Chapter 17 Master Yoda
Master Yoda
Itook an empty seat in the back of the room during Cooper’s fifth period Fun Chem class. Ten years ago, I sat in one of these chairs watching Mr. Stephens stand at the whiteboard and expound on my favorite subject. It felt weird sitting back while Cooper stood in his place.
Though, to be fair, Cooper hadn’t spent very much time lecturing from the whiteboard. After firing off a pop bottle to start the class, he only spent about eight minutes reviewing high-level concepts. Then, the whole class gathered around the fume hood in the back of the room for a demonstration.
I had used the fume hood a few times in my classes, but this seemed to be a regular occurrence for Cooper’s class based on how readily the students came together.
The whole time that he prepared reagents and constructed the apparatus, he was talking.
Cooper would make a statement or ask a question, and to my amazement, the students replied without having to be called on.
The lesson flowed naturally, like a conversation.
I was in awe of his ease—like a dance, he moved and spoke with confidence, connecting with each student until they were all hanging on his every word.
It was a stark contrast to my own style of lecturing at the whiteboard for fifty-five minutes and calling on students sporadically to read from the text or answer a question.
After seeing this, I felt more like an imposter than I ever had.
While I played at being a teacher, he was a real educator with an innate talent that I could only dream of matching.
The final bell rang, and the students filed out of the classroom, leaving me alone with Cooper. I approached him where he erased the little-used whiteboard, and I slow-clapped. “Okay. I’m a believer. Teach me your ways, Master Yoda.”
Cooper chuckled as he replaced the eraser on its tray and brushed marker dust off his hands. I had seen him erasing the board many times over the last month, and it never occurred to me before today that unlike me, he did not spend most of his class time writing on the board.
“Don’t call me Yoda,” he said. “Let me finish cleaning up, and then we can head over to the library.”
He brushed past me on the way to the fume hood, and I followed like a puppy.
“What about Obi-Wan?” I countered. “It’s really unfair that you’ve had a pet name for me all this time, but I can only call you Mr. Cooper.”
He turned and smirked at me over his shoulder. “Have a little respect for the Jedi masters. And Princess isn’t my pet name.”
I fisted a hand on my hip and scowled.
“Oh no? Then what would you call it?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a thoughtful look that had heat rising in my chest. “It’s a title,” he replied simply.
I blinked once. And again. What could he possibly mean by that? Was he teasing me, or was calling me Princess some kind of compliment? Asking for clarification felt foolish, so I said, “Alright.”
His brows furrowed. “I thought you liked being called Princess. Wasn’t that your thing back in the day? It was on your letter jacket instead of Burke.”
Interesting.
How had he remembered that? He wasn’t teasing after all. If I didn’t know any better, I might think he genuinely cared what I thought.
“Yes,” I said, carefully. “Back in the day. But that was a long time ago. That girl is long gone.”
His gaze turned serious, and I got the distinct impression that he could see into my soul. “You’ll always be Princess to me,” he murmured.
My chest felt tight, and it was hard to breathe. “Well… then, I guess I’m okay with it when you say it. Mr. Cooper.” The smile I gave him was soft and shy.
“Jack.”
“What?”
“It’s my name. Just call me Jack.”
“Jack,” I repeated slowly, testing the name on my tongue. I would have sworn I saw him shiver as I spoke, though it might have been a trick of the afternoon light. “I’ll call you Jack if you call me Mel.”
He regarded me for another moment before saying, “We’ll see.”
I straightened my bag on my shoulder and took a step toward the door. “Alright, Jack. Are you ready to go?”
“After you, Princess Mel.” He gestured for me to go ahead of him.
I rolled my eyes and grinned. Playful Jack was back.
“So,” I started as we descended the stairs, “where did you learn to teach like that?” After observing for the last hour, I was much more interested in getting to know him. I still knew so little.
“The South Bronx.”
“Are you from there?”
“No, I’m from upstate. My family lives near Buffalo, and I went to school at Syracuse.”
My face scrunched in confusion. “So, then how did you end up in The Bronx?”
He was silent for a long moment, and I was afraid he might not answer.
“I didn’t get a scholarship for college like I did for Newbury.
After I got my bachelor’s degree, I had a ton of student loan debt.
My girlfriend convinced me to do the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program to get some of the debt waived.
