Peter tilted his head, still resting in his hand, then leaned back and put a lot of unnecessary effort into looking her up and down. “I thought the whole Goth thing was a phase.”
With a deep breath, Cheyenne lowered her hands from her keyboard, folded her arms, and turned to look at the guy. “Anyone who grows out of something that makes them feel like themselves is quitting. I’m not a quitter.”
“Huh.” The dude’s top lip twitched as he decided whether to smile. “That’s deep.”
Cheyenne turned back to her laptop and shrugged. “I thought the whole asshole-jock thing was supposed to be a phase too. Looks like you don’t quit, either.”
Peter’s mouth popped open, and the group of his friends standing by the classroom door burst out laughing. They spread out to take their seats, and the guy sitting next to Cheyenne nodded and pushed the chair out behind him as he stood. “Nice getting to know you, whatever your name is.”
She waited for him to pick another chair at the row of desks in front of her before she typed in her laptop password and sat back again. More than anything, she wanted to sync her laptop with the server at her apartment and check on her running search through the dark web. Nothing else had pulled up in her three hours of sleep, but that wasn’t unusual. Cheyenne was just impatient. And tapping into her personal IP using the school’s internet was the dumbest thing she could do—especially while running on almost zero sleep.
The lab filled up with the other grad students in their first years of pursuing a master’s in computer science, though the room was only half-full. Then the professor walked in, pulling a light-brown briefcase on wheels behind her. The color of the leather made Cheyenne think of Ember’s jacket, which now had to have at least one bullet hole in it, if not two.
“See, so I appreciate my grad students so much more,” the woman said as she hustled toward her desk at the front of the lab. “If anyone’s late, it’s gonna be me.”
A few chuckles filled the room, followed by the sound of backpacks and briefcases unzipping. Cheyenne took a quick glance around at the others. Most of the students pulled out pens and pencils and notepads, which seemed ridiculous when they were here for programming and code-writing. Do they write faster on paper than they can type?
Cheyenne brought her laptop with her everywhere, even for her undergrad classes. She’d bought a new HP Spectre x360 to celebrate graduating with what amounted to a useless bachelor’s degree. But even now, at their third class of the semester, she was the only one who’d thought it was a better idea to bring her own laptop instead of depending on what the school called “cutting-edge technology.” The thought almost made her smirk.
“So who went the extra mile over the weekend and dug into all the extra fun bits of Python and Java they wouldn’t teach you as undergrads?” Professor Bergmann stood behind her desk, the handle of her rolling briefcase still extended to its full height. The woman was tall and graceful, which was the complete opposite of every instructor Cheyenne had had for her classes before grad school. Her hair was black, which contrasted with her olive complexion and striking hazel eyes.
I could be jealous right now. Cheyenne pressed her lips together and pulled up the two coding programs, just to be ready for whichever one their professor would tell them to pull up next. Or I could just appreciate the fact that she’s wearing neon-yellow Chuck Taylors and a tie-dyed skirt. She looks as much like as an IT professor as I do.
The class was silent. Cheyenne could feel the looks darting all over the place from most of the students sitting in the front row ahead of her. Only two people sat behind her, both of them at opposite ends of the last row of desks. She stared at her laptop.
“Seriously?” Professor Bergmann chuckled and scanned her students’ faces. “Oh, come on, people. You’ve spent four years figuring out how to do college. Please don’t tell me you’re taking on grad-school loans just so I can teach you how to think for yourselves.”
A girl with a messy bun tied closer to her forehead than the top of her head sighed and gestured toward the professor. “If you don’t give us an assignment before the weekend, how are we supposed to know you wanted us to show you something today?”
“Huh.” The corners of the professor’s mouth turned down in mock consideration, and she stroked her chin. “I thought you guys wanted to be here. Was I wrong?”
No one said a word.
“It’s in the syllabus,” Cheyenne muttered, still staring at the black background of her desktop screen. Then she bit her lip just to keep from smiling.
“What?” The woman sitting in front of her beside Peter turned around, the messy bun on her head wobbling a little. She cocked her head and shot Cheyenne a fake smile. “I didn’t hear you. Sorry. I think you were mumbling.”
Cheyenne just raised an eyebrow and stared at her computer until the other student shrugged and turned around again. “It’s in the syllabus.” This time, she said it loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s laid out by the week and a detailed summary of what we’re going into.”
Messy Bun scoffed.
“It’s okay if you lost it,” Cheyenne added. “I bet that happens a lot in grad school.”
“Oh.” Messy Bun dug through her well-oiled, expensive-looking designer messenger bag, jerked out a bright-yellow folder, and thumbed through the small number of papers inside. “I didn’t lose it.” She whipped out the stapled-together syllabus and spread it out in front of her on the table. “But it says nothing about having to do assignments before we learn about it in class.”
Professor
