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Fayne.
    â€œAll that stuff about the thick neck and the satiny hair or whatever,” Brendan said. “It’s like she’s gonna hump the horse or something.”
    â€œSick,” said Emily Givens. “You are
so
sick.”
    I had the feeling, actually, that Emily knew a little something about sick. She was wearing a top that would havebeen illegal in key southern states, a kind of cheesecloth camisole.
    â€œYou’re really twisted,” said Rob Tway, and Nick Hutchins chipped in, “Uncalled for, dude. Majorly.”
    Brendan shook his head. He was the lowest common denominator, no doubt about that, a dim kid with the long, rutted cheeks of adolescence. But he was only following my lead. I was the one who had ordered them to root out the truth, to never avert their eyes.
Self-deception
, I’d told them, in my profound deeply feeling teacher voice,
is the only worthy enemy
.
    â€œI’m just saying,” Brendan said. “Like, look at it. ‘She stroked the beast’s hot, damp, thick, satiny neck. She smelled the musk of the animal enveloping her trembling body.’ I didn’t write that. Did I write that?”
    He looked at me.
    â€œYou did not write that,” I said.
    Nicole let out a puff of disgusted air.
    The author, Mandy Shaw, sat scribbling in her notebook. She was a sadistic little sex bomb with a tattoo on the small of her back of a fairy princess with blue hair and D cups. Sometimes, during conferences, as she sat across from me fretting over syntax, I imagined her body rendered on black velvet. The faintest hint of her body spray was enough to ruin my day.
    â€œEven the way the daughter is described. The way sherides the horse, like the way their bodies fit together. And the mom’s watching, remembering how her daughter’s face looked.” Brendan started flipping through the story again.
    â€œLet’s move on,” Nicole said.
    â€œHold on, hold on. Here it is. ‘The look on Cassie’s face was one of unbridled ecstasy, as if her body were rising on some large, warm happiness.’ Am I crazy or does that sound kind of horny? Come on. Large.
Warm
.” Brendan looked for support to Teddy Leaf, his fellow burnout. “I’m not saying the mom doesn’t love Cassie or isn’t heartbroken or whatever. It’s just there’s all this weird, like, energy with the horses. Like this sexy horse energy.”
    This drew a few laughs and Brendan began to nod. “We all know about those girls, those horsey girls, who are all obsessed with horses. Going out to the barn and brushing them and washing their flanks and all that. Rubbing them down. Marie-Antoinette—she had sex with horses.”
    â€œThat was Catherine the Great, you idiot,” said Rob Tway.
    â€œThey had to use a crane to lower the animal down onto her,” Pete Fayne added helpfully.
    â€œPlease don’t call him an idiot,” I said to Rob.
    â€œWho did?” said Teddy Leaf.
    â€œHer attendants,” said Fayne. “The dudes who help out the queen.”
    Teddy Leaf ran a finger over the scab on his elbow.“That’s, like, treason dude. Watching the queen fuck a horse is definitely treason.”
    â€œWhy are we talking about this?” Nicole said.
    â€œBrendan’s just making stuff up to get attention because his parents didn’t give him enough when he was a child,” said Emily Givens.
    â€œI didn’t make that up,” Brendan said. “It’s history.”
    â€œGross,” Emily said. “You are
made
of gross.”
    â€œYou’d know,” said Teddy Leaf, and the class, the entire little circle of creative fucknuts, let out a lowdown murmur.
    All except for Ingrid Nunez. She was a strict Pentecostal who wrote stories about her love for the All-Knowing Creator of Man and, more recently, her devout hope that the iniquitous would burn in hell for the rest of time.
    â€œI do