The words hit my chest like a sledgehammer. The cold brush of blood fleeing my arteries seizes me, and I stare blankly at the man sitting across from me.
Why should anyone care?What he’s really asking is why shouldhecare. Perhaps I had him all wrong. Perhaps, the man I thought he was, or could be, is someone entirely different. The knotting sensation in my stomach twists tighter, tense and coiling like a wind-up toy ready to snap.
“Why should they…” I stammer.
I am losing the ability to remain calm, to keep from leaping across the desk and throttling my professor. But then that certainly wouldn’t get me my apprenticeship. And if I can’t even convince him of the merits behind this study, then how can I expect to convince anyone else? “Notwithstanding the humane aspect of it all, this could happen to anyone. Not just those below the poverty level. I mean, the majority of the middle class could potentially be just one tragedy away from being in this same situation.”
A glint flickers in his gaze.
Almost as if he’s amused by the sudden heat in my words. He quickly tapers it down, looking at some unknown distraction on the floor. “Where do you suppose the funding for all of this will come from? Not to mention the number of volunteers needed to orchestrate a movement like this?”
Where? The never-ending question. Something I have asked myself a dozen times before, without results. Yet I refuse to give in when I have already come this far. “I will find a way,” I say, determination flaring in my words like sparks of electricity. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”
His eyes dart upward to meet mine.
For a brief moment, the lightness I am accustomed to resurfaces, the tender gaze that offered sympathy and understanding when I spoke about my father the previous night. He quickly replaces it with a solid veneer of indifference. “And you are set on this proposal? No way to convince you otherwise?”
I set my jaw. “No. I am set on this.”
The twinkle in his eyes returns, and he smiles despite the tension between us. “I’m glad to hear it. This proposal is quite good, in fact. We will just need to work on your funding and the volunteer aspect, but otherwise acceptable.”
Did I hear him correctly? Is he contradicting all the horrible things he just said about my proposal? He’s saying my research was actually acceptable, and that I am not insane for pursuing this?
He remains motionless, watching me, allowing for the levity in his words to speak for themselves before adding anything else to the conversation. A weight lifts from my lungs, allowing them to breathe once again. The relieving sensation is short-lived, however, as the extent of his cruel game finally sinks in.
Heat flares to my cheeks. So, he’s not the heartless monster I had imagined. But he is far from innocent.
“So...so what was all that, then?” I ask. “You were just toying with me?”
“I’m preparing you,” he says flatly. “You’re going to face some opposition in this matter. There are going to be people who question why they should care, why they should help you, why they should bother giving money to this instead of something else. They would rather feed the homeless for a day than to get them back on their feet. It seems like a no-brainer, but people are more concerned with the easy solution, the patch-up job, rather than the long-term plan.”
It’s all beginning to make sense. Slowly, but painful nonetheless. The man is rumored to be ruthless with his teaching techniques. He wants to nearly break his students, weed out the weak ones. Well, I am not going to play these games. No matter what effect he had hoped for, or what fire he planned to spark in me, he’s gone too far.
I stand.
The sudden need to flee takes hold of me. Maybe soon. But first, this man will get a piece of my mind. “So, you’re telling me, you made me think my proposal was a joke just so you could get a rise out of me?”
“So you would fight for it,” he explains, as if launching someone into a fight was the most natural solution in the world. “You’re going to have to if you want to beat out Jackson’s ideas. He’s playing to his audience. He knows exactly what the board is looking for so they’ll listen. You have to play a different angle.”
The only thing I am able to do at this point is blink. I’m not even sure I’m breathing at the moment. Is he telling me Jackson has already won this thing? Should I even bother trying when he has the whole faculty in his pocket?
“Let me get this straight, Professor Hawthorne.” I position my hands on his desk, leaning forward to stare him down directly. “I’m already starting out behind Jackson in this little race of ours, and the only way to come out even is by baring my soul like some bleeding heart activist?”
No one will take me seriously if I just start spouting out sentimental nonsense!
Professor Hawthorne stands, mirroring my stance and inclining closer toward me. I have to remind myself I’m angry with him, that he just upset me on purpose to prove my loyalty to this cause. Yet all I can seem to focus on is how close his lips are to mine, how warm my skin feels standing this close to him, and the erratic spike of my pulse. An irrational thought of pulling him across the table by his shirt sleeves and kissing him seizes me.
Well, that definitely won’t get your point across.
“You’re not starting out behind by any merit of yours,” he says calmly. “Your paper is significantly superior, and what you’re working toward is that much more important. But you are going to have to play the game a little bit more if you want anyone to care.”
“So brown-nose my way into the good graces of the board?”
He shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. But if we can get the financial backing behind this proposal, if we can get people interested in what you are working for, then that’s everything you need to get ahead of the competition.”
“Is there a reason you didn’t just come out and say this? Rather than letting me believe you were… That you thought...” That he thought, what? That my proposal and everything I had worked for was ridiculous? Or was it the fact that I truly had thought him to be some snobbish playboy with no soul? The man who only paid his way into charities without giving people like me a second thought. The way I had the first day we met.
Why does it even matter?