Page 31 of White Lights
Dez is horrified that these are the first words an Acheron professor says to her, but before she can protest that there are no available seats, Zarlengo asks:
“What kind of Acheron student are you, Ms. Rae?”
Fuck, and he knows her name. How does he know her name?
Every eye in the lecture hall stares at Dez. Some she recognizes from the bar last night, before she blacked out. Shame creeps over her shoulders, knitting them tightly together.
“Right now,” Dez starts, “I’m an Acheron student who’d like to sit down.”
A smattering of embarrassed laughter sounds in the hall.
“I think we all join you in that aspiration,” Dr. Zarlengo says.
Seeing no other option, Dez sinks down into the aisle next to Simon, who gives her a pitying wince. In her fantasies of her first day as a graduate student, Dez was a heroine, not the class clown. But maybe it’s a good thing to be so hideously out of her depth, so repeatedly humiliated, because all this constant scrambling interrupts her thinking about Mo.
She takes out the orientation folder, flipping through to find her schedule for today.
6:00 a.m.
Work Study Breakfast Shift, Enoch Dining Hall Kitchen
Already fucked that one up.
9:00 a.m.
First-Year Orientation, Kohenet Building, Lecture Hall
