Chapter 92 Madame Vesper
Malia's POV
The essay hits my desk with a slap—sharp, purposeful, final. 4/20.
The numbers are circled in a red ink so dark it appear like dried blood. Slashes sever paragraphs. Question marks swarm the margins like accusations. At the bottom, in the neat handwriting of Madame Vesper: Meet me after class.
I’m looking at the document, my mind trying to make sense of what I’m looking at Four of twenty. Not four out of ten – four out of twenty. I've never gotten below a B in my life. Never even came close.
Around me, other students are shuffling papers into their folders, whispering about weekend plans, packing up bags. There’s a laugh—high and carefree. Another person is bitching about the reading load. Normal sounds. Normal problems.
I can’t move. Cannot take my eyes off those numbers.
I knew what I wrote. Tito was a six-hour essay, with twelve sources, where I had triple-checked every argument. Wrote on the historic development of hybrid tolerance within supernatural societies, followed legislative amendments over three centuries, studied sociological ramifications with statistical support.
That was good work. I know it was good work but four out of twenty?
"Assignments will be returned in order of performance," Vesper announces from the front of the room, her voice carrying that same clinical precision. “For those of you in the bottom percentile, you will be signing up immediately for extra remedial sessions. You can’t bargain with that in this course.”
Across the room her eyes meet mine. Hold for just a fraction too long.
The lecture is now over. I can’t hear a word of it. Just sit there, watching the scarlet letters bleed through my carefully constructed arguments, my researched claim, my two-week lecture on how I know that I belong here.
The class is dismissed at 10:15. Students cluster as they exit: talking, texting, griping about the midterm to come. Aiden catches my eye from two rows up, worry written all over his 𝖿ᥱᥲ𝗍ᥙrᥱs, he hesitates before ᥣᥱᥲ᥎іᥒg.
The room clears. The door clicks shut.
I pack my things methodically, deliberately, trying to mold my face into something neutral before I have to get up. Before I have to walk up there and whatever's waiting for me.
Madame Vesper is already at her podium, shuffling papers with robotic finesse. She doesn't even look up as I draw near. Just keeps sorting, forming neat piles, every action measured.
I pause three feet away from her desk. Clear my throat. "You wanted to see me?"
"Your essay was profoundly disappointing." She looks up at last, lifting her red-rimmed glasses to wipe them on a tissue taken out from her blazer pocket. They’re harder without them, her eyes. Sharper. "I thought you would do better for a scholarship student who purports to take her education seriously. "
The words come like punches to the body. "I don’t understand.I cited sources, followed the rubric exactly—"
"You followed the format," she interrupts, as she replaces her glasses with a few precise taps. "But the substance reveals a basic misconception of the topic. Your arguments appeal to emotional logic rather than scientific data. You romanticize historical events, dismiss proven mistakes, and treat anomalous cases as examples of the norm."
"I quoted peer-reviewed sources—"
"You relied on sources that had a predetermined conclusion." She picks up my essay, flips to a marked page. "Here, you cite the Meridian Accord as an example of effective hybrid cooption. What you don’t say is that 70 percent of the families in that accord broke apart within five years. The figures don't support the thesis you're arguing. You just decided to ignore it."
My mouth goes dry. "That figure wasn’t in any of the sources I consulted—”
"Then you didn't look hard enough." She slams the paper down. "Miss Reed, academic scholars don't have the luxury of intellectual indolence. You are here on borrowed favour. They are assessing everything, every task, every grade, every contact. This—” she taps the 4/20 with one perfectly polished fingernail, “—tells me you’re still not going to be taking that responsibility seriously."
Heat crawls up my neck. Shame and rage blending into something metallic."I worked hard on this—"
"Hard work without the right process is nothing." Her voice doesn't rise, it doesn’t get warmer. Somehow that makes it worse. “I’ve seen dozens of students like you. Passionate, earnest, convinced that emotion can stand in for rigor. It cannot. And deficiencies like that, in upper-division classes, are uncrossable.”
“So what are you saying?” The words come out too sharply from my mouth than I meant. "That I don't belong here?"
Something flickers in her expression—satisfaction, maybe, or vindication. “I’m saying that in order to keep attending you need to prove you’re competent. Which you have not yet shown.”
The room tilts slightly. I hold on to the edge of her desk for balance. “This is one essay—”
“This is a pattern.” She pulls out a folder—my file, I think with a sinking sense of dread—and opens it. "Remedial sessions where you do surface amusing analysis. Class comment that depends on personal story rather than engagement with scholarly. General trajectory implying you are… failing to meet institutional expectations.”
“That's not fair—"
“Fair is irrelevant.” She snapped the folder shut. “Outcomes are what matter. And your numbers are going down.”
I want to argue. I really want to argue, tell her that she has been after me from the start, that every example she has brought up of “failed hybrids” is designed to make me feel like I’m full of shit, that this whole conversation isn’t about an essay grade.
But I can’t. Because arguing would just prove her right—that I’m emotional, defensive, and can’t take an academic critique.
So, I swallow the words. Swallow the tears that want to come out. Swallow everything with the exception of "What do I need to do?"
She looks at me for a long moment. "Retake the essay. New thesis, new sources, new methodology. Due Friday. And attend three remedial sessions this week in place of two. And—" she stops, "—I would really recommend that you try and minimize distractions. Social engagements that undermine an academic focus."
There it is. The true signal behind all the noise and talk about methodology and rigor.
Stay away from Aiden. From the brothers, from whatever makes you feel like you have a place. From anything that makes you feel like you belong.
"I understand," I say softly.
"Good." She goes back to the task of shuffling papers, already ignoring me. "You're excused."
I leave before my hands start shaking. Before my fangs dig in too deep beneath my lip. Before I do anything that confirms every horrible thing she thinks about me.
The hallway is too bright, too noisy with faraway voices and crashing lockers. I walk fast, head down, clutching my essay to my chest like it’s proof of my own inadequacy until I reach the bathroom at the end of the hall.