Chapter 4 Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance
While not particularly imposing as campus buildings went, the Marshall W.
Burke Library anchored the south end of the quad with a gravitas reminiscent of the man it was named for, my great grandfather.
He had been as stoic and serious as the marble statues of Plato and Socrates which flanked the library entrance, traits that had been passed down to my grandfather, father, and older brother. Those genes must have skipped me.
In my youth, I had felt a sense of pride—or at least self-importance—every time I walked through the heavy double doors. That feeling was nowhere to be found today. The air felt thick and oppressive. Was it possible for a building to judge me?
Regardless of my feelings on the Burke legacy, I needed information.
And without the benefit of the social media apps that I refused to download, the library was the best—and maybe only—option I had.
I mounted the stairs and entered the cavernous foyer, head still spinning from this morning’s revelations.
Not only did I not have the job I had been dreaming about since learning of Mr. Stephens's retirement last April, but I would be going head-to-head with a much more qualified opponent. I was proud of my education and meager teaching experience, but even I couldn’t deny that it didn’t hold a candle to six years in front of an actual classroom.
Silvia used to talk about imposter syndrome in the early days of her marketing career.
I held her hand and listened with a sympathetic ear, but I didn’t really get what she was saying until now.
I had always been confident in myself and my abilities.
If I wanted something—be it a pair of limited-edition Jimmy Choos or an A on an exam—I would figure out how to get it.
But for the last twenty-four hours, Cooper’s words had been bouncing around my brain—what are you doing here?
Maybe I didn’t have as much teaching experience, but I had a lot of other redeeming qualities.
I was damn smart and great at chemistry.
I had fantastic people skills, honed over years of parties and fundraisers at my parents’ sides and, more recently, bartending in Manhattan. That all had to count for something.
I shook my head as if I could shake out the intrusive thoughts playing on repeat.
I felt progressively better the deeper I moved into the stacks, fingertips brushing the beautiful old tomes. I sucked deep breaths through my nose, savoring the unique and comforting scent that was this library.
It didn’t take me long to find my senior yearbook, the red leather spine calling out like a beacon. And it took even less time to locate Jackson Cooper within its glossy pages. His photo was on the same page as mine.
Several long seconds passed while I took in the photos, my brow furrowing and my lips tipping into a frown.
It was obvious why I hadn’t recognized him. The Jackson Cooper I met yesterday and this morning looked absolutely nothing like the gangly teen in this picture.
I hadn’t changed that much in the last ten years. Sure, my clothes and makeup were dated in my senior photo—stripes of contour and highlighter not blended nearly well enough so that I looked like a deer. But the girl in this picture was basically the same one I saw in the mirror every morning.
On the other hand, Jackson Cooper seemed to have undergone a full-body transplant. And possibly also a head transplant. The boy in this picture was unrecognizable as the man living across the hallway.
Once I saw his senior headshot—more like a mugshot—I vaguely remembered the awkwardly tall and skinny boy.
His dark hair had been combed down across his forehead so it covered the left side of his face, reminiscent of an emo band frontman.
What remained of his pointy face was further obstructed by a pair of thick-framed glasses.
Clothes at least three sizes too big hung off his lanky body.
I felt like I was living in an early 2000s teen movie, where taking off glasses and getting a haircut counted as a makeover. But this was so much more than that.
Jackson Cooper had seriously cleaned up, filled out, and grown into his looks.
The awkward youth had gained muscle and definition.
Though still lean, his chest was twice as broad now as it had been then.
He had gone from looking like an animated skeleton to looking like a professional soccer player.
And yes, a better haircut and contacts helped too. The shorter cut accentuated the high cheekbones and strong jaw on his more-mature face. Removing the glasses had revealed dark eyes, framed in long, curled lashes that any woman would kill for.
I flipped to the section with photos of the extracurricular groups. Cooper had been in the chess and coding clubs and on the Mathletes team. I had been in a bunch of clubs and sports teams, but none of those. We wouldn’t have had many opportunities to cross paths outside of class.
Furthermore, I was very confident that Jackson Cooper had not spoken to me a single time in the four years that we attended school together.
I never forgot a birthday or a pet’s name—my mother had trained me well.
