Filed to story: Shhh Professor! Please Don’t Tell! Novel Free
He stepped into the room, at once friendly and powerful. He moved with a masculine poise that was almost military, but on his face beamed a smile of genuine interest. He might have seemed boyish if it weren’t for his tall, muscular build and the flecks of grey at his temples.
“Meow,” whispered Cynthia.
Annie rolled her eyes.
I was enraptured. I was now, most definitely, tingling all over, and it had nothing to do with the fact that we weren’t supposed to be there.
“There’s a lot of you,” he said. His voice was deep, but musical, and it echoed through the room, which must have been designed expertly for acoustics.
I wiggled uncomfortably in my seat. I didn’t want him to know I wasn’t supposed to be there. His eyes traveled the room, looking at each of our faces. He seemed to simply be saying hello to each of us one by one. Then his eyes landed on mine, and my heart started to pound. I could have sworn he was looking at me longer than he’d looked at anyone else.
I was feeling a
little nervous. I hadn’t taught a class since grad school. There would be a lot of pressure today. I knew Flynn had hyped up the publicity, hoping to attract new business majors to the school. It had worked.
Now, looking out at the class size, I wondered if it had worked too well. I didn’t want to have to teach so many students at once. There could be no meaningful connections in a sea of faces that vast. Not unless I did my best to make some. I began to look out over the room. You could have heard a pin drop. Every single face was staring at me.
I guess that’s one thing fame did for you. My watch might have cost two thousand dollars, and I might have been wearing a designer suit, but the most interesting thing about being a billionaire was the sense of awe that most people had when they met you. As if billionaires were somehow a different race of human being. A little closer to the gods.
I’d have to show up in an ugly old sweater sometime. Just to get them talking. Get that myth out of their heads. I have just as many disgusting bodily functions as everyone else.
I looked at each student one by one, saying hello silently. Many of them looked nervous. I began to strongly suspect that my class size wasn’t really this big after all. I guessed that there were some stowaways on board our ship.
My gaze reached a group of four girls, sitting together in the back. The first one was wearing a pink dress and had sleeves of some impressive tattoos on her arms. She looked as though she could have defended someone against a tiger using only eye contact. The next one was wearing a t-shirt that said, “History Geek: I’d find you more interesting if you were dead.” Hilarious. She looked like a kind, intelligent person. The third one was wearing a pink hoodie with brown blobs on it. She was leaning forward as if trying to stick a hole in me and pin me to the wall.
Then my eyes reached the fourth one. I felt a strange sensation. She was pretty, definitely, but I’m not one to love or lust at first sight. She had brown hair tied back into a braid and was wearing a plain white t-shirt and a gold necklace. On the surface level, she looked like a hundred other girls. There was something about her eyes, however, that made my heart began to beat faster. It was as if she was holding me with her gaze, entering my mind with hers just through her eyes.
My eyes lingered on her longer than they should have. I tore myself away. I didn’t want to start any gossip, certainly not on my first day, and I kept looking around the room. By the time I had finished, a few whispers were flickering through the air.
“I think that will count as attendance for today,” I said, smiling. “I’ll formally meet those of you who are really signed up for this class on Wednesday. The rest of you can use today as a test run. If you find you like this class, you can enroll it in for real.”
I heard some chuckles. The girl with the brown braid was grinning at me. Pleased, I turned to the whiteboard and picked up a black marker. With it I wrote, “What are we drawn to?” in large letters across the top of the white board. I turned back to the class.
“What are we drawn to?” I asked. “This isn’t a marketing class, but the law of attraction is involved in all aspects of human interaction and is therefore heavily prevalent in business.”
I smiled. I liked using big words. It felt like riding a motorcycle with my mind.
“This is an easy first task, anyone can answer,” I said, smiling around the room. “Any thing you can think of. No answer is too simple. Think of this as a class icebreaker. Although, in this class, I think I’m looking at more of a glacier.”
Another ripple of laughter spread across the room, a little louder this time. I was winning them over. I realized I wasn’t nervous anymore.
“Raise your hands, don’t be shy,” I urged, and a young man near the front wearing a turtleneck raised his hand. I pointed to him.
“We are drawn to what we admire,” he said.
“Certainly,” I said, and turned around to write it down. “What else?”
“A good deal,” said a girl wearing a red crop top.
“Definitely,” I said. “What else?”
The girl with the brown braid raised her hand. I found that my smile was no longer simply polite, but involuntary.
“Yes?” I asked.
“We are drawn to what we feel is trustworthy,” she said. “We’re more likely to trust something if someone we know has recommended it. We’re more likely to see a movie if we know that the director of it has done good work in the past. We are drawn to a feeling of safety. Something we can count on.”
“Brilliant,” I said warmly and wrote down, “What is trustworthy.” I turned back to the class. “Our friend here makes an excellent point. Whatever you do in business, don’t be swindlers. You can succeed without cheating other people. Make people your priority, and the rest will fall into place.”
I saw her smiling at me.
“That is actually at the core of what I’m trying to get at,” I said. “We are drawn to things that are good and proven to be so. Make sure that what you’re managing, organizing, and marketing is something of actual quality. Respect your audience. Respect their needs, and their ability to see through any bullshit.”
The laugh was quicker and even louder than before that time. I was definitely getting the hang of this.
I kept lecturing, finding that my prepared notes expanded themselves naturally through the questions and comments that were coming from my students. They were sparking my train of thought just as much as I was sparking theirs. Together, we were getting somewhere.
The hour ended before I was ready. There was so much more I wanted to say.
“I’ll see some of you again on Wednesday,” I said, as the students began to tuck books and laptops back into their backpacks. “To the rest of you, nice to meet you.”
I turned to the whiteboard and began to erase everything I had written as the students stood up and began to shuffle out of the room. As if a thunderstorm of sound had been unleashed, the room was filled with the noises of chairs scraping and feet pattering and people talking and laughing.
“Professor Steele?”
I turned. The girl with the brown braid was standing only a few feet away from me. In the midst of all the other noise, I hadn’t heard her approach. Her friends were standing a few feet back from us, looking as if they were an inch away from giggling.
“Yes?” I said. Now that she was near to me, my skin seemed to hum with an energy that was coming from her. It was as if she filled the air around her with softness, and I could feel it simply by being close to her.
“I just wanted to tell you that my friends and I aren’t part of your class,” she said. “I felt bad about sneaking in like that.”
“I don’t think you were the only ones,” I said, winking, even though my stomach had dropped slightly with the knowledge that she wasn’t really taking my class. I hadn’t realized how much I was looking forward to seeing her regularly until I found out that I wouldn’t be.
“Well, we really enjoyed it,” she said. “You’re a great teacher. Professor. You’re a great professor.”
Her cheeks flushed slightly. I felt pleased.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re a great student. Thank you for that response to my question, it was very insightful.”
“I’m Ellie,” she said, holding out her hand.