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Peter taps his pen on the edge of the desk and blinks as slowly as the human form is able to manage, so as to give the young lady before him an extra few milliseconds to fully comprehend the battle she has elected to bring to this place.
Here. In this holy, gray-toned office with windows that haven’t seen light since 1976.
Here. In this sacred place of learning, where colleagues have reported Peter’s bruises to HR and Title IX six times this month and where his every move is watched like a fucking hawk by a load of meddling, beady-eyed, in-office, do-gooders.
Here, on this shitty hill of all hills, this young lady has decided to die.
“Tell me more,” he says, crossing one leg over the other, as Plato’s half-drunk roommates must have done in response to him falling onto their shared kitchen table slur-shrieking, ‘I have developed an idea surrounding a cave.’
“There’s nothing else to say,” the young lady says. “It’s just not working out, so I want to change.”
Peter blinks slowly again—this time to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head and sticking there.
“How many weeks into the semester are we?” he asks no one in particular. Before his office-guest can answer, he rips his head over his shoulder to the calendar plastered against the wall next to the monster of a monitor he was assigned when he first arrived here.
“Seven weeks?” he asks No One. “Seven weeks since the start of instruction?”
He rolls his head back towards the student. She stares at him, lanky and wide-eyed—evidently not picking up what he is so tenderly putting down before her.
“It’s the same class just at a different time,” she says.
“Taught by a different instructor,” Peter tacks onto that very astute observation.
“Well, yeah. That’s the point.”
“Have you spoken to this instructor?” Peter asks, fully prepared to mouth along with the answer before it even leaves the lips of this blessed, blessed child before him.
“No,” she says.
“Right, so you want to add a class seven weeks into a semester, with an instructor you have not spoken to, because you find your current instructor’s accent...challenging?”
“And her teaching style. I sent her some links and stuff to like, better pronunciation and teaching guides on Youtube, but she didn’t respond to me.”
Peter steeples his fingers in front of his face and imagines Doc Ock doing this with every phalange of his tentacles as well.
“How would you respond if you received an email like that?” he asks.
One never knows. Sometimes, empathy can be found in even the most inhospitable environments. He wishes simply to give this student the benefit of the doubt.
“I’d be grateful,” the student says, “Clearly no one’s talked to her about all this before.”
Peter doesn’t blink this time because he can’t promise that his lids will close in unison, further, one might get stuck on the last grain of hope he had for this generation.
“I’d feel bad,” he says flat out. “That kind of thing is unprofessional.”
One moment, Peter is sitting in an office designed to a ‘T’ to crush his soul; the next, he is sitting in a fog of hatred. The student before him appears now to be one beat away from sprouting snakes from her head and turning him to stone.
He endures. It is important, in the face of perceived danger, to keep calm and refrain from using your super strength to tear the door from its hinges and launch it into space.
Students of this variety don’t fear that kind of thing. No, the only thing they fear is looking back upon their own behavior and finding the culprit of their current misery to be, not that great and terrible institution their parents have paid so much money for them to attend, but rather themselves.
How terrible it is to have to change classes before the add and drop deadline.
How miserable it must be to be forced to look up reviews of instructors before signing up for one’s classes.
How disgusting it is to be taught by someone with an accent or a teaching style different from that preferred by you and perhaps two other people on this great blue marble in space.
Sympathy? Peter doesn’t know her.
He leans back in his seat and rotates his ankle, waiting to hear the response. One does not come. He elects to proceed since the playing field remains empty.
“At the university level, it is the student’s responsibility to do all that they can to help themselves succeed academically just as much as it is an instructor’s responsibility to show up and teach their assigned class,” he points out. “Have you tried tutoring? Have you tried attending office hours?”
“They’re a waste of my time,” this cartoon of a human suddenly erupts at him, “Why should I go to office hours when the instructor should just teach better?”
Peter wonders if she has ever realized that she stands in a classroom with other human beings. He doubts it. It is a shame to be the first to make her aware of this sad fact.
“Other students may find the instructor’s method to suit their needs, actually, and anyways, this is not the first time you’re going to be in a situation where your teacher isn’t going to be the absolute pinnacle of pedagogy and engagement,” Peter reasons. “So let’s start there. This is a learning opportunity. What do you do when your professor doesn’t teach in a way that is conducive to your learning?”
