Chapter Text
The trees are on fire. Not in the apocalyptic sense, but in the way they blaze without heat, holding sunlight in their bodies like they’ve known this secret all along and only now feel bold enough to tell us. Burnt umber, carmine, goldenrod, rust. The branches outside my dorm window are burdened with colour, clawing at the cloudless sky like a warning or a promise. I haven’t decided which.
Iowa autumn has a sharpness to it, a clarity in the air that makes everything seem more important than it really is. I grew up two states south, where the seasons change like an afterthought. Where fall is just summer with longer shadows. But here, the light leans differently through the windows. The wind comes with a memory of cold. Even the grass smells nostalgic, like the breath of some half-remembered place I’ve never been.
It’s been a week since I moved in. Long enough for the newness to wear a little thin, yet not long enough to feel like anything’s settled. I still wake up unsure of where I am. The bed creaks too loud when I shift. The radiator groans like a ghoul. My clothes smell faintly like home, which makes it worse somehow. Like my body hasn’t caught up to the fact that I left.
My roommate, Milo, hasn’t said much. He came in with a helmet, a duffel bag, and three different types of protein powder. He talks to his hometown friends on speakerphone late at night and calls his ex-girlfriend “bro.” Earlier today he told me he’s “not homophobic or anything” right before asking if I planned on “bringing guys over.” I said probably not. The words have stayed with me all day, curdling deep within my gut like something sour.
I’m supposed to be reviewing my syllabi—maybe brushing up on the rules of integration, maybe reading the chapters for Lit & Comp that I was supposed to read two months ago. But instead, I’m curled up in my narrow twin bed, knees to my chest, scrolling through RateMyProfessor with the precision of someone checking a horoscope and hoping the stars are feeling generous.
My first class tomorrow is Physics I, taught by Mr. Wesley Addisen. Mr. That strikes me as odd—shouldn’t a professor have a doctorate? Still, I type it into the site verbatim.
Wesley J. Addisen. Physics. Tenured. Teaches with “passion.” That’s one word for it.
“Best professor I’ve ever had. Don’t take him unless you’re serious. Like, serious serious.”
“Doesn’t believe in textbooks. Literally said ‘I could write a better one if I wasn’t so tired all the time.’ Then he did.”
“Genius. Hardass. Looks like he hasn’t slept in a year.”
“Gave me an existential crisis about the nature of time. Five stars.”
“DO NOT take if you want an easy A. This man ruined my life. He’s a savant and he thinks all of his students should be, too.”
“Kind of hot. Ferrari guy, but not a Charles Leclerc fan. Anyway I failed his phys 1 lol probably don’t take this one”
I blink. Scroll back. Ferrari? That can’t be real.
Milo’s music pulses faintly beside me—some industrial electronic thing that sounds like a machine learning to scream. I glance at him, hunched over his laptop, oblivious. I don’t think he even knows what my major is. I don’t think he knows anything about me beyond my name and the fact that I color-coded my desk drawer.
Physics I. 8:00 AM. Hansen Hall. Taught by a man who might be a genius, a lunatic, or both. There are dozens of reviews, and none of them agree. Half say he changed their lives. The rest say he made them question their will to live. Looking more into the reviews, I see that he teaches everything from Physics I to Quantum Mechanics II. He seems to be stretched thin.
Outside the window, someone’s tossing a frisbee on the quad in a hoodie and shorts, like the cold doesn’t reach them. Laughter rises and falls in the distance—bright, uninhibited. Everything around me feels a few degrees more alive than I’m used to, like I’ve stepped into the sharp part of a dream.
I shut the laptop. The hinge snaps shut like a verdict. My hands are cold. I tuck them under my thighs, like I used to do on winter mornings at home, waiting for the heat to kick in. The dry air makes the skin on my knuckles ache.
Across the room, Milo says something into his mic—some joke, some laugh—and I remember again that I don’t belong here. Not really. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I haven’t figured out what I want to study. Not officially. I wrote “philosophy” on my orientation forms because it sounded impressive and I liked the shape of the word. Clean. Controlled. But I don’t know if I have the brain for it. I don’t know if I have the heart. And I sure as hell don’t know how I’ll get employed with it.
The sun’s beginning to dip behind the redbrick buildings. The sky is lavender and peach. I reach for the worn notebook on my desk and press my fingers into the pages, trying to absorb the confidence I don’t have.
I think about Mr. Addisen—about the reviews, the contradictions, the fact that he’s a Ferrari fan—and I try to picture what kind of man I’ll be sitting in front of tomorrow morning. I try to imagine what kind of semester this will be. What kind of version of myself I’ll be at the end of it.