The plan was to work in an at-risk district in the city for ten years, pay off some loans, and then go somewhere quieter. ”
He held the door for me, and we stepped out into the chilly afternoon air. “Ten years,” I mused. “You weren’t there that long.”
Cooper shook his head. “No. Living in the city was fucking hard. Brutal really. The kids didn’t want to learn.
Didn’t want to listen. I spent more time fighting them than actually teaching for the first couple of years.
It felt like beating my head against a stone wall.
And then, there was the money—hardly any to live on after rent and food.
I had to pick up side gigs—tutoring and UberEats. It was exhausting.”
“I can imagine,” I replied quietly.
“Can you?” There was a tinge of bitterness in his voice.
My stomach rolled over, and my gaze dropped to my feet. “I guess not. Like, I know teachers are underpaid in an abstract sort of way, but I never really thought about what that looked like for a real person. I’ve never had to worry about money.”
Silence stretched between us again. The only sounds were the tapping of our shoes on the sidewalk.
“That must have been nice,” he said finally, and I released the breath I had been holding. We had been making so much progress, but this particular subject felt like walking on eggshells. One wrong step, and all of the goodwill between us would be gone in a puff of smoke.
“I think I took it for granted,” I said carefully. “It didn’t always feel nice but I suppose it was. I mean, I was never below level three in Maslow’s Hierarchy.”
Cooper—Jack—snorted a humorless laugh. “I can tell you from experience that level one is a bastard.”
I jerked my head over. “Level one?”
He shrugged. “Yep. Food. Shelter. Sleep, sometimes. It really sucks having to decide if you’re going to pay for food, rent, or credit card debt. Or work extra gigs when all you want to do is crash.”
My heart broke for him. This brilliant, kind, capable man—my classmate, my equal—hadn’t always been able to eat. No wonder he was furious to learn I was his competition. This job represented freedom to me, but to him, it was security.
“Don’t pity me.” There was a bite to his words. “I wasn’t special. It’s like that for a lot of teachers—most, actually.”
I stopped him with a hand on his arm. His dark eyes were cold, like they had been at the beginning of the semester.
“I don’t—”
“Seriously. I don’t need pity. I’m one of the lucky ones. Newbury pays more than triple what I earned at my last school.”
I squeezed his arm.
“I wouldn’t—”
He wrapped his long fingers around my wrist and held me still.
“You better keep fighting for this job. Don’t stop trying because you feel sorry for me.”
His gaze was so intense. The idea of quitting, of letting him have the job, had never occurred to me. It wasn’t in my blood. I didn’t owe Jack anything, but I could give him this—this piece of dignity.
“I promise.”
He studied my face, trying to decide if he believed me. I stared back, letting him see everything, my pride but also my integrity. He nodded and gently pulled my hand off of his arm before releasing it and starting back down the path. I fell into step beside him.
“So,” I started, eager to lighten the conversation. “How did you learn to teach like that in The Bronx?”
To my immense relief, he latched onto the subject change with alacrity.
“The pay was shit, but I was lucky my school was flexible with the curriculum. After a couple of years of beating my head against the blackboard, I realized that I needed to go about things differently. So I decided to employ the scientific method.”
“Smart,” I said, and meant it.
“Ha. Thanks. Most people thought I was crazy. But I wasn’t crazy. I was just tired. So fucking tired of trying my hardest and getting nowhere. That’s the definition of insanity right?”
“Trying the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results.”
He smiled at me, a soft, sweet smile that touched his eyes. “Exactly.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well,” he continued as we approached the library, “I wrote out a hypothesis and a test plan.”
I snorted a laugh. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he confirmed. “I thought of everything I loved about chemistry and how best to showcase those things.”
“And that worked?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. I sounded like a used car salesman. The students hated it even more than the straight lecturing.”
“I could see that. Some adults don’t give kids much credit, but they can tell when you’re being authentic or not.”
We reached the library, and Jack opened the door for me. The familiar smell washed over me, and I hummed in pleasure. Jack gave me a funny look, and I blushed.
“That they can,” he said. “So, I went back to the test plan and turned that on its head. I stopped thinking about what I wanted and started thinking about them. What did the students want? They don’t care about molecular theory or thermodynamics.”
“Some of them do.”
“Sure, some of them do, but not most of them.”
“So what did they want?”