You've Found Oliver (You've Reached Sam, #2)(14)

Thankfully, the building isn’t too far. I hurry up the stairs and open the classroom door. Julie’s mom is in the middle of answering a question when I walk in slowly. “…yes, of course, but I would like us to think beyond that. Now, what are some other things we can sense? For instance, when something is missing. Or wrong. Colors? What about when something changes in the air? Or a person’s mood?”

Quietly, I find a seat in the back. As I pull out the chair, Professor Clarke turns her head and says, “Oliver! What are you doing all the way back there? There is an open spot here in the front.”

I wasn’t expecting her to call me out. I grab my bag and make my way down. Everyone watches as I take a seat right in the front.

“Glad you could join us today,” she says, gesturing to the rest of the class. “We were just talking about the name of the course. Disrupting the Senses.” She pauses, allowing us to take it in. Then she looks at me. “What do you think that means, Oliver?”

“Oh…uh.” Julie only mentioned this class a few days ago. I haven’t even seen the syllabus yet. So I have no clue what it’s actually about. “Something to do with our senses?”

She nods. “Yes, what about them?”

“I don’t really know.”

“That’s why we’re here, to ask questions,” she says, bringing her hands together. Then she turns to someone else. “You in the gray shirt. Looks like you have something to say.”

He seems surprised to be called on but manages to answer anyway. “Maybe it has to do with our perception. As in, how we see the world.”

“How we see the world,” she says, nodding thoughtfully. “Interesting. Would anyone like to expand on that? What are other ways to perceive the world that we haven’t discussed yet?” Professor Clarke walks between the rows of seats as she continues. “What about our sense of time? Or the future? What about our memories? Do they also shape our image of the world? If so, what exactly does that even mean?”

She gives us a moment, but no one raises their hand. She lets out a slow breath, returning to the front of the class. “It seems a lot of you are afraid to share your thoughts. I want to make something very clear to all of you. There are no wrong answers in this course, which means there is no rubric to follow and no points to deduct. Everyone gets the same grade, as long as you turn in your work. All I ask is you forget what you’ve learned from your other classes. This is my permission for you to be creative, question everything you’ve been told, think outside of the box. Speaking of which—”

There’s a white box on the table in front of the class. Mrs. Clarke walks over and places her hands on top of it. “This brings us to our first activity. For the remainder of the class, we are going to shift our attention to what’s inside of this box in front of us. You’re going to guess on your own and then break into small groups to discuss it.”

The girl behind me raises her hand. “Are we allowed to touch it?”

Professor Clarke shakes her head. “The rules are you can’t touch it or shake it. And the box will remain closed for the entire class,” she says.

A guy in the back raises his hand. “Is this like Schr?dinger’s cat? Where it’s both dead and alive until we open it?”

“Forget Schr?dinger,” she scoffs. “There could be three cats in here. Or even a hundred.”

“But there can’t be a hundred,” he says.

“And who said that?”

“I mean, it’s physically impossible.”

“Interesting.” She looks at the rest of us as if expecting someone to interject. “It seems you all have come to this class with your own constraints and logic about the world. Not to say any of it is wrong. But for the sake of these ninety minutes we have together, I would like us to open our minds toward what we consider to be impossible.” She lets that sink in. Then she grabs a piece of chalk and faces the board.

“Let’s take a second to discuss the book we’ll be reading this quarter. It’s called The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard,” she says, writing down the title for us. “But I don’t want you to read it like any other book. I want you to read it in any order, starting at any page. Just pick a passage and write about it. In fact, it is Bachelard who says there are more things in a closed box than in an open one. We will consider what that means as we continue our activity.”

For the next fifteen minutes, she has us write down what we think is inside the box. I guessed a sandwich because that’s what I had for lunch. Then we arrange the desks into small circles to “see each other better.” As we come up with question for clues, it never feels like we’re getting closer to the answer. Mrs. Clarke doesn’t confirm or dismiss anything, making it even more confusing. For a second, I think she might not know what’s in there herself.

The class ends a few minutes early. I stick around as everyone files out.

Professor Clarke unzips the bag on her desk. “Nice having you in my class today, Oliver.”

“Sorry I was late.”

She waves it off. “That’s alright. Julie might have given me a warning. I just hope today’s conversation didn’t scare you off.”

“Not at all. It was pretty interesting, actually. I’m definitely planning to come back.”