Chapter Twenty
Three days until the Faculty Ball
The hallways changed in the minutes before class started. Stragglers who had been chatting after their last class cleared out. Latecomers rushed to find their rooms before the ancient bell rang. This building held mostly graduate courses. There was, of course, no official penalty for tardiness to class, but showing respect was part of the game.
At least, it was for most of the professors. Blake didn’t seem to play the same game. He never seemed to mind when folks rushed in late or had to leave early for something. She’d almost never seen him annoyed, not at the class and not at her, something that was a huge relief after worrying for so long.
Her old boyfriend, Doug, hadn’t been an angry person, but he’d always had an offhand criticism. She’d been young and stupid enough to accept them, to change for him, thinking she wasn’t good enough. She’d subconsciously expected the same from Blake, who was so far above her.
After weeks, months of being with him, she had begun to relax. He wasn’t going to cheat on her. He wasn’t going to tell her she wasn’t good enough. He already knew her mom cleaned houses, and he was fine with it. He hadn’t been prejudiced—no, that had been her. Internalizing the hurt and betrayal her mother had received, distrusting those with more money, more power. But she wasn’t her mother, and Blake would never hurt her.
The reminder of her mother formed an uneasy knot in her stomach. It had been a while since her mom had called. Not an unheard of amount of time, but unease niggled at her. And the last time they’d spoken, her mother had seemed distant on the phone. She’d mentioned being in pain, something about her knees bothering her. Was it worse than she’d let on? Erin stepped into an alcove and hit the speed dial. It rang five times before going to voicemail.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me. Just calling to check in and see how you’re feeling. You’re okay, right? Call me back.”
Frowning, she slipped the phone into her bag. She’d have to try again later.
Slipping into the classroom, she waved to her friend Bailey as she made her way to the back of the room. The two of them were always the quietest ones during class discussions. She refrained from speaking too much so as to avoid giving away anything about her and Blake. Sometimes she would contribute under her breath. Bailey would hear and respond just as softly. Once, she’d worried he had a crush on her, but he never asked her out or made a move at all, which relieved her.
“How was it?” she asked, referring to the visit from his mother this past weekend. He’d mentioned it in the past few classes with typical young bachelor dread.
“Great. She declared my house a pig sty and decided to stay at a hotel.”
She snorted. “Well, what can she expect with three roommates?”
“Exactly what I said. Though I might have made it worse before she showed up.”
“Bailey!”
“I couldn’t have survived, Erin. She’s planning on staying in town until the final scores come back. That’s almost a week.”
“Three days,” she corrected grimly. Three more days until she and Blake were together again. “Then we’re both free.”
He gave her a curious look. “Do you know where you’re going yet? What you’re going to do?”
“I have a few applications out,” she admitted. It felt strange to confide in Bailey and not Blake, but maybe it was better this way. She had applied to places near Blake’s house, and she didn’t want to imply promises she couldn’t keep regarding moving in with him.
“Cross your fingers for me,” she said. “What about you? Any plans?”
“Actually I was thinking of doing a tour of Europe. Find myself or something like that, before I have to decide which major I actually want to use.”
“That sounds awesome. Both the traveling and the double major. I didn’t know you’d done that. What are they?”
He blushed. “I got the idea from Ayn Rand. To learn about physics and philosophy. The physical world and metaphysical one. Combined, it’s everything there is to know.”
She grinned. “That sounds ambitious.”
“Yes, well, now that I have the degrees, I’m sure the enlightenment is coming any day.” He rolled his eyes in a sweet, self-deprecating way. “I’ll just hold my breath.”
Her attention was snagged as Blake entered the room. He looked fresh and happy. She tore her gaze away to refocus on Bailey.
He was looking at her strangely. “Don’t let him slip away.”
She blinked, her smile faltering. “Who?”
“You know who.” His gaze flicked to the front of the room, where Blake fielded a question from two animated students.
“How did you—?”
He shrugged, his smile wry. “I would have made a move myself, but it was clear you were taken.”
Her breath caught. “Bailey…”
“It’s okay, Erin. Just…hang onto it, that’s all. If he makes you happy. That’s all there is. Being happy.”
She swallowed. Her smile felt fragile—and already cracked. “Is that your advice as a physicist or a philosopher?”
“Both.”
In a move so familiar she ached with it, Blake flipped the chair around and sat down facing the class. His elbows rested on the back of the chair, his wrists hung loosely. The whole room became quiet with respect well-earned.
