Although my mother didn’t want me to leave the house, she insisted I continue my education. The classes I took at the community college were mostly to keep her off my back. I didn’t complain. They’d help me fulfill a great deal of the basic requirement classes I’d have had to have taken anyway that weren’t related to any major I might choose later on down the line.
The job was to keep my father happy. He’d wanted me to go away to school, I think sensing a separation from my mother might be a good thing for both of us. All the same, I think e was also secretly pleased that I didn’t want to waste his money. He appreciated what hard work could teach a person about life, and when I came home dog tired from a long day at work, I think he was proud that I never complained. In his eyes, these were lessons you could never learn in a classroom.
Not that he wanted me to leave either. It was strange really. None of my friend’s parents seemed half as reluctant to send their kids off to school as mine were. Heck, some of my friends were more than encouraged to go as far away to school as possible. Oddly enough, I didn’t recall my folks being this way when my brother left for University, but that had been over ten years ago. I don’t know, maybe it was because I was their baby girl.
Sadly after almost a year of my life had passed, I was no closer to knowing what I wanted to study or do with the rest of my life. I’d filled out college applications wondering, hoping really that I’d be one of those people that found their way once they were out of the nest. Unlike my friends who all seemed to have some purpose driving them on, I felt more like a compass that didn’t know North. Somehow, sitting here in the lecture hall moments before class was about to begin, I felt perhaps I’d made the right decision after all. Maybe this was where I’d find my future. Or it would find me.
To my left, a side door at the front of the room swiftly opened and two men walked in. The first was a handsome man in his mid-forties. From the description Darcy and Tabitha had given the night before, I presumed this was Professor Walker.
The Professor was on the tall side with very fair skin, and soft looking, dark, wavy brown hair. In my mind his pale skin seemed somewhat at odds with his athletic build. I would have expected someone in such good physical shape to have more of a summer tan. As he strode up to the podium there was a timeless quality about him that at first glance puzzled me. He was every bit as attractive as Darcy had described, but there was also something about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something that made him handsome, but I wouldn’t say necessarily sexy. I wasn’t sure what that difference was, but I had a feeling I’d be giving it a lot of thought over the remainder of the semester. At least I was sure I would every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning while I sat in his class and took the opportunity to study him in more detail.
The other was a young man in his early twenties. Not wholly unattractive, he had the pasty look of someone who spent too much time in the library and not enough talking to girls. Had he been a friend of mine, my first suggestions would have been; loose the pocket protector and get a decent haircut. Poor guy, he all but had Nerd tattooed on his forehead.
“Humm … No Daniel. That’s odd,” Tabitha commented in a low whisper. Turning her way, I caught a glimpse of a frown betraying a subtle hint of disappointment on her face.
Notes in hand, the Professor came to a stop behind the podium, and for the briefest of moments glanced up at the class. In that quick appraisal of his students this semester, I couldn’t help but be taken aback by the way he eyed us. It was beyond intense. It was the look of a bird of prey soaring high over a heard of mice, carefully yet quickly searching the herd for something for dinner.
Settling in for his lecture, I pulled a bottle of orange juice I’d picked up in the cafeteria out of my bag. A moment later he cleared his throat and looked up again quickly scanning the room once more. As I twisted the top on my drink and raised it to my lips, our eyes met. His brow furrowed as his gray yes began to bore deep into my head. I wanted to look over at Tabitha for an explanation, but like a deer in headlights, I was too caught under his spell to move.
Beside me I could have sworn I heard a whispered “O-oh” coming from Tabitha’s general direction.
Eyes still locked on mine to the exclusion of everyone else in the room, he began.
“Welcome to Art History 101. I’m your professor, Jonathan Walker. I have very few rules in my class but I expect them to be strictly adhered to. Attendance is mandatory. You will sign in and out of every lecture using the sign in sheet located in the back of the hall. The other rule is no food or drink is permitted in class.” He was still staring at me. I was too afraid to move a muscle, lest I attract more attention to myself.
“Miss? What is your name?”
I paused, unable to speak until Tabitha gently elbowed me in the ribs.
“Sara, Sir. Sara Donnelly,” I answered with an amount of confidence in my voice that I certainly wasn’t feeling. At least I hadn’t stuttered.
“Well, Miss Donnelly, I’ll ask you to put away your beverage at this time and I hope we won’t have to have this conversation again. A second offense will see you out of this class. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well then.”
His voice was ice cold, an odd juxtaposition to his warmly handsome features. His wavy, slightly unkempt hair gave him a boyish look, but his gray eyes betrayed a hint of age that made him hard to decipher at first glance. Then there was the way he carried himself. He had excellent posture which made him seem even taller than he probably was. His entire demeanor was beyond authoritative, it was commanding really. Almost reluctantly, he pulled his stare away from me then continued. He hadn’t smiled yet and I found myself wondering what he’d look like if he offered me a friendly smile.
“I hope you’ve all taken the opportunity to skim through the pages of your text book to see the material we’ll be covering this semester. For those of you who haven’t, you’re already behind and odds are you won’t be passing this course. So let’s get started. Rodney, lights please.”
