All's Well

by Mona Awad

You will mentally fast-forward to the moment when you hand Briana her essay back, branded with this B−. She will receive it and immediately look as though she has been stung by a thousand wasps, and you will wish that she had brought this to her performance of Juliet. You will watch her face redden first with embarrassment, then with outrage, her chin tilt up, up, up in defiance. She will assume you have given her this grade because you are an idiot and/or jealous of her beauty and youth. You are not the former, but you are most certainly the latter, and so it is not without some fear, some guilt, that you will watch Briana march toward your desk after class, watch her flip her shining hair around in an attempt to blind you as she complains. Watch her eyes grow big and wet and desperate. Watch her outrage bloom like an out-of-control flower. For this is not the way of the universe, the universe of Briana in which you are merely a cog in the great machinery of her ultimate success.