MARCUS STROLLED TOWARD HIS FIRST CLASS ON Monday morning feeling like the poster boy for Clichés-R-Us. The air did seem cleaner. The songs from the birds in the oak trees were brighter. The color of the red square and Yoshino cherry trees in the quad seemed more vibrant than he’d ever seen them.
The battle of his regrets wasn’t over. He realized there was more work to be done, more skirmishes ahead, and more rubble to be worked through. But his tower of regrets had been leveled and he would never allow it to be reconstructed.
When he stepped up to the podium to begin his class lecture, he felt the Spirit suggest a different topic than what he’d planned. He smiled at the idea and started in. “Today we’ll be taking a slight detour from our current discussions to explore the intersection of what some would call the divine with quantum mechanics. Our beginning will be a review of Planck time.”
Halfway through his lecture, a man of average height and build slipped into an aisle seat at the back of the room. Marcus had never seen him before, but he looked older than college age. Midthirties if he had to guess.
The man crossed his legs, a thin smile on his face, his dark eyes riveted on Marcus, his brown hair slicked back from his forehead. Probably a new grad student or TA dropping in on his class. It happened often. But there was something about this guy Marcus didn’t like.
He continued to lecture but the feeling intensified. Maybe because the man continued to stare at him. He stopped lecturing and looked at the man. “Excuse me, can I assist you? Are you in the right class?”
As his students turned, the man rose from his seat and slipped through the door at the back of the lecture hall. Strange. Just before class ended, Marcus called to the student the man had sat next to. “Brodie, may I see you for a moment? The rest of you are dismissed.”
Brodie shuffled up to the podium. Marcus stepped down and glanced around to make sure they were alone.
“Do you know of the individual who sat next to you about halfway through class? And if you don’t, could you tell me if you felt anything strange about him? Or if he said anything to you that seemed off-kilter?”
“When, today?”
“Yes.”
Brodie looked puzzled. “No one sat next to me today.”
“I’m referring to the man who sat next to you for five minutes at most, at which point I said, ‘Excuse me,’ to him and he got up and left.”
“No one sat next to me today, Prof.” Brodie frowned.
“He sat right next to you. Brown hair, average size . . .”
Brodie grinned. “Are you working me for some example you’re going to give in class later on? ’Cause if you are—”
Brodie was serious. He hadn’t seen the man.
Marcus forced a smile. “You’ve discovered my subterfuge. Well done.”
“Rock on, Prof. Can’t wait to dive into alternate realities next quarter. Take care.”
Brodie scooted down the aisle and pushed through the double doors at the back of the lecture hall.
Marcus lifted his laptop off the podium and shuffled to the door at the side of the room, turned his back, and pushed it open. Before he backed through he stared at the seat where the brown-haired man had sat. His new, finely tuned spiritual eyes were miraculous and disconcerting at the same time. Marcus pulled out his cell phone and called Reece.
Hopefully tonight he’d get to talk to Dana and Brandon about it as well when Reece took them to what he called a different kind of church.