He is extending this olive branch. He doesn’t have to. He could rip off his shirt and jump from the desk to the ceiling. He could hiss at her and wall-crawl over the top of the doorframe and across the lobby ceiling to break a window and escape this hellscape.
“I’d change classes,” the young lady says.
Peter allows his mind to be as blank as her reflection must be in mirrors.
“Well,” he says after a long moment of consideration, “If you really want to change classes, you are going to need to submit a request for a mid-semester withdrawal. This requires you to provide a statement of hardship, preferably with documentation of all of your efforts to seek assistance from the instructor and campus resources—for example, tutoring—so as to demonstrate to the Board that you have taken all reasonable measures expected of a student to succeed in a class and all these have not been sufficient to help you pass the course.
In addition, you’ll need to contact the other instructor of the course you’d like to add to arrange a meeting and gain their support to add into a class seven weeks into a semester, with an understanding that you’ll complete all of the assignments that you will have missed for that course. In that meeting, you’ll need to obtain an add code and then the instructor’s signature and the department chair’s signature on a late add petition, which you’ll need to submit to the registrar before the class can be added to your schedule.”
Check, he does not end with.
He absorbs the silence.
“Or,” he says, “You might try to determine how you can help yourself pass the class you are currently in.”
There are so many wonders in the world that deserve to be ranked in the top seven of those bastards, and Peter is saddened that Entitled Rage didn’t even place seventh. The student has gone white with barely-suppressed fury that this no-good, terrible, nasty advisor has dared to not snatch them up by their beltloop and deposit their gleaming, blushing behind into the seat of their preferred course at the snap of their fingers.
Peter cannot wait for them to remember this moment with excruciating agony in 10 years time.
“To get that withdrawal request rolling, I would suggest that you start by attending office hours and tutoring,” he says. “And also by speaking to the other instructor.”
There is one student who Peter realizes, halfway through the semester, is onto him.
He considers her now, staring with hair tied in two puffs on her head like Mickey-Mouse ears and rose-gold gleaming glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.
He would die for this student.
That is no exaggeration.
And yet now he wonders if he will have to flee the county on account of her tricky, sticky intellect.
“Are you okay, Mr. Parker?” she asks.
It is probably the nest of busted capillaries on his cheekbone that inspires this line of questioning. Peter, however, is used to this treatment, no thanks to a crowd of certain nit-picking, busy-body co-workers with counseling degrees and not a singular sense of self-preservation among them.
“You should see the other guy,” he says with a smirk.
The student’s brow contorts and her carefully sculpted eyebrows bent in their middles with it.
“I brought my resume,” she says. “And the internship posting.”
Wonderful. Peter takes both into his hands and lays them out on his desk.
“Did you ask your Calc instructor for a letter?” he asks.
“Yes,” the student who is going to ruin Peter’s career in 30 seconds if he doesn’t distract her ticking brain says.
“And?”
“He said okay.”
Perfect.
Peter starts scanning the posting.
“Mr. Parker?”
Oh, what’s that? A phonecall? For him?
“Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” he says.
“Mr. Parker, you’re bleeding—”
Wade brings him lunch. Everyone in the office, even the husk that is left of the fulltime front desk person, recoils in horror at the thought.
Peter hears Wade through the door and stands to open it.
Wade towers over the front desk in his red and black, holding in his hand a paper bag which has seen better centuries in a previous life as a tree.
“Ah,” Wade says. “Pete.”
He holds up the bag innocently.
“He’s good to come through,” Peter says while the waiting room waits in pure terror. “Come on in.”
His director hears about the Wade incident, and Peter soon finds himself in a conference room, feeling eerily like a man about to experience a Come to Jesus meeting. He’s so excited. He’s always wondered what one is like.
He doesn’t have wine, but he does have a thermos and he’s more than ready to set a ceremonial place at the table.
“Peter,” his director greets upon entry. “Sorry, I was just in a meeting with the head of biology.”
Peter notes that they have not brought wine, either.
“No problem,” he says as the director gets situated.
He waits.
