-Leonard-
Their first stop was the Law/Business School. They exited the Fermin Center through the south entrance and made their way straight into the combined building, which was one of the older-looking ones. Brick exterior, five floors, and pointed towers on its corners, it had a castle-like appearance. Judging from his perspective, Leonard had to guess that it was the largest building on the entire campus. Hundreds of people must have been employed to staff this building alone.
“The FDU Business and Law School building is one of the original ones constructed at the school’s founding with a grant from our proud town’s founder, Fermin Delton, himself,” Jenny explained as they passed through the doors and into a stately hall filled with students and trophy cases and doors on all sides. Staircases led to upper floors in multiple areas, and posters advertising various school events and activities could be seen.
The air seemed to smell of and radiate with mental rigor and intellectual expansion. Leonard breathed it in deeply and imagined himself here as a young man. What would that have been like? What extra nuggets of knowledge might he have garnered about the world?
Jenny continued to do her tour guide thing while the two-family group made their way through a hall and up a staircase to a room with larger classrooms and lecture halls. “We’re here now in the Law School side of the building. On the west end we will find the Business School.”
Everybody settled into an “appreciative examination” state of mind, fascinated by the expansiveness and quality of what they saw. Leonard felt it too.
He peered through windows in classroom doors as they walked past, catching glimpses of students together studying diligently. Classes weren’t in session yet due to tour week, but apparently these students were not about to let that stop them from gaining knowledge.
Leonard recalled a certain amount of that studiousness in Medical School. But it wasn’t all like that for him. He remembered times of goofing off and being apathetic and lazy, and plenty of others had taken it more or less seriously than Leo did.
But here he didn’t see that. Where were the pranksters, the slackers, the partiers? Maybe they just didn’t hang out on campus. But no, everything he had heard so far indicated everything interesting to do and see was on campus. And in all these wide hallways, no one was sitting around, laying on the seats napping, chatting with their friends, or anything like that. Only sitting quietly to study or moving happily from one classroom to another.
Where, he thought with a gnaw at his lip, were the neurotics? The mentally unhealthy teenagers struggling to cope with life?
His gaze passed over Maxine, with her confident walk and her tour guide clothes, so professional-looking, so clean, so…
He sighed. It wasn’t that he wanted to see these sorts of people. But he knew they existed. In great quantities. So…where were they, he couldn’t help but wonder? Why did everybody he saw look like they were made from steel?
‘Forever guiding us to a new age…’
They passed into the Business School side of the building and found many smaller classrooms with multi-tiered lecture rooms. Jenny introduced it all as they went, occasionally letting Maxine add a thought or two.
“This is where I took my first business class,” said Maxine. Her bleached-blonde hair swayed as she walked with a bounciness to her steps. “After a few days of calculating figures and doing taxes, I found out that it was absolutely not for me. Ha, ha. But maybe it’ll appeal to you.”
She nodded to the teenage twins, who smiled.
The college was immaculate, each room clean and filled with students studying, talking, laughing, and walking together. The artistry in the construction was palpable and sometimes breathtaking, much of it taking inspiration from various periods of history. Art deco in this chamber, dark burnished wood in this hall, and so forth.
One of the teachers walked by the tour and said hello to Jenny and gave her assurance to those in the tour that they would have a hard time picking another school after seeing just half of what FDU had to offer. By the time they finished touring the law school, with two dozen or more factoids from Jenny in his head, Leonard almost wanted to start studying law himself.
They returned to the FC and started visiting its various levels at a brisk pace, staying just long enough to get a good sense of each section but always leaving a thirst for more. They learned that the FC was the newest-constructed building on the campus, built by order of Patrick Ronald Kennedy, current president of FDU, in 2014. There were several offices on the first floor, and classes on the third and fourth. On the second level, they emerged from the escalator to a grand cafeteria and food court full of students sitting and eating their late breakfasts or early lunches. Julia seemed awestruck by the scope.
“This is the place that comes so highly recommended, eh?” Essie said to Maxine with a hint of challenge in her voice.
Maxine smirked. “Oh, yeah. It’s just like Mom used to make.” She giggled.
Essie laughed in return, and Leonard felt a spark of memory.
What Maxine said wasn’t new; that sort of thing had been said before. Some of Essie and Maxine’s old relationship seemed to be reasserting itself. It was pleasant to watch.
