready to perform. If you aren’t, there is no place for you.”
    I’ve been judged. Executed.
    He suggests I consider leaving.
    “No,” I say. I won’t leave; they will have to throw me out. But I don’t say that to him. For some reason, I’m can’t make my mouth say anything beyond one syllable.
    He stands. “Then do better. I’ll give you two weeks to redo the project.”
    For a moment, my heart soars. Then it sinks. I have other work due. He tells me to go.
    I’m shaking when I leave the building. I know what abuse is all about. My entire puberty was haunted by it. But I’ve never had this.
    I’ve never had anyone tell me I’m a piece of garbage to my face. While I listened to it—in the studio and in Brut’s office—I was damned and determined not to cry. I suspected that was the point of the exercise: to break me and drive me away. Some kind of Darwinian game where only the toughest should make it through first year.
    I know that is garbage. I know I should stand up for myself.
    But I’ve never stood up for myself.
    The women’s bathroom is two steps away, and I retreat into one of the stalls. Sticking my thumb knuckle between my teeth, I bite hard.
    The finger-biting doesn’t stop my tears. When I come out of the bathroom, I can feel them brimming in my eyes. I brush them away. Then slam into a tall, male body.
    “Mia.” It’s Jonathon and he stares down at me in shock. “What happened?”
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
     
    “Say the word,” Jonathon says, after I’ve told him everything about my presentation and the meeting with my prof afterward. “I can have his career destroyed in days.”
    I don’t know what to do. Cry? Laugh? Say yes? Laughing wins. “No, I don’t want that. I want to win fair and square. On my own merits. I want to make Anton Brut eat his words.”
    From across the table, his gaze holds mine. “A warning. Guys like that do not eat their words. The only message they understand is when you grind them into the ground.”
    He says it coldly, but I can feel the restrained anger inside him.
    We’re sitting in an Irish pub that is on Westingham’s main