Help Sessions (2 page)

The bell rang, and Roy realized he’d missed several crucial formulas. As other students prepared to leave, he quickly recorded the last of the formulas, hoping he could figure them out later. He glanced up to see that Heather had left but Greta was motioning him to come down. As he reached her, she seemed quite pleased about something.

“If you’re free tonight, you can study with us,” Greta said. Roy wasn’t sure her smile was for being able to see him again or just being glad he could get some help.

“Are you sure Heather doesn’t mind?” Roy asked, finding it incredible that Heather had changed her mind.

“She told me I could ask you.”

“Really? Why did she have a change of heart?” Curiosity caused Roy to tingle all over. He tried not to think of a reason. It befuddled him, nonetheless.

“Well, you have to understand Heather. The only way to know her feelings is watching her actions and catching the very subtle indications in what she says. Hey, why is that important to you?” Greta asked, her suspicions of Roy’s interest obvious in the upward curve of her mouth.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Roy said honestly, trying to formulate an answer to Greta’s pointed question and at the same time feeling something stir in his heart.

****

Why call the second semester the spring semester? Early February certainly didn’t qualify for spring, Roy thought as he headed for the Union Building, now a block away. The biting wind chilled him, so he adjusted his scarf to protect his neck. He’d been made fun of for wearing white earmuffs, but they were warmer than any he’d ever had. He curled his fingers up into his gloves to keep them a little less frozen from the poor circulation that bothered his fingertips. All this cold took a back seat, though, to the warmth of his emotions as he thought of Heather’s change of heart. Greta had warned him not to make personal remarks to Heather, so he vowed to follow that advice. But, he asked himself, would that keep him from thanking her for the invaluable help he was sure to get tonight?

At last he jerked on the brass door handle and entered the warm Union Building. He removed his winter garments as he headed toward the study area. As he approached, he saw Heather and Greta had just arrived and were shedding their coats.

“Here, let me hang these up for you,” he said, holding his hands toward both of them. Greta handed her short, fur-collared coat to him. Heather hesitated before handing her long brown coat to him as well. He deposited the load of three coats on a nearby coat rack. Both girls thanked him, and they got busy on the problems set.

Forty-five minutes into their study session, Roy had verified his suspicions that Heather exceeded Blanchard and Finnigan in intelligence and Greta wasn’t far behind. Just before tackling the last few problems, Heather excused herself briefly. Roy watched her walk away, trying to understand his growing attraction to her. He denied that it was because she represented a challenge for him to break down that staunch wall she’d erected. Challenges could be met, but in Heather’s case, the term “challenge” took on a new definition: that which is insurmountable. Greta broke his thoughts.

“Ahh, there’s magic in the air.”

“Eh, what are you talking about?” Roy asked, reluctantly dropping out of his mental analysis of Heather.

“You and Heather.” Greta pointed in the direction Heather had taken, then at Roy.

“Oh, not likely,” Roy answered, waving a dismissal of Greta’s opinion, but not convincingly.

“Opposites attract in physics and in people.” Greta countered.

“Not in Heather’s case, but it’s true of an elderly second cousin of mine and his wife. Dick and Daphne have been married forty-five years. Daphne is a small woman, very sophisticated, and Dick tops 250 pounds, a jolly fellow with a raspy laugh, not a sophisticated bone in his body,” Roy said, chuckling at the fond memories of Cousin Dick and Daphne.

“Don’t hold your feelings back for Heather. Nurture them, let them develop more. Don’t reveal them to her verbally, at least not yet. She’ll know how you feel just by watching your face and observing your actions toward her.” Greta emphasized by poking her finger at Roy’s face.

“It’s that obvious? I…I’m afraid I’ll chase her away,” Roy remarked, unable to mask his fear, giving up on concealing his feelings for Heather from the super-perceptive Greta.

“Well, I’m not going to analyze Heather for you. If I did, I’d betray her trust.”

