Whitfield put her glasses back on. Her jaw was tight. Her voice had a new edge. Not the controlled surgical tone from lectures, something raw, something threatened. You copied these.
You saw them somewhere. Online, in a journal, from another student. I don't know where, but you didn't solve these. You couldn't have. "Professor, I didn't."
"I'm going to the Dean of Academic Integrity." Whitfield was already gathering her papers, shoving them into her briefcase with none of her usual precision. Her hands were shaking. Barely, but enough. I'm filing a formal complaint.
Academic dishonesty. Plagiarism of research-level work. Samantha felt the ground tilt. "Ma'am, I solved them. You saw me."
"I saw a student write things on a board. I didn't see a student think them up on the spot. Those are very different things." Whitfield snapped her briefcase shut. "You'll be hearing from the disciplinary committee."
She walked past Samantha without looking at her. Her shoulder brushed Samantha's arm. Not hard, but not accidentally. At the door, she stopped, turned halfway. "You know what I think, Porter?
I think someone handed you those solutions. And I think you thought you were clever enough to pass them off as your own. But this isn't some community college where nobody checks." There it was again: that phrase, "community college." The same code, the same message delivered with the same casual precision.