Page 737 of Lessons in Cruelty

He moves to the blackboard, tossing his piece of chalk up before catching it easily in his palm.

“An aggressor…and a target.” Bastian continues, scrawling on the blackboard.

SELF-DESTRUCTION

“But what happens when those roles collapse into a single person? The same person?”

He turns back to face the class, dark eyes sweeping the room. They hardly ever linger on me during lectures. He’s too careful for that these days.

We asked him for space, and he’s giving it to us in spades.

“Self-sabotage. Self-harm. Self-destruction.” He ticks each phrase off on his fingers. “These behaviors seem counterintuitive. Because why the hell would anyone willingly inflict suffering on themselves?”

Because pain you inflict feels better than pain you can’t control.

Bastian catches my eye, holding my gaze just long enough for my body to tense before we both look away.

“Freud would argue it’s the death drive—“ he scrawls THANATOS on the board without missing a beat “—manifesting as aggression turned inward. A fundamental impulse toward dissolution. A return to an inorganic state.”

Kai shifts beside me. Usually he’s got his phone out, but today he’s paying close attention.

We spoke about it the first day I was due back in Bastian’s class. I told Kai I wasn’t going, but when he said he’d come with and make sure ‘Rooke didn’t pull anything’, I was out of excuses.

After all, my entire tuition hinges on the whims of the psychopath strutting around in front of that blackboard.

A psycho I scratched, slapped, and yelled at…and for some reason, he let me live to tell the tale.

Then again, he let Melissa go, too.

Fuck. Poor Melissa.

I haven’t seen her in weeks. The rumors say her parents shipped her off to rehab, and I’m not risking Kai’s freedom to check if they’re true. I’ve wanted to message her so many times to find out if she’s okay, but Kai told me what Deputy Thatcher said about trying to contact her. I’m not risking Kai’s freedom just to clear my conscience.

I did message Milo. Not for the job he promised me—just to check in and make sure he’s really okay.

He left me on read, and I’m still not sure how I feel about that.

Bastian’s voice drags me back into the present. “That explanation doesn’t satisfy me.”

Beside me, Kai scoffs quietly.

I stare at him, but my boyfriend just keeps watching our professor, twirling a sucker in his mouth.

Bastian sets the chalk down, rubbing his fingertips as his gaze becomes unfocused. “It treats self-destruction as pathology. An…aberration. In reality, it’s our psyche’s logical response to an illogical situation.”

A few students shift uncomfortably, but no one’s in the mood to question Professor Rooke today, it seems.

“Not convinced?” He shrugs, moving over to the T.A.’s desk and perching on the edge. “Imagine, if you will, that you’ve grown up in an environment where you had no control. Pain was inevitable, unpredictable, administered at the leisure of others. Choosing to inflict that pain yourself becomes a form of agency.” His voice drops, just slightly. “Why? Because now you’re not a victim anymore. You’re the architect of your own suffering. This is your world now, and you’re its God. A wrathful, Old-Testament kind of god, but God nonetheless.”

He should have had a mic, because then he could have dropped it.

Tingles prick my fingers, and a cold dread seeps into my toes.

It’s like Bastian just sawed open my skull and put a microscope to my brain.

My entire life, I’ve made choices I know will hurt me, and I never knew why. Is he seriously suggesting I did it just so the hurting happens on my terms?

Staying with family who treated me like shit.