“I’d not want you to anyway. I want to find out for myself. Say, are you sure you’re not a psych major instead of a chem E.?” Roy smiled, feeling comfortable talking to Greta.

“Well, I’ve had a few courses, but I don’t think I can find a company that would want me to double as a shrink along with being a plant designer.” Greta laughed.

Heather returned, looking suspiciously at Greta.

“What have you been up to, Greta?” Heather asked with a frown.

“I’ve been analyzing Roy,” she answered. Roy, shocked, looked at her, wondering what else she would reveal.

“You always tell me the truth, Greta. That’s one of many things I like about you. One of these days, somebody is going to get tired of your analysis. I don’t think Roy will, though.” Heather gazed at Roy, a hint of a smile on her pretty mouth.

Roy’s heart turned mushy as he enjoyed a first: Heather’s lips taking a pleasant turn upward when she looked in his direction.
Was Heather analyzing him?

Badgered by a difficult gas law problem on the set near the end, Roy confessed his miserable mark on a recent quiz over the two-flask connected with a stopcock problem.

“Since you ladies score tens on Dr. Hunter’s quizzes, you may not know what his zeroes look like. It’s a zero with an “X” through it. His infamous cartwheel—what I netted on the two-flask problem.”

“That problem is simple. You’re given the temperature, pressure, and volume in each flask and asked what those parameters are after the stopcock joining them is opened.”

Heather then proceeded to write the figures down, point to them, set up the formulas, and zipped her slide rule scales rapidly, showing the answers.

“Whoa! You make it seem so easy, Heather.” Roy understood her treatment of the problem.

“Do you think you could handle a problem with multiple flasks?” Heather laid her slide rule down and crossed her hands, looking intently at him.

“Eh, well, I…”

Heather predicted such a problem might appear on the test and instructed both Roy and Greta on how to work that problem. Continuing her assertiveness, Heather asked Roy another question, one that embarrassed him.

“Do you know how to use every scale on the slide rule, Roy?”

“No.”

“You’d better set aside time to look into your slide rule manual. When we get to chemical kinetics later, you’ll need to know how to use the unusual scales on the back.”

After working the last few and most difficult of the problems, Heather made a request of Roy before they called it a night. At last, Roy thought, he could make a contribution that might stretch his contact with Heather to another help session and perhaps dispel his dunce feelings.

“That last p-chem experiment with determining the transference number of silver didn’t turn out very accurately for me. Have any idea why, Roy?” Heather asked, pulling out her lab notebook and flipping to the appropriate page. Roy admired her feminine cursive writing, so neat and perfect.

He examined the notes she and Greta had on the experiment, determining her milliampere reading was low, causing the silver deposit to be incomplete.

“That can’t be. The meter had the correct reading. I double-checked it.” Heather’s face reddened slightly.

“The only way the meter could have been wrong would be the internal resistor being off. I know it was right, because Mr. Cortessis had me check all of them. I work in the lab after hours. Perhaps you had parallax error. That would happen if you didn’t look directly at the meter but viewed it at an angle,” Roy said, hoping not to insult Heather’s intelligence. Heather’s expression mellowed a bit, and she nodded. Although Heather’s grade for the experiment was still a B+, Roy appreciated her demand for perfection. They packed up their books, and Roy retrieved their coats, making an observation about the experiment as he did so.

“Most people think of silver as a bright shiny metal, but didn’t you think those buff-colored silver crystals were beautiful?” Roy’s mind went back to the delicate tan-colored crystals clinging to the immersed electrode.

“You find beauty in the oddest places, Roy,” Heather said, as she put on her coat, Roy helping her with one sleeve.

“And beauty in obvious places, too,” Roy added. Greta smiled at that remark as he breached into personal territory in a more than subtle way. If Heather caught that remark, she didn’t let on. He had met her eyes head-on when he said it and included a grin, so the remark couldn’t be construed to be meant for Greta.