If I had ever spoken with the tall, quiet boy, I would have remembered something—some detail.
But I didn’t. There was a Cooper-shaped void in my memory.
I closed the yearbook and reshelved it while my brain continued to process everything I learned in the last hour.
We might not have spoken before, but we would be speaking frequently now.
I was caught in a Catch-22. In order to win my dream job, I needed to work with the one person standing between me and that dream.
And the man clearly couldn’t stand me. It wasn’t like I wanted friendship or even validation, but the whole process of working together would be much easier if we could be civil.
Without really intending to, I found myself back on the third floor Brookside Hall.
But instead of going into my apartment, I stepped in front of number thirty-three.
I needed to talk to Cooper. I needed to apologize for not recognizing him, and then hopefully he would apologize for his rudeness too.
And once the air was clear, we could figure out a plan for the semester.
Riding a swell of determination, I rapped my knuckles on the door and held my breath while I waited for Jackson Cooper’s tall form to appear. But nothing happened.
I knocked again with more force. Rat-tat-tat.
Still nothing.
The silence was oppressive.
He must not be home. I sighed. I would have to try again later.
We had two days before the students arrived on campus, and then classes would begin after the weekend.
There was still time to reconcile and start lesson planning.
That, and I didn’t like the idea of starting the semester with him still hating me.
After twenty minutes of flipping aimlessly through my favorite Ali Hazelwood paperback and listening for every little sound in the hallway that might indicate Cooper’s return, I set the book aside with a sigh.
I was going to lose my mind if I continued to wait here.
I needed to do something productive, and, perhaps, self-indulgent.
I slid my laptop into a tote bag before heading back out, intent on starting the lesson planning on my own.
The sun was hot and bright on my skin as I strode across campus to the one place I had wanted most to go since arriving.
Franklin Hall, home of the math and science classrooms, stood before me looking exactly like I remembered it.
It was clad in red brick and white marble and trailing ivy like all of the campus buildings, but it somehow felt more welcoming.
Perhaps it was the colorful flowers that flanked the doors in large planters.
Or maybe the windows just shined a little brighter.
Or maybe Franklin Hall was the perfect combination of my favorite memories from my youth and the promise of my hopes for the future.
Regardless, it wasn’t just a building. It was my building, even more than the library.
The large doors opened smoothly when I pulled the handle, welcoming me like an old friend.
The chemistry classroom was still at the end of the second-floor hallway.
I surveyed the room with a nostalgic eye.
While the general layout—two rows of benches and chairs arrayed down the length of the classroom—was how I remembered it, some aspects of the space had changed.
The large fume hood at the back was new—a state of the art model even nicer than the ones I had used at Columbia. A peek into the adjacent supply closet revealed shelf after shelf of ruthlessly clean test tubes, beakers, and other glassware, plus clearly labeled bottles of chemicals.
It seemed like only yesterday that I had been connecting glassware and mixing reagents in my own experiments. Purple liquid had bubbled beautifully in a round-bottom retort over an orange flame, the effluent coalescing in the thin piping until my pure distillate collected in an Erlenmeyer flask.
I resisted the urge to start playing chemist, and instead, meandered down the center aisle to the front of the room, trailing my fingers along the black-topped workbenches.
They had been outfitted with individual natural gas lines so a Bunsen burner could be connected at each station.
My smile widened as I considered the possibilities—frequent experiments to engage the students while demonstrating fundamental chemical principles.
We were going to light a bunch of stuff on fire to see how it burned.
The students would love it. I would teach them to love chemistry as much as I did.
The traditional, wooden teacher’s desk sat to one side of the whiteboard at the front of the room. With a direct view out one of the large windows. Setting down my bag, I hopped up on top of the pristine desk, legs dangling over the edge.
Pleasure and excitement swirled in my stomach as I surveyed the whole room. I had been wrong before—the cute little apartment wasn’t going to be my home for the next four months.
This was my home.
I was ripped from my fantasy when the door at the back of the room opened, revealing Jackson Cooper. My shoulders stiffened and my kicking feet stilled as he stalked toward me between the benches, his eyes narrowed and locked on mine.