Page 29 of Fundamentals of Chemistry

They all nodded at me, grinning broadly. I waited for someone to speak, but no one seemed particularly forthcoming.

“This club meets once a week right?” I asked, attempting to keep the conversation flowing. “So, um, what do we usually do?”

“Pretty much just this. We’ll talk about October or anything else, really,” Miriam supplied.

I considered the faces a little more thoughtfully. They did seem to be a collection of odd ducks—likely social outcasts, or at least outcasts from the social circles that I used to run in. This might be the height of their week. Or maybe I was judging them too quickly.

“So, what were you talking about before I got here?” I asked, trying to get the conversation moving again.

Russel cleared his throat. “Well, we were talking about you, actually.”

“And Mr. Cooper,” a brunette girl added in a dreamy voice.

I perked up, eager to gauge the students’ impression. “Oh yeah? What about us?”

Russel shrugged noncommittally and looked down at his shoes. I tried to catch someone else’s eye, and no one would meet mine.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I’m not going to be mad. What are people saying?”

Miriam finally took pity on me. “Well, it is kind of strange, right? Having both of you? Everyone is sort of curious how that’s going to work.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, nodding. “Well, we aren’t both going to stay indefinitely. So either of us might be gone in a couple of months.”

The brunette girl gasped. “He won’t be leaving, will he? Mr. Cooper is wonderful! I would be so sad.”

I had to really work to keep the frown off my face. I could not wrap my head around why so many people liked Cooper. It stung to be confronted with this predicament so directly.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, genuinely curious about the man that had come to take up so many of my thoughts.

“Well,” the girl started, oblivious to my distress. “He’s the best teacher. I had Stephens last year, and he would just drone on and on, and the lessons felt like an eternity. But Mr. Cooper? I don’t know… I could listen to him talk forever. It feels like it’s just him and me, you know? But then there are the pop bottles, too, and those are really fun.”

“Pop bottles?” I parroted. I couldn’t stop my brows from pulling together. Was he bribing the students with soft drinks?

“They’re really cool,” the boy in red added—I seriously needed to get these kids’ names. “He has these empty twenty-ounce bottles, or at least they look empty. But then, when he opens them in front of a Bunsen burner, they pop. It scared the shit out of me the first time he did it.”

My eyes bounced between the pair of them. “Pops?”

“It sounds more like a gunshot, or a car backfire,” the brunette girl added. “It’s a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. He does it to keep us on our toes when it looks like the class is drifting off during a lecture.”

“It’s pretty funny—watching everyone jump out of their skin.”

“Yeah, he’s amazing. I hope he stays.”

A roller coaster of emotions roared through me as I mulled over their words. I hadn’t anticipated this little wrinkle—that the students might find Cooper less unpleasant than I did. They seemed to genuinely like him and his unorthodox methods. I’d never heard of anyone using pop bottles before, but I had to admit it was a clever application of the exothermic reaction.

I fought to hide my unease and hold the smile on my face. I couldn’t have my new club thinking I was bitter and jealous, even if I kind of was.

What were my students saying about me to their friends? I had a feeling they weren’t saying that I was an amazing, wonderful teacher too. Or that my lessons were that fun and engaging. I tried to be funny. I tried to relate the lessons to things the students would be familiar with from real life. Hopefully, they liked me. I would want my students to like me even if the student assessments weren’t part of my evaluation for the job.

“He sounds great,” I said, finally. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the class.”

“It doesn’t hurt that he’s gorgeous,” the girl added.

“Janelle!” Russel whined.

“What?” she said. “You can’t tell me he doesn’t look like he stepped out of a hockey romance?”

I chuckled. “What kind of novels are you reading?”