Now You See Me [Jasper Hale story]

III. Chemistry

"For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Alice was intoxicating. No matter how much I wanted to get her out of my head, I couldn't. The golden eyes of hers - it took me a while to conclude that it must have been some kind of a strange mutation, since it wasn't the contact lenses. My aunt had been using lenses since three years ago, and I'm sure Alice's eyes didn't look like that at all.

Her heavenly, exalting voice... oh my, with the memory, I felt like having withdrawal symptoms. Well, most probably, meeting another person with voice as angelic as Alice's, at the first lesson of mine wasn't helping either; but it wasn't in my powers to change that now, was it?
The moment I recieved my schedule from the chubby lady in an office as small as my "new" room at Emily's, my eyes automatically searched for the Chemistry. To understand, Chemistry was the only love of my life. I adored the subject - experimenting with various liquids, powders, searching for cellulose, starch, proving the presence of glucose, and much more. Everything had its sense, its logical reasoning. There weren't any stupid exceptions to the rules in Chemistry, as in normal life - no; there were only the strict, merciless rules. So, yeah, Chemistry was simply a paradise on Earth for me.

"Good morning, class," the teacher - an asian woman in her early 30's - welcomed us in the laboratory. "This subject is elective, for that I expect you to do your best. Those of you who have signed up for Analytical Chemistry will obviously need the knowledge in the future; or are self-murderers, since Analytics definitely isn't a walk through rosy garden."

The woman managed to summarize the subject and her expectations in two sentences and for that, I was slowly starting to like her. "My name is Irene Gao. I will be your teacher for at least this year. Now, each of you will come to me and choose a topic for your essay. The essays will be the result of your year work, so I recommend you to prepare yourselves well."
After that, the class errupted into wide whisper. I felt a urge to start biting my nails for obviously the same reason as the rest of the class started chatting - nervousness. The girl next to me though - unlike the rest of us, normal, deprivated students - snorted, shut her exercise-book closed and then, turned her head away from the teacher to watch out of the window. Her reaction made me wonder, how was it that she wasn't nervous. It made me curious enough to look at her even.

Immediately, I started to regret the decision. Mainly since my temporary neighbor was as beautiful as Alice was. Uhm, nope, that wasn't quite the right definition. Remember when I said that Alice was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen? Then forget it. This girl was definitely the most beautiful one, and I had slowly started doubting my sexual preference. Until now, I thought I had been a strict heterosexual, however, if this particular girl asked me to do any lasciviousness with her, I wouldn't refuse (although I'd do with Alice as well, for that matter).

"Miss Hale," the professor sighed wearily, pulling me out of the chain of thoughts. Thanks god for that anyways. "Do you have any objections to the work assignment?"

And obviously, I wasn't the only one who noticed the girl's actions either. My neighbor turned her head back, to look at the teacher, her emotions obviously struggling among themselves, letting her surroundings know that she was trying to avoid any other expressions of contempt. In the end, her "good" self obviously won the fight, yet the girl rolled her eyes.
"Of course I don't," she retorted sharply.

"Marvelous," professor Gao smiled at her as sincerely as she could, then pulled out paper cards in various colours - blue, green, black and red. She arranged them on the table, letting us adjust to the colours. "These are the topics of your essays. Red colour means a part of the Atom Structure. Black means a particular group of elements from the Periodic system of the Elements; green is the theory of Organic Chemistry and blue means your favorite Nomenclature. You will come to me, announce the colour you've chosen. I'll pull out one card for you then. Understood?"