Rodney, the Professor’s pocket protector wearing sidekick, flipped a switch dimming the lights and activating the projector. A painting of a beautiful woman with cascading red hair appeared on the screen above our heads. She was dressed in a flowing champagne colored gown and stood among the lush greens of a woodland landscape.
“What is art? Few questions spark such heated debate yet provide so few satisfactory answers. – Imagination. To imagine means simply to make an image – a picture in our minds.”
Another slide appeared, a painting of a tall sailboat with billowing white sails on the horizon of a blue green sea.
By the expression on his face combined with the tone of his voice, it was obvious how passionate he was about his subject.
“Imagination is key in allowing us to conceive possibilities, to picture possible futures, to wonder about possible pasts and to dream of different tomorrows.”
The slide changed again to a blur of shades of reds and whites making up a more modern painting.
“But what is the meaning of art? What is it trying to tell us? Artists often provide no clear explanation, since their work is the statement itself. If they could say it in words, they would have been writers instead. Thus art, like the written word, requires that we learn the language of the artist. In this case a visual language. We need to examine each work through the eyes of the artist in an attempt to understand how he or she viewed the world they lived in and their place in it. Perhaps through their artwork, we can catch a glimpse into their dreams, and hope to understand the meaning of the images they captured on canvas.
“Well, enough of the esoteric,” the Professor said, turning back to his notes on the podium. “We begin this survey with a look at the Stone Age.”
The slide changed once again to a photo of a rudimentary human figure carved from stone.
I sat through the beginning of the lecture a little too stunned to take
it all in. But slowly I watched as the Professor’s demeanor began to change from the icy tones he used with me to something else entirely. As the lecture wore on, his eyes would light up as he talked about different things. His voice was soft now with an undercurrent of boyish enthusiasm that easily held your attention. I remember registering for this course out of simple curiosity, but now I was glad I had. I had a feeling I was really going to enjoy watching and listening to him during his lectures. Somehow, he pulled you in with his words and kept your attention tightly wrapped. It was unexpected to say the least and I couldn’t explain why, but some part of me was drawn to him in a way I’d never experienced before. Not just as a teacher, but as a person.
Sitting there I felt caught in his spell somehow. It wasn’t only the words he spoke but the way in which he spoke them. That and his faint accent. Hard as I tried I couldn’t pin down what it was. It didn’t sound foreign but I couldn’t possibly imagine what part of the U.S. it could be from.
Before I realized it, the lights came up and class was ending. The Professor quickly headed out the side door, but not before stealing a glance over his shoulder at me. The icy stare had returned to examine me once again. And then he was gone.
“It’s all my fault,” Tabitha lamented as we gathered up our books. “I should have warned you, but I totally forgot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Every semester, the Professor picks one student from each of his classes and relentlessly calls on them the whole semester. He usually singles them out for doing something like you did with your drink. But once he latches on to them … I hate to say this, but you’re either going to get an A or flunk horribly. I’m so sorry, Sara. He did it to this poor guy in my History class last year, and he ended up dropping out a few weeks into the semester. The next day the Professor just picked some other girl and called on her until the end of term.”
“I don’t understand,” I replied, shocked at her story. “How can such a wonderful teacher be such a jerk at the same time?”
Shaking her head, she looked at me with eyes filled with pity.
Together we filed up the stairs and out of the lecture hall in silence. As we walked out I could feel the eyes of several of my fellow students on my back. I was a marked woman now.
My mornings torment was the main topic of conversation over our table in the dining hall that evening. I didn’t have much to say on the subject. It was Tabitha’s guilt that did most of the talking.
Although I’d managed pretty well in all my other classes today, I found myself unable to wrap my mind around the events of the morning. I knew I could be a little paranoid from time to time, but there was just something in the way the Professor had stared at me as he’d walked out the door that made me uneasy even now.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of his calling on me. I mean I was dreading that, but it was his eyes. They were almost emotionless if such a thing were even possible. I had thought it a cold stare, but that imbued too much emotion into his expression. It was the look of a scientist right before he cuts into the subject of his research, somewhat cold and dispassionate yet utterly curious. I mean, how often does someone look at you with no emotion in their eyes? Some people love to hate, and some people hate to love, but everybody feels something, don’t they?
Outside the thoughts rattling around inside my mind, I could hear the friendly chatter of Darcy, Tabitha, Mike and Ryan in the background. It was comforting, but I hadn’t heard a word they’d said for a while now.
“So, no Daniel?” Darcy’s voice finally penetrated my haze. “How disappointing.”
“I know,” Tabitha sighed. She tried to play it cool in front of Mike, but I think it was possible that she had just as big a crush on him as Darcy did.
“He’s still here though. I saw him in my medieval history class so I don’t know why he wasn’t in Art History this morning. I’d have sworn Professor Walker and Daniel were joined at the hip. You so rarely see one without the other.”
Wishing for a change of topic, I looked past Darcy and started scanning the faces in the dining hall. Glancing from table to table, I tried to imagine what their conversations were about based on facial expressions and body language. A few tables into my mental game, I spotted Ben across the room, seated with another set of friends.