“Thank you, Heather and Greta, for letting me study with you. I feel better about going into that test tomorrow.” Roy gave Greta a quick glance with his thanks but continued to make most of his eye contact with Heather.

“You’re welcome,” Heather answered, nodding her head slightly, centering her soul-searching eyes on him.

“You’ll do okay tomorrow, Roy. I think you sell yourself short on understanding these problems,” Greta said, as Roy helped her with her coat.

“That’s nice of you to say, but I had problems with the gas law on those multiple-flask questions. Thank goodness you took time on that tonight, Heather.” Roy finished wrapping his scarf around his neck and zipping up his coat.

The midnight hour approached as Roy unlocked his dorm room door. Exhilaration overrode any tiredness from the long day. Greta was right. He felt the magic she rattled on about surrounding his heart, at least knowing that on his side it was true. Heather’s own special beauty, not actually subdued in his estimation, soothed his mind as he popped open a glass bottle of Barq’s orange soda pop from his small refrigerator and prepared to read a chapter of
Great Expectations
before going to bed. Heather’s intelligence, not flaunted with arrogance like Blanchard’s and Finnigan’s, appealed to him, as well. He was sure falling for her fast, but beneath her reserved shell did anything churn his way? Had she softened toward him? He’d been guilty of wishful thinking before, but attraction to a woman, at this level, was something new for him.

****

Despite Roy glancing at Heather several times during the test, he applied what he’d learned the night before, conquering the problems with a vengeance. Heather’s prediction of a multiple-flask question was exactly right. When the infamous blue books were returned in the next lecture, Roy had barely missed a B. He squinted his eyes to make out Heather’s score from his vantage point. Doctor Hunter always put two scores on each student’s book: the class average, for this test 55, and the student’s score. Heather had made 86, an unprecedented mark on Doctor Hunter’s tough p-chem tests. There seemed to be extra writing at the top of her book, but Roy couldn’t make it out from a few rows away. He wondered if she noticed he’d vacated his fourth row aisle seat and moved to the middle of the second row, closer to her front row end seat. After the lecture, he heard Greta call to him. He hopped to the wooden floor, dodged a few students who were going the opposite direction, and approached Heather and Greta. Heather concealed her test booklet between the pages of her p-chem text.

“How’d you do?” Greta asked.

“Better than I expected. Sixty-nine. At least it was above class average,” Roy answered, trying to make out the tip of the writing at the top of Heather’s booklet.

“How about you two?” Roy asked, curiosity grasping him about Heather’s test.

“I made a seventy-seven. High enough for an A. Heather, show Roy your booklet,” Greta said, tapping her on the shoulder.

“Roy doesn’t need to know,” Heather answered, her face blushing red.

“Oh, Heather,” Greta said in a chastising tone and jerked Heather’s test book from between her text pages to flash it at Roy.

“Greta!” Heather shouted.

Roy saw the 86 and was able to read the comment written in Doctor Hunter’s upright choppy letters before Heather jerked the blue book from Greta’s hand. It read “top score in class.”

“Whoa! You beat everyone. Good job, Heather,” Roy said, daring to touch her shoulder lightly for half a second.

Heather’s face turned a brighter shade of red as she adjusted her glasses, her usual nervous habit. She met his happy face with embarrassment, and her delicate throat revealed a swallowing.

“I have to hurry off to class,” she said, her voice shaky. Roy watched her take three rapid steps toward the door before she stopped and looked back at Roy, her hair swaying gently before settling over her ears.

“I think Professor Hunter will reward you with a B on your test.” With that, she hurried away, leaving Roy and Greta alone in the lecture hall.

“You’re making a dent in that concrete wall she’s erected around herself,” Greta remarked, looking at the open door Heather had cleared seconds before.

“I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, and I’m afraid that’s what I’m doing. Do you suppose she caught my reference the other night about my finding beauty in obvious places? Perhaps I overstepped my bounds.” Roy zipped up his coat and walked into the hall with Greta.