I don’t know why, but the thought comes sharp and certain: I am going to remember this semester for the rest of my life.
And I have no idea why.
*****
The morning breaks harsh and early.
The alarm goes off at 6:45, and I lie there for a minute staring at the ceiling, not sure if I’m breathing or being breathed. My body feels heavy, like I’ve been underwater for hours. Milo is snoring under a tangle of sheets, one leg kicked over the side of the bed. His phone flashes with a missed FaceTime call from someone named Kaycee.
I dress in silence. Jeans, flannel, a hoodie. Simple. I don’t eat breakfast. I can't. My stomach is folded up like origami. There’s a vending machine coffee in my hand by the time I’m halfway across the quad, and I don’t remember buying it.
Hansen Hall is brutalist architecture—grey, rectangular, and vaguely dystopian. Inside, it smells like stress and decades of chalk dust. It’s almost suffocating. I double back a few times before finding room 203.
When I step inside, the air smells like whiteboard marker and old metal. The rows of seats are steep and stadium-style, all slanted toward a whiteboard that spans the whole front wall like an altar. There are maybe thirty of us. Freshman energy permeates the air: backpacks are still too clean, pens are unopened, and there’s a weird mix of terror and expectation hanging over every head.
I find a seat in the front row, not because I’m eager, but because my hearing is bad after years of playing bass. My pen shakes a little when I click it. The girl next to me is chewing gum with militant focus. Someone in the back is already asking if there’s a group chat. It’s quiet. It’s cold. It smells like nerves.
There’s a TA in the corner, a girl with long, pin-straight brown hair. She’s calling names in a soft voice that I can barely hear. After some time, she calls, “Bellamy Nichols?”
She says my name like it’s unfamiliar, like it’s not stuck to every file in admissions, every piece of mail I’ve gotten this week. I raise my hand, quietly.
“Here.”
This continues for a few minutes before every student is accounted for. I make note that one guy—Anthony Young—did not bother showing up for his first day of college. The room settles back into uncomfortable silence.
And then he walks in. Wesley Addisen is younger than I expected.
Maybe thirty-five at the oldest, though he carries himself like he’s lived three or four lives already. He’s lean, round glasses, dangerously blue eyes, and a black turtleneck under a charcoal blazer that looks like it’s seen better years. His hair is a mess of jet black curls that don’t look intentional. There’s a coffee thermos in one hand and a thick stack of loose paper in the other, which he promptly drops onto the desk with a sound like a shotgun blast.
Silence.
He looks up at us, eyes scanning the room like he’s memorizing a criminal lineup. Then he sips his coffee and says:
“Good morning, freshmen. Welcome to the part of your education where things start making less sense the harder you try.”
He lets that sit. Someone chuckles. Nervously.
“My name is Mr. Addisen. Not Dr. Addisen. Not Professor. I don’t have a Ph.D. yet, but I’m working on it.”
He scribbles his name on the board in sharp, angular handwriting. MR. WESLEY ADDISEN. He underlines the MR.
“Before we go any further—no, I’m not a TA. I’ve gotten that question before. I’m thirty-two. I’m here on tenure because I was fortunate enough to get a Nobel Prize when I was very young.”
There’s a beat, then scattered murmuring. The girl next to me pulls out her phone to look him up. I glance over her shoulder—he’s got a Wikipedia article. He seems legit.
“Quantum teleportation,” he continues. “That was my study. If you like me enough, you’ll stay for a few years to learn about it.”
He reaches up to grab a cord hanging from the ceiling, pulling down a projector screen. He turns on the projector using a remote, revealing nothing but a block of plain text.
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?
“I won’t write on the board often, and that’s to your benefit. I’m crazy dyslexic. And that quote’s not mine, by the way. That’s Feynman. But who could teach you physics any better?”
He paces a little, sipping his coffee, loose and kinetic. He talks fast but clear. The kind of fast that forces you to focus, but not the kind that loses you.
“You are not here to memorise formulas. That’s what ChatGPT is for. You are not here to become walking calculators. That’s what engineers are for, those crazy motherfuckers. You are here to think. Physics is the study of how reality behaves when you aren’t looking. If that doesn’t scare you, you’re lying.” He pauses for a moment, turning back to the screen. “The answer, by the way, is: All things are made of atoms. That’s it. That’s the sentence. You can go home now.”
A laugh ripples through the room, genuine this time. I feel myself smiling without meaning to. My pen starts moving before I even realise it. Nobody stands up.
“Good. You’re still here. That means you’re not cowards. Let’s talk about motion.”