What a buried memory it seemed to have been, though.
There were multiple restaurants, and even one or two that actually had their own seating areas like full restaurant buildings. Frozen yogurt, Asian kitchen, Taco Bell, burger joint, fine Italian, and everything else to satisfy a 17-to-24-year-old’s heart.
Jenny added her second witness to Maxine’s praise of the food, explaining that many fine chefs were hired to run most of the places in the cafeteria. “Unfortunately,” she added with a cock of her smiling head, “there has been a shortage of some rarer ingredients as of this week, so some meals are using more common substitutes. All the more reason to come back again when things have changed.
“Next we’ll head to the School of Education and Humanities via the Hall of Culture,” Jenny announced, walking backwards as she led them away from the cafeteria. They entered a relatively wide hallway, and after looking through the windows the tour-takers realized that the hallway stretched out of the building, suspended over the paved exterior pathway below, and connected directly into the next building.
The Hall of Culture inhaled them and encircled them with spectacle. A beautiful collage of framed paintings, photographs, statues, and other memorabilia of all kinds was arranged like a trendy art exhibit.
They were walking through time itself.
“This is the Hall of Culture. Decorated by our fine art majors just four years ago, it stands as a monument to American culture as well as the diverse faculty and student body of FDU,” said Jenny, sounding prouder than ever. Leonard wondered if she practiced crying too.
She pointed a hand toward a few photographs of FDU employees amid the colorful art.
Leonard could see Essie’s eyes bulging. She loved stuff like this. He had to admit, it was quite impressive.
He felt a warmth in his heart at the sight of it all. How could one not appreciate all this art, all this talent combined with effort and vision? It was beautiful.
“Oh, we’ve got to take a picture. Could we stop for a moment?” Essie said.
She was already pulling out a digital camera she kept on her person. Jenny stopped and clasped her hands together. “Of course. We will stop here for three minutes.”
Essie scanned around for a half-moment before spotting a passing student and asking her, “Would you mind taking a picture of us, please?”
The girl had Asian features and had been clutching books close in her arms, staring low at the floor. Upon seeing Essie approach, her gaze jolted to eye-level and she opened her mouth wide for a moment.
Jenny’s smile faltered.
“Bú yào,” the Asian girl said.
Her mouth trembled, her hair was unkempt, and her eyes—her brown eyes were ballooning wide as twin moons and…twitching. Twitching like dying insects.
“Wǒ bú huì shuō Yīngwén! Duìbuqǐ! Wǒ huì shāng. Yīnggāi zǒu le!”
With that, the girl clutched her books, faced forward, and hustled away.
Silence shriveled the Hall.
Leonard’s skeleton felt like it had received an electric shock, and Julia had her shoulders hunched and one eyebrow raised.
“…I can take that picture for you,” Jenny said to Essie, smiling sweetly as she broke the silence with great care, as if stepping out onto thin ice.
Essie coughed as she handed the camera to Jenny. “Is that girl alright?”
Maxine stared after her with a worried expression. “I hope so.”
Jenny turned the camera on and grinned at their concerned faces. “College life can be stressful at times. The first floor of the FC has offices with experts dedicated to helping students going through challenges of all sorts. I’m sure that’s where she was headed.”
So students do deal with things like that here, thought Leonard.
But only…only one of them? Only that foreigner?
Leonard stared at the tour woman’s grinning teeth and felt positively disturbed. He didn’t like Jenny, he decided. Something about the calm and yet uncalm way she reacted to what just happened was …not normal.
At any rate the family, including Maxine, forgot about the strange Chinese girl and gathered together for their first family photo in over a year, stretching their jaws and then putting on smiles, surrounded by beautiful art and cultural photography. Leonard knew he should have felt more fulfilled having his arm around his elder daughter at last, but he didn’t feel at peace. Surrendering his disturbed feeling so the photo could be taken was not easy.
“Smile!” said Jenny.
Click.
“Beautiful!” With that, she handed the camera back to Essie. A deep breath went through Jenny’s chest, struggling through her like a fish too big for her throat. “Who’s ready to get going again?”
Nobody objected, and they got on their way once again to proceed through the rest of the tour, soon taking in many new sights and impressive architecture and school features.
But through it all, Leonard’s mind kept replaying the image of that Chinese girl dashing away from them with eyes buzzing like insects.
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