“I’m a little nervous about this paper,” Maria confessed. “I’m a terrible writer. And what kind of theme is ‘what I want to be when I grow up’ for a college paper anyway?”

            “Relax,” Liz said. “I looked at it, Max looked at it, even Michael looked at it. It was fine.”

            “I’m not sure Prof. Can’t Hear What I’m Saying will like my plan to be a lounge singer,” Maria continued to fret.

            “Maria,” Max soothed. “It doesn’t matter what your paper actually says, its just to show him your writing style.”

            “I told him I want to be a fashion designer,” Isabel said, leaning forward on her desk. “He won’t like that any better.”

            “I wonder what Michael said,” Alex pondered, looking over at Michael, who was already sleeping with his head on the desk.

            “No one’s is worse than mine,” Tess said.

            “What did you pick?” Kyle asked interestedly. “You wouldn’t tell me last night.”

            “Housewife,” Tess coughed quickly, turning red.

            “Really?” Kyle’s eyes widened and he turned a little red himself.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Max said. “I said that I wanted to be a science fiction writer and stay at home too.”

            “And I said I wanted to run a multi-million dollar software company out of my garage,” Alex added. Everyone stared at him. “What?” he asked. “That’s close…”

            “All right class,” the professor said, coming and setting his briefcase down on his podium. “Settle down, now, settle down…”

            “Are we going to get our papers back?” Liz asked, putting her hand in the air.

            “Eh?” the professor said. “Speak up!”

            “Our papers!” Liz said loudly. Maria began to giggle.

            “Yes, yes, the stapler is on my desk if you must use it.” The professor turned and started to write on the board. The rest of the class began to laugh and Maria had to lay her head down on the desk, she was laughing so hard. Even Max shook with suppressed laughter as Liz glared at the professor’s back.

            “I’d set his hearing aid on fire, if I had alien powers,” Liz growled at Max.

            The eight teenagers squirmed in their seats until the end of class. Well, seven of them squirmed and one of them slept peacefully.

            Finally, the professor dusted the chalk off his hands and pulled a large sheaf of papers from his briefcase. The class sighed in collective relief.

            “The class as a whole did terribly,” he said in tones of deep disgust. “So bad in fact that I have decided not to even count this first grade. The next paper, however, will count double.”

            Silence spread through the room as papers were handed out. Not a hushed, reading the comments silence.

            More like the silence of the absolutely horrified.

            Liz looked at her paper in disbelief, then looked up, but the professor had evidently beat a hasty retreat in deference to his personal safety.

            “WHAT?!!” Isabel’s shriek finally broke the silence. “Not only did he give me a D, but read this comment! READ IT!!” she demanded, waving it at Alex violently.

            “’You would make an attractive secretary’!” Alex read aloud, jaw dropping. “Well, he gave me a C and said computers would never be a driving force in the world!”

            “He gave me a B and said that nursing is a fine profession for a girl like me!” Liz exclaimed. “Does ‘molecular biologist’ sound like ‘nurse’ to you?!”

            “Apparently he didn’t mind sheriff very much,” Kyle said. “B.”

            “I got a C,” Maria said. “But then it says singer is a fine profession for a girl because I will be able to give it up easily when I get married and settle down!” she smacked Michael hard in the arm. “What’d he give you?” she demanded.

            “C,” Michael yawned, barely glancing at the paper. “Just like high school…”

            “What did you get?” Isabel asked Tess.

            “I can’t believe I feel guilty about this,” she said, gulping. “I got an A. After I wrote that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, he wrote ‘that’s what women should do’.”

            “Oh. My. God.” Isabel was taking deep breaths, trying to calm down.

            “Max?” Liz asked. “How did you do?”

            Max was sitting very still, just staring silently at his paper. Liz had never seen him so angry in her whole life. He handed her the paper without a word.

