Just One Day(49)

I feel something jolt up my spine. An old circuit-breaker long since forgotten being tested out and sparking in the darkness.
Gretchen must see my expression, because she starts telling me about how this isn’t just any Shakespeare class, how Professor Glenny has very strong opinions on how Shakespeare should be taught, and how he has a cult following on campus.
I can’t help but think of him. And then I think of the tabula rasa. The resolution I made on New Year’s. The fact that I am pre-med. “I don’t think I’m supposed to take this class.”
This makes her smile. “Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.” She taps on her keyboard. “It’s full, as usual, so you’ll have to fight your way in off the wait list. Why not give it a shot? Leave it up to the fates.”
The fates. I think that’s another word for accidents.
Which I don’t believe in anymore.
But I let her register me for the class just the same.

Twenty
Stepping into the classroom for Shakespeare Out Loud is like stepping into an entirely different school than the one I’ve attended for the past four months. Instead of a giant lecture hall, which is where all my science courses were located, or even a large classroom like Mandarin, it’s in a tiny, intimate classroom, the kind we had in high school. There are maybe twenty-five desks arced into a U, around a lectern in the middle. And the students sitting at them, they look different too. Lip rings and hair dyed colors not found naturally on the human head. It’s a sea of well-manicured alienation. The arty crowd, I guess. When I come in and look for a seat—they’re all taken—no one looks at me.
I take a seat on the floor, near the door, for an easier escape. I may not belong in chemistry, but I don’t belong here either. When Professor Glenny strides in five minutes late and looking like a rock star—shaggy graying hair, beat-up leather boots, he even has pouty Mick Jagger lips—he steps on me. As in, literally treads on my hand. As bad as my other classes have been, no one has ever stepped on me. Not an auspicious start, and I almost leave right then and there, but my way is now blocked by the overflow of other students.
“Show of hands,” Professor Glenny begins after he has dropped his artfully worn leather satchel on top of the lectern. “How many of you have ever read a Shakespeare play for the sheer pleasure of it?” He has a British accent, though not the Masterpiece Theatre kind.
About half the hands in the class shoot up. I almost consider raising mine, but it’s just too much of a lie, and there’s no point in brown-nosing if I’m not staying.
“Excellent. Ancillary question: How many of you have fallen asleep while attempting to read a Shakespeare play by yourself?”
The class goes silent. No hands go up. Then Professor Glenny looks right at me, and I’m wondering how he knows, but then I realize he’s not looking at me but the guy behind me, who is the only person who’s raised a hand. Along with everyone else in the class, I turn and stare at him. He’s one of two African American students in the room, though he’s the only one sporting a huge halo of an afro covered in bejeweled barrettes, and bubble-gum-pink gloss on his lips. Otherwise, he’s dressed like a soccer mom, in sweats and pink Uggs. In a field of carefully cultivated weirdness, he’s a wildflower, or maybe a weed.
“Which play bored you to sleep?” Professor Glenny asks.
“Take your pick. Hamlet. Macbeth. Othello. I napped to the best of them.”
The class titters, as if falling asleep while studying is so déclassé.
Professor Glenny nods. “So why, then, please—sorry, your name . . . ?”
“D’Angelo Harrison, but my friends call me Dee.”
“I’ll be presumptuous and call you Dee. Dee, why take this class? Unless you’re here to catch up on your sleep.”
Again, the class laughs.
“By my count, this class costs about five grand a semester,” Dee says. “I can sleep for free.”
I attempt the math. Is that how much one class costs?
“Quite prudent,” Professor Glenny says. “So, again, why take this class, given the expenditure and given Shakespeare’s soporific track record?
“Well, I’m not actually in the class yet. I’m on your wait list.”
At this point, I can’t tell if he’s stalling or parrying with the professor, but either way, I’m impressed. Everyone else here seems eager to give the right answer, and this guy is stringing the professor along. To his credit, Professor Glenny seems more amused than annoyed.
“My point is, Dee, why attempt it even?”
There’s a long pause. You can hear the fluorescent lights humming, the throat-clearing of a few students who clearly have a ready answer. And then Dee says, “Because the movie of Romeo and Juliet makes me cry harder than just about anything else. Every damn time I see it.”
Again, the class laughs. It’s not a kind laugh. Professor Glenny turns back toward the lectern and pulls a paper and pen out of his satchel. It’s a list. He stares at it ominously and then checks off a name—and I wonder if this Dee just got himself kicked off the wait list. What kind of class did Gretchen Price put me in? Gladiator Shakespeare?
Then Professor Glenny turns to a girl with weird pink Tootsie Roll twists who has her nose in a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare, the kind of girl who probably never deigned to watch Leo and Claire’s version of Romeo and Juliet or fall asleep while reading Macbeth. He looms over her for a moment. She looks up at him and smiles bashfully, like, oh-you-caught-me-reading-my-book. He flashes a thousand-watt smile back at her. And then he slams her book shut. It’s a big book. It makes a loud noise.