Chapter 6
SIX
KIRA
We have just enough time before class for me to scribble down a few names of the more intense students I’ve had in mind.
“Are any of them in this class?” Isaak asks right as students start to pile in for my nine-thirty lecture.
It’s bizarre. I’ve known Isaak for less than twenty-four hours, really, but already he feels like a confidant in this strange storm that’s overtaken my life. Even having someone to read the barrage of messages for me this morning so I didn’t have to… was a relief. Like maybe I don’t have to carry the burden alone. I didn’t feel that with the bodyguard Carol assigned me.
“Zachary usually sits in the front row. Phillip, center right, with kinda curly hair. Dae, in the back. Phillip and Dae are vocal, so you’ll notice them. Zach’s quiet, but he usually comes up to talk after class. The other two do sometimes, too, or during office hours.”
Isaak nods, his eyes already scanning the kids streaming in the doors and sitting down.
I know they’re only four years younger than me but they really do look like kids. It’s easier to have compassion on whoever’s doing this to me when I remember it could be one of them. That maybe they’re just some mixed-up freshman or sophomore with mommy issues experiencing transference in a screwed-up way because I’m the first woman with real intelligence and authority they’ve run into in their adult lives.
A lot of these kids were neglected in the way that a lot of Gen Z has been, abandoned by busy parents to be raised by screens. They’re better with pixelated zombies and NPCs than real-life human beings.
Even now, with rows of laptops facing me, I know I’ll have difficulty tearing many of them from their screens. Except for Phillip, already in the middle row, who’s been staring at me with uncanny eye contact from the moment he sat down.
Isaak’s taken the seat my TA sometimes takes off to the side so he can still see the student’s faces.
“Good morning, class,” I say with a big smile, trying to make up for their disinterest with manufactured enthusiasm. Usually, I like teaching. I always thought this would be the scariest part of getting my degree, but it surprised me when I was able to settle into it without much anxiety. Because it’s just the rest of my life that gives me so much anxiety, I’m regularly popping pills for it.
Talking to students about concepts I find endlessly fascinating is usually my most low-key activity. Everything else in my head becomes quiet for once, and I’m finally able to be fully present.
Before the stalker anyway, and realizing it could be one of my students.
Now, I find my heart thumping as I continue our unit on Jungian psychology. I start by asking the students what they remember from last week’s session on the mind and the subconscious. I don’t get a lot of takers, but Dae finally speaks up without raising his hand.
“That there are conscious and unconscious parts of our psyche,” he says, his answers as astute and intelligent as always, “but the unconscious can only be reached through dreams and the symbolism of archetypes.”
“Very good, Dae,” I say, and I can all but feel Isaak’s displeasure at me giving a student on the list any praise. But I won’t change my teaching style out of paranoia. For all I know, all the students in this room could be innocent.
“And what are archetypes?” I ask the class.
“Universal symbols that live in the collective unconscious of a society,” says Phillip, also speaking up without raising his hand. But this is the familiar rhythm of how class goes between these three. They all start to answer as if one-upping one another, the most talkative even though the class is composed of mostly women. I can’t tell if it’s about a triangulating rivalry amongst them or if it has to do with jealousy in impressing me. “Images or stories from myths that have resonance for the collective and the individual.”
“Excellent summary, Phillip,” I say and feel Isaak bristle again from my left.
It takes all my effort to ignore him and focus on the lesson at hand. “Today, we’ll be interrogating these ideas further as we look at the persona and shadow to tease out the interplay between our conscious and unconscious selves. To put it simply, our persona is the self we put on to interact with the outside world.
“My persona, for example, is who I present to you from this podium, smiling and friendly, welcoming you. It’s a social mask.” I lean a little over the podium, smiling sideways. “Do you think this is who I really am?”
A mixture of yesses and nos come from the crowd. I—and I’m sure Isaak—note that Phillip is especially loud in calling out no .
“Those of you who’ve said no are correct, at least according to Jung. Because the other side of the careful social mask I’ve crafted to present to the world as the self I’d like you to see is my shadow. Who can tell me from the reading what the shadow is?”
When several students start talking at once, I remind them, “Hands.”
Phillip’s hand shoots up, as well as several others. I look over at Zachary, who’s scribbling in a notebook, no laptop today. He’s usually one of the first to have a hand up like the others. His hair is rumpled and matted on one side like maybe he hasn’t showered in a couple days.
“Zach? What do you think?”
He glares up at me. “The shadow is the darkness. The part everyone hides.”
I feel a little chill shiver down my spine, but then Zach stares back down at his paper and starts scribbling again so hard with his pen that it looks like he’s chewing through the paper with the tip.
