Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 344: 344 | Impress Me

Thursday landed on Jordan like a brick thrown through a window he forgot he left open.

Professor Delgado’s classroom had been reconfigured for the debate, the U-shaped desk arrangement broken apart and rebuilt into two facing rows with a podium between them. The fluorescent overheads buzzed at a frequency that made Jordan’s molars itch. Forty students filled the gallery seats along the walls, phones already out, recording in case someone said something stupid enough for a story.

Jordan sat in the front row of the left-hand side with Eliza beside him, close enough that the vanilla cloud of her perfume kept drifting into his peripheral awareness like a neighbor’s dog that won’t stay in its own yard. She’d worn the tennis skirt again. Shorter this time. A cream cashmere sweater that looked soft enough to be a felony, with the neckline sitting wide enough to expose one collarbone and the black strap of something underneath that she absolutely wanted him to see. Her blonde hair fell in those manufactured beachy waves that required forty-five minutes and three products, and her legs were crossed at the ankle with her knees angled precisely in his direction.

He was wearing a white t-shirt and dark jeans.

Chloe had told him to wear a white t-shirt and dark jeans. The white t-shirt made his arms look good. Chloe’s words, not his, though he’d checked three separate mirrors on the way out of the apartment and couldn’t argue with the assessment.

Across the aisle, Cameron Mitchell occupied his chair the way a king occupied a throne he hadn’t earned but fully expected to keep. His ankles sprawled wide in that casual dominance posture that announced ownership of space without the vulgarity of claiming it aloud. One arm hooked over the back of Tanner Morrison’s chair, fingers drumming against the wood in absent rhythm. Cameron Mitchell didn’t share furniture so much as colonize it.

The uniform came standard issue for Tier One residents: Patagonia vest layered over a crisp white button-up that had probably cost forty dollars to have someone else press. Designer jeans with the kind of dark wash that photographed well under Edison bulbs at the places Cameron frequented for brunch. White sneakers so pristine they could’ve passed safety inspection at a surgical theater. No grass stains. No scuffs. No evidence the shoes had ever encountered weather.

His dirty blonde hair had that perfectly imperfect swoop that Jordan recognized from his own bathroom mirror experiments back when he thought hair gel could fix his life. Except Cameron’s version actually worked. Twenty minutes of strategic product application designed to look like he’d rolled out of bed into effortless genetic superiority. The hair alone was an act of theater. The confidence that went with it was generational wealth.

Tanner sat beside Cameron like a concrete wall that someone forgot to remove from the construction site. Six feet even, two hundred and twenty pounds of linebacker packed into a team hoodie. His buzz cut and neutral expression gave away nothing, which was the entire point of Tanner Morrison. The kid saw everything and said nothing until the one thing he said landed like a mortar round.

Professor Delgado arrived at one-oh-three carrying a coffee large enough to qualify as a weapon and a stack of grading rubrics that she dropped onto the podium with zero ceremony. Her burgundy wrap dress caught the light when she turned, the silver hoop in her nose glinting. She looked like a woman who’d had exactly one hour of sleep and planned to make everyone pay for it.

"Alright. Welcome to the part of the semester where I find out who actually did the reading and who’s been skating on vibes." Delgado swept her gaze across both teams with the warmth of a tax audit. "McKnight and Hartwell, you’re arguing that the American Dream is a myth. Mitchell and Morrison, you’re defending it. Each side gets an opening statement, three minutes max. Then we go to cross-examination. I will interrupt you if you bore me."

Cameron leaned forward and cracked his knuckles like he was about to bench press the podium. His smirk had teeth in it, the same one Jordan had memorized from a parking lot three months ago when Cameron kissed Eliza six inches from Jordan’s face and called him a simp.

"This is gonna be fun," Cameron said to Tanner, loud enough for the whole room.

Jordan felt nothing.

He cataloged this absence of feeling the way he cataloged everything now: noted, filed, moved past. Three months ago that smirk would have carved his chest open. Now it registered as background noise, a mosquito buzzing near the ear of someone who’d already been stung enough times to develop immunity.

Delgado pointed at Cameron. "Pro side opens. Three minutes. Impress me."

Cameron stood the way Cameron always stood, shoulders back, chest first, jaw tilted at an angle that said his reflection had never disappointed him. He planted both hands on the podium and grinned out at the gallery.

"The American Dream is the foundational promise of this country. You work hard, you take the right risks, you build something better for your family. My grandfather came to California with six hundred dollars and a handshake deal on a piece of land in Orange County that nobody wanted. He built that into a portfolio worth more than most people in this room will see in their lifetimes." Cameron paused for effect. "My father took that foundation and expanded it into the Mitchell Group. Real estate, development, property management across three states. That’s not luck. That’s not privilege. That’s merit compounding across generations."

A couple of students in the gallery nodded. Cameron had the room in his hand and he knew it, his voice big and confident and broadcasting on a frequency that made people want to agree before they finished listening.

"The data supports this. Over sixty percent of Americans exceed their parents’ income by age thirty. Small business creation is at a ten-year high. The tools available today through technology, through education, through access to capital, are exponentially better than what previous generations had. The dream isn’t dead. It’s more alive than it’s ever been. You just have to be willing to do the work."

Cameron sat down. Three students clapped before Delgado’s flat stare murdered the applause in its crib.

Tanner hadn’t moved during Cameron’s entire statement. His expression remained the same wall of neutral concrete it always was, though his eyes tracked the room with a precision Jordan recognized from sparring. Tanner was reading the audience the way Maya read a fighter’s balance. Cataloging who bought in and who didn’t.

"Con side," Delgado said, turning to Jordan. "Three minutes."

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