It is not his job to open this conversation like it is to open every other conversation with every other student on this godforsaken campus. It is a luxury that he intends to bask in while it lasts.
“Right,” the director says. “Peter, I received a report that Deadpool came into the office yesterday?”
It is phrased like a question, but see, Peter has three fucking degrees now—he’s covered the Three’s Cs: Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Counseling—so he knows that this question is not a question but a trap.
“An old friend. We were just catching up,” he says.
“A friend, Peter? You’re friends with Deadpool, Peter?”
“It’s a long story—met at a bar, placed a couple bets, found out why they call him ‘Deadpool’—”
The director holds up a hand and takes a little huff of a breath to collect themselves.
“Peter,” they say shakily, “I respect that you have a variety of friendships. It’s really cool that you are able to get along with people from such...diverse backgrounds, however, campus police have requested that all meetings with Deadpool hereafter take place off-campus.”
Peter shrugs.
“Fair enough,” he says.
The silence is long and rolling. Peter waits for the director or Elijah or Jesus to speak. He doesn’t mind who chimes in first.
“Is that all?” he asks.
“I’ve received 18 reports about visible injuries on your person,” the director blurts out. “I know you said that everything at home is okay, but are you sure—”
“With all due respect, that’s between me and the Title IX office,” Peter says smoothly.
He’s practiced this one in the mirror. There is nothing the director can do but clear their throat and agree. Just to due their due diligence, however, they hand him a card to a battered women’s shelter and tells him that the place is non-discriminatory.
Peter accepts the card and waits until the director checks their phone and startles at the time. They apologize and hustle out to go to another meeting. Peter stands to open the door for them and tucks the card into their back pocket before they vanish entirely out of the frame.
“Hey, so what do you do in the daytime?” Peter asks Hornhead next to him.
The guy’s crouched in a fantastic rendition of the giant purple guy in the Gargoyles cartoon. His head rotates Peter’s direction and his mask tilts slightly to the side.
“What do you think I do?” Red asks.
“Ice-cream truck driver,” Peter says immediately.
“Ice-cream?”
“You just got that air about you.”
“Ice-cream...”
Red’s brain gets stuck like this sometimes. Sort of like a pinball machine’s flipper just barely scraping the edge of the ball over and over again.
“What do you do?”
Peter almost chokes at the question being redirected back to him. He reaches up to scratch at a fleck of pigeon shit or dried blood on the hard eyes of his mask. The gesture is useless. He’s got no nails on these gloves to scratch with.
“Advisor,” he says.
“Financial?” Hornhead asks in surprise.
Pft. No. Academic.
“Oh.”
Yeah, ‘oh’ is right.
“I guess you kinda got that kinda voice,” Red says.
The urge to cram his entire fist down his throat in one frantic, fell swoop explodes through Peter’s brain like dopamine.
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” he snaps.
Red looks away.
“HEY.”
Red’s very preoccupied with a broken lamppost down below suddenly.
“Lawyer,” Red says out of nowhere.
The burning, yearning desire to throttle himself and everyone around him burns off quickly.
“Lawyer,” Peter repeats. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“You could pretend to be offended,” Peter points out.
“I mean,” Hornhead says, “What do you want me to say? I know exactly what set of scales I’m balancing on.”
There is a pause.
“Ah, I get it. Scales, because you’re a fucking lawyer,” Peter realizes.
Red smirks.
“I’m very good,” he says.
“Say something lawyerly,” Peter says.
“I object.”
Fucking Elle Woods is in the house. What a day. What a fucking day.
“Say something counselor-y,” Red goads.
“Get advising early and often,” Peter says immediately.
Red stares through him.
“That’s mortifying,” he says.
“God, tell me about it.”
“No, really. I felt 17 for a second there.”
“17? You a December baby, Red? You one of them kids who comes to college needing Mama’s signature for field trips?”
“October.”
“No shit? Fuck.”
“Yeah, and there were no Mamas around to help out. My dad got canned when I was ten. I didn’t know who had my Ed Rights until I after I got into college.”
“Nevermind,” Peter says, “You were a logistical nightmare, and I would have hacked into the system to get you off my caseload.”
Red’s grin gleams.
“You have no idea what kinda nightmare I am,” he says. “We got a live one. Ready?”
Ready.