            “’This is not even worth my time to finish reading’,” Liz read out loud. “’The only science fiction here is the fact that you think you can ignore your duty to get a real job and leave your wife to the chores of home and children. Men belong in the office, women belong in the home’.” She looked up in shock to six speechless faces of horror. “He drew a huge line through the paper where he stopped reading, and gave Max an F.”

            “Jesus,” Alex said after a few minutes.

            “Max?” Liz asked in a hushed voice, tugging gently at his arm. “Come on, snap out of it. We should get out of here.”

            He rose to his feet mechanically and followed the other seven out of the classroom.

            *                      *                      *                      *                      *                      *

            Michael answered Max’s and his door.

            “Hey, Liz,” he said.

            “How’s he doing?” she asked with concern.

            “About the same,” Michael answered. “He hasn’t moved, he’s just sitting there, playing Snood.”

            “Do you mind if I try and talk to him?” she asked.

            “No problem,” he said. He grinned mischievously. “Maybe I’ll go tease Maria. I understand she has a ton of homework she should be doing…”

            Liz laughed and slipped past him into Max’s and his room, closing the door behind her.

            “Hey,” she said, sitting down on the bed. “I smuggled you a sandwich from the dining hall. Thought you might be hungry.” She held out the sandwich wrapped in napkins. Max looked away from his computer and gave a half smile.

            “Thanks,” he said, taking it from her and unwrapping it.

            “How do you feel?” Liz asked tentatively.

            “Still pretty pissed off,” Max admitted. “But I feel a little better.” He took a bite of the sandwich and smiled. “This is good. What’s in here?”

            “Um…egg salad, onions, mustard…a bunch of stuff. Basically I just put in everything that made Maria look queasy,” Liz told him. He laughed.

            “I’m glad you feel better,” she said seriously.

            “Oh,” Max said, finishing off the last bite of the sandwich. “That’s because I know what I’m going to do.”

            “What do you mean?” Liz asked warily. Max smiled and said nothing. “Max, what are you going to do?”

            “You’ll see,” he said simply.

            *                      *                      *                      *                      *                      *

            Friday morning before class started, Liz, Maria, Isabel, Alex, Tess, Kyle, and even Michael watched Max nervously. Max sat quietly at his desk as though nothing were amiss.

            When the professor came in, the tension in the group doubled, but Max remained nonchalant. Ten minutes into his lecture, the professor suddenly brought a hand up to his ear as though to swat a bug, then went right on lecturing. Everything seemed perfectly normal.

            “And that concludes today’s lecture on nouns,” the professor said an hour later. “Any questions? Comments?”

            Max put up his hand and everyone stiffened.

            “Yes, Mr. Evans?”

            “I would just like to say,” Max said pleasantly. “That I hate you. I hate this class. You are a pompous, racist misogynist, and I want to punch you in the head.”

            The class stared in horror at Max, but he went on placidly.

            “You should have retired twenty years ago. Half the stuff you teach us hasn’t been true since the Second World War. You are a million years old, and you can’t hear a word we say, not like you would listen if you did. In fact, if you were as blind as you were deaf, and you aren’t far from it, I would fuck my girlfriend,” here he banged his fist on the desk, “right here.”

            He smiled politely and leaned back in his chair, clearly finished.

            Everyone stared at him, jaws hanging open. Someone giggled nervously.

            “Yes, yes,” the professor said loudly, as two dozen pairs of eyes swung to focus on him in morbid fascination. “Quite right, Mr. Evans. Class dismissed.”

            Max calmly began to pack up his bookbag, but no one else moved.

            “Oh,” Tess said.

            “My,” Liz covered her face with her hands.

            “God, that was good,” Maria finished with a satisfied smirk. “Get settled down indeed.”

            “Secretary,” Isabel snorted.

            “How did you do that?” Alex asked Max in awe.

            “I blew out his hearing aid,” Max shrugged.

            “You are my personal hero,” Kyle said fervently. Max shrugged again.

            “You shouldn’t mess with the pod squad,” he said simply. “Let’s go eat, I’m starved. I have a craving for a sandwich made out of everything Maria hates…”