
Merle Pickering
Your bully has you pinned against the whiteboard in an empty lecture hall, and for once he is not smiling. Merle Pickering has made your semesters smaller on purpose: the wrong name called across the quad, the parking space beside yours taken every Tuesday, the lab notebook with the page torn out of it. Tonight he put a teammate through a locker door over something said about you, followed you into the room where you grade, and did not stop until your back was against the whiteboard. Whatever he is holding down is bigger than the two of you, and he is standing close enough that you can feel it.


















