Filed to story: Shhh Professor! Please Don’t Tell! Novel Free
After Annie and I had finished watching
The Maltese Falcon
in her dorm room and consumed a full bag of microwave popcorn each we’d found two more references to Logan Green. One of them was a list of all the education majors eighteen years ago.
“We could start looking for teachers named Logan Green in this area,” I said. “That might be all we need to locate him.”
Annie was staring at the photo on her phone screen, an odd expression on her face. She looked as though someone had handed her a wounded bird and she didn’t know what to do with it.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice quiet. “I think I’ll start doing that.”
I gave her a hug and went back to my dorm room. My roommate was gone again. It seemed she spent most of her time with her boyfriend. I was grateful to have the place to myself so much, but I was jealous that she had someone to run off to and spend time with anytime she wanted. Someone she could talk to. Hold. Make love with.
I took a deep breath and sat down on my bed with my laptop. I opened it and typed “Jackson Steele” into Google.
Thousands of results, obviously.
“What do I want to know first?” I muttered.
I didn’t want to know if he was a womanizer. I was scared to find out that was true. Procrastinating any such discovery, I typed “business practices of Jackson Steele conservation” into Google.
My eyes widened a little as I read. He was actually one of the leading businesses following green practices. And he talked about it. He’d gone to conferences about it, and published an article about how important it was.
He hadn’t said any of that today. He could have defended himself, bragged about himself, made me look a fool. He didn’t. He’d just kept talking with me, respectfully discussing the situation without making it about him.
“Wow,” I whispered. The numbness was rapidly melting away. There wasn’t going to be any of it left by tomorrow.
Unless he turned out to be a playboy.
Swallowing, I searched “Jackson Steele romance” into the search engine and winced as I hit enter.
I read the titles of the articles that came up. I clicked on a few of them. I looked him up on Wikipedia. I looked at the pictures of his e-wife, a famous fashion model.
And the numbness was completely gone, out the door, down the staircase, trickling through the soil and down into the depths of the earth.
She’d been his ex-wife. Judging from the tabloid headlines I’d seen, they had a “will they, won’t they” relationship post breakup.
So, he might still be in love with her. But that was okay it would explain why he wanted to hook up with someone else. His heart was broken, and he was just seeking comfort. Maybe it wasn’t something he did all the time maybe it was just that night.
Anyway, it wasn’t someone he was in a current relationship with. He hadn’t cheated on anybody.
I took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Jackson,” I whispered.
I wanted to tell him right away. To apologize to him. Talk to him, see him, be near him. Now that I guessed what his situation really was, I wanted to be a comfort to him.
Tomorrow was Friday, and I would just see him in class.
I stood up, closing my laptop. I felt light. Tingling with a buoyancy I hadn’t felt in a long time. I’d make it up to him somehow. I’d been closed off to him for so long, and he deserved some friendliness.
“I’ll write him a card,” I thought as I walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Warm steam filled the air. “I’ll be able to choose exactly what words to say that way.”
I composed the card in my head as I slathered my hair in rose-scented shampoo. “Dear Professor Steele…dear Professor Jack….dear Jack…”
I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in a tower, and walked back to my desk. I wanted to write the words out before they left my head. I’d figured out exactly what I wanted to say.
I chose a blank card with a picture of a sunset on the front. Or maybe it was a dawn. I chose a pink pen and began to write.
The following morning,
I felt an odd premonition. As I awoke, I realized that my spirits had lifted. I didn’t know why.
“I suppose it was just having gotten to speak to Ellie, unfriendly as she was,” I thought. “I’ve missed her.”
I spent an hour working out in my home gym, and then brewed myself a cup of black coffee and cooked myself waffles for breakfast. I’ve always been a good cook. Veronica used to make fun of me for it, like it made me soft somehow.
“I suppose I am soft,” I thought, staring out the window at the view of my yard. The early morning sunlight was pairing with the trees to cast long shadows across the lawn. “I shouldn’t have let her push me around like that. It didn’t matter until Ellie saw us. I feel sure that that’s part of what’s upsetting her, somehow. She must think I’m still involved with Veronica.”
I swallowed another sip of coffee. It was a nice thought: the idea of Ellie being upset at the idea of me being involved with someone else. Well, not Ellie being upset. I didn’t want that. But I wanted to believe that she was being cold towards me because she was trying not to feel things for me. Somehow, I couldn’t bear to face the idea that she just disliked me.
I drove to Flynn and walked to my office. As I was stepping inside of it, something slid under my foot. I paused and looked down.
A card. “Professor Steele” was written across the back of it in pink ink.
My feeling of premonition swirled. I picked up the card with tingling fingertips. I knew, somehow, that it was from Ellie.
I shut the door to my office and sat down behind my desk. I tore open the envelope with my letter opener and pulled out the card. It was a picture of the dawn.
The first thing I looked for when I opened the card was the signature.
Ellie.
I inhaled and began to read it.
Dear Jackson,
Have you ever spent a lot of time thinking about something, but you were looking at it upside-down? Then someone or something comes along and shows you what it really looks like. Then you can think about it clearly. What may have looked like a spider turns out to be a star. That’s more poetry than fact, but I think you can guess what I mean. That’s the purpose of poetry, isn’t it? To guess at a meaning?
Ellie