Chapter 4

The taxi let Charlie off right in front of the Math & Sciences building.

Charlie paid and went directly to the bench in front of the building, where he sat and absorbed the atmosphere for a while. It was Saturday, so there weren't many students, but there were some. Several stopped to speak with him, asking when he would return to teaching. He felt missed. He felt important. He felt oddly safe, certainly safer than he had thought he would.

Of course, he was still outside the building.

When he looked at his watch, he was surprised to see that he had been there over 30 minutes. He rose uncertainly from the bench and walked toward the building's main entrance.

Just inside the door, he stopped, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He would go to his grave believing that education had its own aroma.

He would go to his grave.

His eyes popped open and he forced himself to the stairwell. His office and the lecture hall were on opposite sides of the third floor. He mounted the stairs slowly. Coming out of the door onto the third floor, he could hear his own rapid breathing, and knew that he couldn't blame that on exercise.

The stairwell was the mid-point between office and classroom. He turned right, and went to his office first. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

He expected dust, but Larry must be keeping an eye on things. He looked at the cognitive emergence work on the board in the center of the room. Might as well erase that. It all had to be done over, now. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Instead he picked up a Dry Erase marker and found a blank spot on the board, not even knowing what he was going to write.

His hand, by itself it seemed, scribbled the familiar symbol for Pi. Pi. Discovered by Archimedes.

He dropped the marker, quickly erased the symbol, crossed behind his desk and sat down.

He loved it here.

He could close his eyes and see Larry sitting on the couch, close his eyes and see students streaming in and out, close his eyes and see…Gary Sanborn, bent over his books at the table, struggling with…struggling with everything. Billy Sampson sat in the same chair just a few months ago, smiling, begging his advisor to help him find a way to fit another class into his already jammed schedule.

Charlie stood up. Maybe he could ask Larry to get rid of that chair before he came back, ask building maintenance to rearrange the furniture, or something.

He ran his hand along the top of the desk and left the office, locking the door behind him, and turned toward the lecture hall.

He didn't know exactly what he had expected.

He had walked these same steps thousands of times, and only once had it resulted in being shot. So it wasn't that unusual that he had no problem walking the hall. His steps slowed a little as he circled around to the faculty entrance. That might be a little unusual.

He found the key on his Cal Sci ring and unlocked the door. It pushed open soundlessly, and he stepped inside.

He smelled the chalk right away. This was one of the older class rooms, with actual black boards. That's why he'd always liked it.

He smelled the blood right away.

He knew that was crazy. It had been 2-1/2 months. The blood was long gone.

But in his mind, the blood was there forever.

He held onto the edges of the lectern and forced himself to look around the entire room. The first shot, the gut shot, had pretty much rendered him unconscious. He didn't have a lot of memories of screaming, frightened, dying students, buried in his subconscious or anywhere else. He did, however, have an imagination. It was the scenes created by that imagination that decorated his dreams at night.

Now, he allowed his imagination a few moments. Imagined the terror. The inexplicable horror. Then, he forced himself to remember other things. The hours he had spent scratching equations on these boards. A look of sudden comprehension dawning on a student's face. Good-natured groans as he passed out a test. Normal things. Statistically speaking, the many more normal things that had happened to him in this room should outweigh one really bad hour.

He crossed to the first row of student seats and sat down. He found himself thinking about a lot more than just getting shot. He thought back to his spinal cord injury, and the weeks in rehab. He thought about killing a man himself, when he and Colby had been at his cabin in the mountains. He remembered the first time he met Archimedes.

And he remembered how easily she betrayed him.

He was glad that he came here, today. He thought more clearly here.

He rose and quietly left the room, locking the door behind him. He backtracked to the stairwell and soon exited onto the first floor. Heading for the front door of the Math & Sciences Building, he opened his cell phone and called Don.

"Hey Charlie. Ready for a ride?"

Reaching the glass door, Charlie saw Don sitting on the bench outside. He had followed him, and waited. Charlie stepped quickly to the side. "Actually, no, I don't need one. I think I'd like to spend a few more hours alone. If that's okay."

He saw as well as heard Don hesitate. "Are you okay? Was it too hard?"

Charlie's voice hardened. "I'm stronger than any of you think," he said. "Than any of you will let me be. I'm fine."

He saw Don run a hand through his hair. "I know you're strong, Charlie. I'm not saying you're not. This would upset anybody."

Part of Charlie wanted to continue the conversation and turn it into a full-scale argument while he could observe Don without his knowing it. A bigger part of him just wanted to be alone. "Right. Look, I'm okay, really. Just being on campus again, I feel better than I have in weeks. If it's all right for me to stay with you again tonight, I'll just be back later."

Don shoved a hand in his jeans pocket. "Of course it's okay, Charlie."

"Don't stay home waiting, or anything. I have my key to your place."

"Okay. Just call…if you need anything." Don sounded dejected, and for a moment, Charlie almost felt guilty. But he was tired of feeling guilty. Guilty for killing young Addison in the mountains. Guilty for not saving Colby. Guilty for not dying in the lecture hall when so many others did. Guilty for wanting to come back to work and not being the basket case they all expected. Guilty for not physically being the man Archimedes must want him to be — guilty for not even realizing that he was falling so short. Guilt was suffocating him, and killing everything around him.

"Thanks." He snapped the cell phone shut, ending the call, and watched as Don slowly lowered his own phone, hung it on his belt, and walked, head down, toward the parking lot.