He’d done such an amazing job. So much more than she could have imagined. He was intelligent and thoughtful and passionate, yes. She’d known that much. But his real strength had been teasing out their intelligence. Testing their thoughts and bringing their passion to the fore.
She was going to miss this class. The energy, the way she lit up when he spoke. The way he lit up when he really got into it, as if he’d found himself in the sharing of knowledge.
“Today is our last meeting,” he said. “So I want to run-down the schedule real quick. Your final papers are due to me at midnight. Because of the abbreviated schedule for summer, I have to turn in grades in a very short amount of time, so don’t be late. It won’t be a question of my giving you an extension or extra credit. Once I turn in grades next week, even I can’t change them. Got it?”
A round of nods and some shifty eyes followed his pronouncement, probably by folks who’d be up late working on the paper. Anticipation strummed through her. The grades were due on the same day as her thesis…the same day as the Faculty Ball.
And the next day she’d get to see Blake again.
“Today is our last meeting,” he repeated, his manner turning thoughtful, “so I also want to tell you how incredibly impressed I am with you all. How grateful I am that you put up with me as I bumbled my way through my first class. How much I believe in each of you.”
Erin bit her lip to keep from sighing out loud. Glancing around, she saw embarrassed flushes and bright eyes. God, he’d turned a classroom full of cynical co-eds into an after school special.
She loved him. She was in awe of him.
“Albert Einstein once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. I’m sitting up here, as your professor, because of things I know. That’s knowledge. You’re sitting in front of me because you have the initiative, the ambition, and the creativity to do something with it. That’s imagination. What you have is far more important than what I can do up here. You trump me.”
A poignant quiet rang out in the room.
“Can anyone tell me what Einstein’s Nobel Prize was for?”
Everyone was silent. She wasn’t sure. It was in physics, she knew that much. Her science education was limited to ping-pong ball experiments in her high school AP class. But Bailey had majored in physics. She snuck a glance at him.
Bailey wore a reluctant look. He never spoke in class, but it seemed he couldn’t let the question go unanswered. “The photoelectric effect, which led to the discovery of quantum physics.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Blake said. “Can you tell us what it means in layman’s terms?”
Bailey leaned forward. Clearly this subject interested him. It drew him into the discussion he’d so long avoided, and in a sudden flash of insight, Erin wondered if Blake had done this on purpose. The one student who’d resisted participation, besides her, and Blake had hit upon a subject important to him.
“In the old days,” Bailey explained, “matter was made of particles and light was made up of waves. But during experiments with ultraviolet light, they determined that wave theory didn’t account for certain behavior. Einstein was the one who suggested that light was, in fact, particles as well.”
Blake nodded. “There were physicists and scholars with full knowledge of how things worked. Knowledge wasn’t enough. It would never have been enough to make that leap. Only imagination was enough. Bailey, how can you tell whether something is a particle or a wave?”
“You can’t. If you measure it as a particle, it’s a particle. If you measure it as a wave, it’s a wave.”
“In fact, it goes a step further. If you want to examine an electron, you must basically throw a photon at it, thus changing its course. It’s called the observer effect. Science 101. And we’re scientists too, just on the social scale. Can you think of an example of the observer effect in the social sciences?”
“When reporters embed themselves in a military unit,” someone offered. “That unit might behave differently under scrutiny, thus affecting the outcome of their missions.”
“Excellent. What else?”
Another raised his hand briefly before speaking. “Kids have to take standardized tests in school. At first it was to measure their progress, but now teachers have to teach specifically for the test.”
“Yes, right. The act of measuring has affected the primary source.”
“The help,” Erin offered blandly. “The presence of a maid might change the behavior of the household members.”
His lip twitched. “Very much so.” He paused, looking distant. “This is the last day of class, so I need to tell you that you are all activists. Each one of you and every person you pass on the street. Even if you sit back and hope someone else will fix the problem. You can’t ignore the problems in the world. Your inaction is action. If you see the problem, if you’re observing it, you’re already having an effect. The only question is what that effect will be.”
“I’ve always been a fan of throwing photons, myself,” one boy quipped, and there were snorts and chuckles around the room.
Blake smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. “This is our last class. And so what I want to tell you, the most important lesson I can teach you, is to respect the people who disagree with you. They are the ones who challenge you. And even if you are right, so are they. If you measure it as a particle, it’s a particle. If you measure it as a wave, it’s a wave. Both sides are right. Respect that. Learn from it. Find the common ground, because that’s where the true answer lies.”