“Is that Ben over there?” I said to no one in particular.
Everyone turned in the direction I was looking.
“Yep, told you. I swear he’s friends with just about everybody on campus,” Darcy said as she turned back to her food.
“So what are your plans for the evening?” Tabitha asked me. I guessed that after the topic of my mornings escapades had ended this was what had replaced it.
“Studying,” I shrugged. “Guess I’d better stay on top of Art History if I know what’s good for me.” Off handedly I added, “Plus I want to organize all my research so I can hit the library tomorrow.”
“Research?” Tabitha raised an eye brow.
“Is that what’s in all those plastic containers you have stacked up in the corner?” Darcy asked.
“Yes,” I answered, suddenly wishing I hadn’t mentioned it at all. “I like to work on my family’s genealogy. It’s a hobby of mine. I’d brought a lot of my research with me from home to work on when I had time. The library here has one of the best genealogy sections in the state.”
I purposefully neglected to mention that the attractions of their library had been a major reason I’d chosen NPU to begin with.
As was usual a moment of silence followed. This was pretty much the norm when I first mentioned my hobby to new people.
“That sounds interesting,” Mike finally said. “My grandmother is really into that. She knows all sorts of stuff about the family going back to the 1700’s.”
Now started a general conversation among them of what they knew of their family histories. I didn’t say anything further. I’d been working on my research for about a decade. In the process, I’d amassed a considerable amount of information, much more than anyone at the table had, probably more than anyone at NPU. It was a topic I could easily go on and on about with little prodding or encouragement. I bit my lip though. On the few occasions in my life I’d talked to my heart’s content about it to someone outside the family, it hadn’t taken long for their eyes to either glaze over or their attention to drift. Either that or they’d give me an odd look like I was a little crazy. For what I considered a completely inoffensive hobby, most people, though they wouldn’t admit it, thought it was boring as saw dust. I knew some even saw it as an indication that I was some sort of social misfit who’d rather talk to the dead than the living. For this reason, I let it drop with my new friends. No need to run them off this early. They’d probably fall into the latter category though if they ever saw my extensive collection of family headstone photographs.
The topic of conversation eventually changed to our hiking trip and a date was set for the weekend after next. They were planning a drive up to Mohonk Preserve where they said there were plenty of good trails, waterfalls and lots of wildlife to see.
And so my life settled into a routine of sorts. I’d learned to forgo breakfast in the dining hall for a quick bowl of cereal in my room which saved time for a half hours extra sleep in the morning. Three times a week I sat through Art History and was put on the spot by Professor Walker at least twice each day. I studied hard for that class, harder than any other I had, and so far hadn’t embarrassed myself too badly. Hard as I tried I could never tell if he was pleased when I gave the right answer, or if he was hoping I’d offer the wrong one. I sometimes thought he might like the opportunity to publically berate me, but he never got much of a chance. Sometimes after I would answer, he’d get something of an arch smile in his eye that I could easily have interpreted as he’d get me next time.
My other courses were all going well. It became increasingly clear as the weeks wore on that I would be seeing less and less of Darcy. She was officially pledg
ing now and had spent the last few nights sleeping in one of her pledge sister’s rooms over in Crispell Hall. Something about safety in numbers she’d said, but I wasn’t really sure what that was supposed to mean.
I met up with Tabitha, Mike and Ryan for dinner every night, and also for lunch some days when our class schedules allowed. I also ran into Ben from time to time while crossing the quad. He seemed as nice as he had on first impression, but guarded. It seemed like every time, I left him, I was left wondering why he closed off parts of his life to everyone here. From time to time I’d casually asked him questions about where he was from and his family, but he’d always quickly change the subject to avoid answering me. As a person with secrets of my own, I could recognize a kindred spirit of that kind better than most. I let it lie. I respected his privacy and hoped he would do the same for me. Of course, I still wondered what was going on behind his amazing brown eyes. Could I possibly guess his secrets if I tried? I know he’d never guess mine.
I’d made some other friends as well in my classes, but none that I really socialized with outside of the classroom except for the occasional quick snack after class to discuss a project or a particularly interesting lecture.
Eventually, I’d begun to notice that everyone I was acquainted with seemed to run into this Daniel guy but me. Not that it really meant much. I mean the only effect this had on me was to peak my curiosity. I’d been on campus a few weeks now, so I’d have thought I’d have crossed paths with him at least once by now. NPU might seem big in comparison to my high school back in Wading River, but in reality it just wasn’t that big.
It was the different ways in which people reacted to Daniel that was beginning to fascinate me – in a scientific curiosity sort of way. Women tended to ever so slightly swoon at the mention of his name, and men usually showed a flash of what I assumed was jealousy. But this was not a hard and fast rule. I’d noticed an extremely small minority of women didn’t like him either. A few girls in my classes said he kind of creeped them out when he looked them directly in the eyes with some intense stare he apparently had. I heard a lot about the strange shade of blue his eyes were. I’ll admit it, I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.
The Purity of Blood: Volume I Page 3