Diantha
The turretsof the Art History building lance the low, dense clouds that have overtaken campus. A distant thunder crackles as I stare up through the rain at the looming stone building. Etched into the massive keystone above the entrance are the words: FIDE NEMINI.
Trust no one.
The University of Echidna’s Arts & Humanities department slogan—half joke, half reminder. Stay scrupulous. Stay vigilant. Stay curious.
A shiver of excitement corkscrews down my spine.
The first day of my last semester of night school. I love night school. The quiet of the campus, the stillness in the maple and chestnut trees that shade the stone paths winding from one building to another. The warm glow of classroom lights through the crown glass windows. The small class sizes and the way professors tend to treat lectures like a private ritual, a precious secret.
I can barely hide my smile.
Inside, my very yellow, very wet rain jacket squeaks against the old, lacquered wooden chair as I slide into my preferred seat. The farthest to the left in the front row. It’s objectively the bestseat—the closest to the exit, near enough to a plug that I never have to worry that my ancient MacBook will die in the middle of class and force me to haul my beautiful, albeit large, ass over a few rows to find an outlet. I can see the screen without straining my eyes and I know, down here, the professor’s voice won’t echo.
Night school.I’m an expert.
Tonight, my dinosaur laptop stays sleeping in my bag, and I instead extract a spiral notebook and my favorite writing utensil––a black gel ink pen with the label rubbed off, stolen from my daytime barista gig and apparently completely irreplaceable.
It’s not just a pen. It’s a talisman. One of many in my life.
The lecture hall is almost entirely silent, except for the ambient buzzing of various lightbulbs and my whispering classmates. The smell of old paper and extinguished candles and someone’s dinner lingers around us. For once, I’m not the first one here—thank god. I can only shrug off the brown-noser allegations for so long.
I push my hood back and take in the room—the climbing rows of seats meant to house at least two hundred students are almost entirely empty. Across the way, a man with a heart-shaped face and a shock of black hair jams furiously at his laptop’s keyboard. Ten or so rows up, a woman with overly tanned skin and overly processed hair chews at her lip, fiddling with a chunky, clamorous necklace that looks like it was purchased in an art museum gift shop. Five or more rows behind me are two women with young faces whispering to each other in…
I strain my ears.
Vietnamese, if I’m not mistaken.
I flip to the first page of my notebook and, in an almost illegible Catholic school scrawl, I write:Diantha Moro [email protected] Art History Dept.
Suddenly, the hall door swings open and in walks a man, his thinning hair wet and plastered to his forehead, his nose a painful shade of red from the cold, and a ratty, nylon briefcase shoved under his arm.
He pauses for a few seconds behind his desk, eyes glued to the phone in his hands, then he slams down his bag, extracts his laptop, and connects it to the projector. A PowerPoint slide blinks to life on the screen behind him.
In black font on a white background, the slide reads:
medieval art: saints sinners and their relics
ARTHST401
Our professor smirks, crossing his arms over his chest, observing us with an arched brow. “Incredible. Two hundred seats and you’ve managed to find the mostannoyingconfiguration. Any chance I can bother you all to please join your classmate in the front row?”
In an instant, my cheeks heat.
Ass-licker status, confirmed.
Introductions happened at an improbable speed. Our professor is Cormac Bowen, and our ears do not deceive us, we are not experiencing a post-vodka-binge auditory hallucination—he is Irish.
Janet, with her big chunky necklace, is a pharmaceutical CFO’s executive assistant exploring her passion for art history.
Ray, in his fifth year of a bachelor’s degree in early Renaissance philosophy, barely looks up from his laptop screen while admitting he is “desperado” to see the catacombs. He flashes a wet smile, canines glinting, and Bowen grimaces.
The 19th century crypts beneath the University of Echidna campus are, according to U of E’s website and the syllabus Bowen emailed last night, extraordinarily off-limits and only accessible to authorized personnel via private VIP tours. This class is not so much anexceptionto that rule, but rather a trial to see if we can handle it.
The criteria for “handling it” have been outlined nowhere. But Ray has quite obviously started us off on the wrong foot.
Laila is a first-year PhD in Art History, focusing on 13th century Chinese art. She’s vaguely curious about what white people were up to at that same time.