He moves into the lecture then—not like a teacher but like some sort of pastor. He uses slides, but he often abandons them. He mainly utilises the whiteboard, where he draws vectors like he’s sketching memories. He makes jokes about Isaac Newton being “a bisexual little freak with a god complex.” He says “shit” when his marker runs out of ink. He explains displacement using an anecdote about getting lost in Berlin with a guitarist named Marco and a GPS that doesn’t work.
He doesn't flirt with us, exactly, but he performs. And we, rapt in our plastic chairs, fall for it.
By the time the lecture is over, I’m not sure if I’ve learned anything tangible, but I feel… something. Shaken, maybe. Before I can finish writing, Mr. Addisen addresses us again.
“Office hours are on the syllabus. I am completely up to offering tutoring during this time, and if you need one-on-one help, we can make that happen. My intention is never for you to fail—the hell would I be doing here if that were the case? That being said, you should come. Or don’t. But if you email me asking why you failed when you didn’t show up once, I will laugh at you. In writing.”
The room starts to shuffle with movement, people collecting their things. I sit still, notebook open in my lap. Before anyone can get far, Mr. Addisen calls out again, “Hold on, there’s something I need to give all of you.”
He grabs a stack of books and passes them out to each occupied desk. As he walks around, he explains, “This will be your textbook for the year. It’s mostly additional practice and explanations. I considered giving it to you on Wednesday, since there’s nothing in here that will matter until the next lecture, but I thought I’d give you a head start if there are any eager readers in the class.”
The book plops down on my desk, and I read the cover. The Basics of Stuff—All-Encompassing Beginner Physics by Wesley Addisen. No co-authors.
“If you’re as dyslexic as I am, this will be no more useful than a brick. I have an audio copy for this very reason. Email me, and I’ll send it over.”
That makes me appreciate him a bit more. He seems like the type to truly care about his students in spite of his devil-may-care attitude. I fit the relatively thin book into my bag with ease and head for the door, stealing a lingering glance at the desk this man calls home.
There’s a little bisexual flag taped to a toothpick sitting in his pen cup. It’s stupid, but it makes me feel a little less alone.
The door creaks softly behind me as I leave, swallowed by the noise of the hallway. People chatter in clusters, already breaking off into alliances and friend groups, talking about the professor, the lecture, the Nobel Prize thing. I don’t say a word. I walk slowly. No one follows.
Outside, the sun’s higher now, casting long shadows across the crumbling sidewalks. The trees are still vivid, still burning with that unearned sense of purpose. I pull my hoodie tighter around me and start down the steps, resisting the muscle memory that wants to take me back toward the dorms. I think about Milo—about the way he grunts more than he speaks, about the way he treats me like I’m the stupid one. About the way he said “I’m not weird about it or anything” when he realised I’m gay, right before making it weird. About the way his Bluetooth speaker plays at full volume twenty-four-fucking-seven.
I picture myself walking back in, climbing into that narrow bed under the flickering ceiling light, and pretending not to hear him on the phone, saying things he’d never say in front of me.
And I don’t want to go back.
So I don’t.
Instead, I walk aimlessly, book heavy in my bag, that stupid little flag image burned into my brain like it’s more important than it has any right to be. I find a bench near the campus fountain and sit there for a while, long enough for the breeze to start biting. Students pass me in twos and threes, their laughter crescendoing and decrescendoing as they go.
I remember the Wikipedia article the girl next to me was reading, and I’m hit with an insatiable curiosity. I dig out my phone.
Wesley R. Addisen (b. 1993) is an American physicist, musician, and educator best known for his Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the theoretical framework of quantum teleportation…
Musician?
I scroll.
There’s a photo: Wes in a tuxedo, wild hair barely tamed, standing stiff beside two other scientists in Stockholm. He’s holding a certificate in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. There’s a crooked half-smile on his face like he’s still waiting for someone to tell him it was all a joke.
Under honours:
—ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2010)
—Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2014)
—Nobel Prize in Physics (2015)
—Time Magazine's “Thirty Under Thirty” (2018)
Jesus.
I lock my phone and set it face-down on the bench beside me.
No wonder he looks like he hasn’t slept in a year. No wonder he teaches like time’s running out. He’s already lived enough for three lifetimes—and I’m just trying to pass my first midterm.
I take out the book he wrote and flip it open, just to see.
The first page is blank, except for one thing handwritten in the upper corner:
“Physics is just storytelling with better math.”
—W.A.
I snort. Something about that strikes me as narcissistic.
Deep down, some part of me knows I’m not avoiding just the dorm. Not really. I’m avoiding the version of myself that I’d be if I went back there. The one who stays quiet. The one who shrinks. The one who never quite arrives.
I stay where I am and let the world move around me. I’m not ready to go back yet. And for the first time since I got here, I think maybe that’s okay.