“T-that’s right,” I say, swallowing and standing straight as I look at the rest of the class, trying not to show how unnerved I am. “The shadow is what we repress in our subconscious. Jungian therapy is a holistic approach that suggests we can begin to encounter the shadow in safe spaces without being afraid of it. It dwells within all of us, and we don’t have to repress it.”
“But shouldn’t some people repress it?” Phillip asks. “Like psychopaths and serial killers?”
Some people laugh.
I give the same spiel I always do when the subject comes up. “Psychopaths are a much smaller percentage of the population than all the police procedurals would have you believe. And even then, violent psychopaths an even smaller percentage.”
“I read that almost thirty percent of us have some psychopathic traits,” Zachary says, finally deciding to engage the class.
Everyone perks up. This is the kind of thing they took this elective to talk about. Abnormal psych is the class unofficially dubbed The Serial Killer class—Dr. Ezra teaches that one. But this class is the prerequisite.
“That’s like saying that a lot of people have some narcissistic traits,” I counter, seeing the crowd ready to derail my entire lesson talking about Manson and Bundy. “Traits don’t equal a diagnosable condition.”
“What would Jung say about psychopathy?” Dae asks from the back of the class.
Internally, I sigh. On any other day, I’d be excited about having an engaged class like this, but right now, I can feel Isaak’s eyes taking all this in.
“I imagine that Jung would want more information about the psychopath in question before classifying him under one of his twelve archetypes. The closest to the psychopath would likely be the ruler or the outlaw. One is concerned with power, the other with freedom.”
“Damn, Teach, you saying our politicians are psychopaths?” This comes from Simona, a non-binary kid with colorful hair in a row near the back.
I roll my eyes as everyone laughs. “You said it, not me.”
I wait a minute for the class to stop laughing and get back under control before I try to reign them back in. “But seriously, the shadow has a lot less to do with psychopathy and more to do with the ways we’ve learned to repress ourselves to fit into society. Some of this is good. For example, as kids, your parents might have put you in time out if you bit other children.”
More laughter.
“It’d be bad if we had a society full of biters, right?”
“I don’t know, Teach,” Simona calls. “I like ’em when they bite!”
“Yeah, yeah.” I wave a hand, smiling. “We all learn to repress what society deems inappropriate. But society isn’t always that great, right? Different societies hold up certain ideals as the standards of beauty that make everybody else feel like shit, right?”
Snickers flitter through the class like they always do when I curse. It’s my little secret way of making them feel like I’m one of them so they stay keyed in and paying attention.
“But what does that do to everyone else outside the narrow beauty standard?”
“Makes ’em feel like shit!” says a girl near the front.
“That’s right.” I point in her direction. “They start to feel bad, and some might try to conform.”
“You lose your culture,” says a girl with braids.
“You get EDs,” says another.
“You give in and become an influencer who gets all the brand deals,” says another.
More laughter.
“She’s right. Conformity reaps rewards. It feels good to be in the in-crowd. It can make a person want to lean in even harder. Get all those likes. More brand deals.”
“What about someone who can’t conform no matter how hard they try?” Phillip asks, brows furrowed, eyes intense on me.
“They repress,” I say, locking gazes for only a moment before looking to the class at large. “Their shadow grows deeper. Trauma forms in the shadow. Someone mentioned EDs—eating disorders. I think that we’re all getting that we’re talking about racism here, too. Scapegoating someone who doesn’t put on a persona that’s like the one a society has decided to elevate. Or you can become a rebel and seek freedom from that societal persona and liberation for yourself and others.”
“How?” someone asks.
“Jungian therapy seeks balance to bring the conscious and unconscious selves together, persona and shadow—through art, storytelling, talk therapy, and other ways to help patients access their feelings and thoughts.
“Does it work?” Zachary asks.
“Does Jungian therapy work, or does therapy itself work?”
“Either. Both.”
When his eyes meet mine, I feel a desperation there that I occasionally sense in these kids. I know it’s silly that I think of them as kids when we’re not that far apart in age. And I know it’s cliché to say that I feel like an old soul. But sometimes I think the gap in the generation between those of us who didn’t always have a smartphone in our hands as little kids and those who did is bigger than the Grand Canyon. It’s not like my parents paid any more attention to me without an iPad or phone, but at least they were plopping me in front of a TV that had human operators driving the programming and not YouTube algorithms.
“Yes,” I nod, not dropping Zachary’s gaze. “Therapy works. Because the good news is that our neurons are endlessly elastic, and we can form new neural pathways and connections at almost any age. Change is very possible, no matter what emotional or mental dilemma a person might currently be facing.”
