15. The Professor and the Puzzle by Carolyn Keene

Author:Carolyn Keene [Keene, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YA
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2017-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Know Thyself

THE SKY OVER ORACLE COLLEGE was a fiery collage of oranges and reds as the sun began to set. Iris and I were walking across campus to sit in on Dr. Stone’s ancient philosophy class. The air had that telltale smell of autumn, a combination of earth and smoke. On the way, we passed by Dr. Brown, who looked even more handsome in regular clothes than he did in his Apollo costume. His brown hair was swept stylishly to the side, and his tortoiseshell glasses complemented his brown vest and slacks perfectly. He was chatting animatedly with a few students, who all seemed to hang on his every word. “A B average is fine for some, I suppose,” he was saying. “But to truly be great, you must aim higher. As Heracleitus once said, ‘Big results require big ambitions.’ You must not allow obstacles to prevent you from following your path to greatness.” The wide-eyed students nodded, some of them even taking notes.

“Yeesh,” Iris groaned as we passed by. “Those girls act like he really is a god. Give me a break. I never understood the whole hot-for-teacher thing.”

“I bet you’d change your tune if he was talking about the difference between chambray and denim,” I said with a smirk.

Iris raised the back of her hand to her forehead and fluttered her eyelids dramatically. “Ohh,” she swooned. “Be still my beating heart!”

Dr. Stone’s ancient philosophy class was in a huge, curved lecture hall inside one of the academic buildings on campus. There must have been at least a hundred seats, and they were rapidly filling up by the time Iris and I arrived. We entered at the top tier and nabbed two seats on the aisle, where I had a good view of the students in front of me. Guilt has many ways of expressing itself—in body language, tone of voice, choice of words. I wanted to make sure that if guilt showed its face, I’d be there to see it.

“Look!” Iris said, pointing. “There’s Dr. Stone.”

I gazed down toward the front of the class to see Dr. Stone striding into the room. Unlike when I’d seen her earlier, she radiated a commanding presence that caused the people in the room to fall quiet almost immediately. Students who’d been loitering in the aisles quickly took their seats, pulling out laptops and notebooks from their bags. Dr. Stone arranged her own papers on the podium and checked her wristwatch. My phone read 5:59 p.m.—one minute until the class began. As the time clicked over to six o’clock, I saw Dr. Stone clear her throat and face the class. “Good evening,” she intoned, her rich voice filling every crevice of the hall. “Before we begin, I have an announcement to make. Sometime this afternoon, my African gray parrot escaped from his cage in my office.”

I gasped. Sophocles? But I’d just seen him a few hours ago. Poor Dr. Stone, she must be devastated. I watched her carefully, but whatever the professor was feeling at that moment, she was hiding it well.

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