I finally pull my eyes from his, hoping I wasn’t just making a direct plea to my stalker as I address the class as a whole again. “That’s not Jungian, though, just therapeutic knowledge at large. But for any of you thinking about going into it, therapy is an exciting field where you can really help people. In fact, the department is holding a workshop later this month about career opportunities. I’ll be sending out an email, so watch for it, and as always, feel free to stop by my office during office hours to talk if you feel this is a career that might interest you.
“Now, open your texts to page 379 and let’s start digging a little deeper.”
Some groan, but the squeaking and shifting of bags tells me many are complying while others start clacking away at their laptop keyboards, either pulling up the ebook version of the texts or going back to playing whatever online game they were in the middle of since they’ve decided the class is going back to being dull again.
I teach for the rest of the hour before there’s the usual mass exodus when I dismiss the class.
Only Phillip comes up after class, wanting to know more about the career fair and to get my thoughts on if I could see him being a therapist or if I think he’d fit better doing graduate research.
“Either way, you’ll probably end up doing some clinical hours, which could give you a better feel for it and which way you might want to go. I’m sorry, Phillip, but I’m late for another appointment,” I say, looking toward Isaak, who’s come up to the desk and is looming like a towering shadow behind me, glaring down at the boy. “Come by during office hours if you want to discuss it more.”
“Sure thing, Professor Roberts,” Phillip says, beaming at me before backing away when Isaak takes a step toward him. “Whoa. This your boyfriend or something?”
“Or something,” Isaak growls, and Phillip scurries off, only taking one quick look back over his shoulder at us before disappearing through the door.
“Was that entirely necessary?” I ask dryly as I gather my teaching notes and tidily tuck them into my portfolio.
“You bet your ass it was,” he mutters. “Class of little creeps.”
He surprises a laugh out of me. “I thought they were on pretty good behavior today.”
“That was good behavior? That one was all but drooling on his desk over you, and I’m pretty sure the weirdo in the corner was writing his school shooter manifesto.”
“Zach’s harmless.” I wave a hand.
“What about the boy band member in the back?”
“Dae? I shouldn’t have even put him on the list. You saw how all the girls in class swoon over him. He’s got his hands full.”
“He didn’t have eyes for any of them. Only for you.”
I feel my cheeks heat. That was always the impression I got during class with the way Dae watches me so carefully, but I was hoping I was wrong. “If anything, it’s just a schoolboy crush.”
“Schoolboy crushes don’t write their teachers about violent fantasies and deliver bloody animals to their well-fortified bedrooms.”
I shudder at the reminder.
“Sorry,” Isaak whispers harshly under his breath. He drags a hand through his hair. “I hate you being so exposed in front of all of them, knowing that any one of the little pricks might be the one writing that shit.”
I look over at him, seeing the muscles in his neck flex with how tense he is.
“Hey,” I say, reaching out but stopping right before making contact with his hand. “It’s gonna be okay. Isn’t that what you said last night? Or were you just blowing smoke up my ass to make me feel better?”
I know I might feel like an old soul, but he probably sees me as a whiny little kid, young and immature, like I see my students.
His eyes flash up to mine. The guilty look in his eyes tells me, yup, he said it to make me feel better.
But then he covers it with a smile. Ah, he’s someone who knows a thing or two about putting on a persona, isn’t he? So what are the shadows that he keeps so carefully hidden?
“You’re good at what you do, Professor.”
“Oh.” I blink, surprised. I wasn’t prepared for a compliment. Isaak’s much easier to handle when he’s pulling out little quips or infuriating me with some misogynistic nickname. “Well, I try, anyway.”
“You do a good job. You’re really engaging.”
“Oh. Um. Thank you. It’s a good group of kids. I’m proud of how far they’ve come already this semester.”
“Does the Professor have time to go grab a cup of coffee?” he asks, and my breath catches a little as I look up into his searching, gray eyes. Maybe he doesn’t see me as just a bumbling kid after all?
“Why?” I ask, too blunt, as always. At least with him. I’m much better everywhere else in my life, my persona firmly locked in place.
He chuckles. “Tuck your panties back in, Red. It’s not a date. I just want a more complete list of names. And I thought it might be nice to grab some caffeine before we head over to make the police statement about the break-in.”
“Just when I start to think maybe you’re a decent guy, there you have to go again opening your mouth.”
“Well, there’s your problem. I’m definitely not a decent guy.” He holds out his arm in an overly formal manner. “Shall we, dear Professor?” he asks mockingly.
I ignore his proffered arm, rolling my eyes and sweeping down the aisle of the classroom without glancing back over my shoulder. “Do try to keep up.”