The Philosophy of You

Chapter 37

It was mid April, and the assignments had begun to die down. Things were falling into line and suddenly, I found myself with a lot more time than usual. I often spent my lunches in the portable with Shaw. I would be lying if I said it wasn't my favourite part of the day. I found that conversations came naturally and I felt at peace being around him. COY still went on, even after the literacy test. While there was a drastic decrease in students that came, it was still enough to keep the class running. Everything felt okay again, and I found myself getting comfortable with the point I was at in the year. I knew this feeling of calm wouldn't last for long, but why waste time worrying about the future when you can savour the present. 

I began noticing how close Shaw and I had gotten. During lunch, he would often spend time telling me about his classes and which ones stressed him out. I felt as if being able to talk to me was doing Shaw some good, since he always seemed a lot more calmer after he ranted. I didn't mind it one bit, I was glad that Shaw trusted me enough to open up about the things that were troubling him and knew that if there was ever a day where I was troubled, he would be there for me. 

Henry and I also took notice of the ways Shaw  would "break boundaries". In fact, just these Tuesday was a perfect example of what I meant by "boundaries". You see, on Tuesday the students were on the chrome books working on any homework or assignments they had. I was helping where I could and Shaw was doing the same. I had a Chromebook of my own and at one point, had left it at one of the table groups as I helped another. As I was helping the student, Shaw was at the table group where I had left my laptop to help the students. I took notice of how he had used the laptop to search something up, but before he did, glanced my way. I figured he was going to ask me but that was just my own assumption. Maybe I was looking too deeply into these tiny things but I felt that this implied that we were close enough that I trust him to use the laptop, since it was logged in on my account. It was flattering to know that Shaw also felt there was a high degree of trust between us, and it made me feel that maybe, just for a moment, everything I had suspected was true. 

I forgot to mention, the film club "died". We had one more meeting after the first to discuss the movies, The Godfather and Citizen Kane, but no one showed up except for me and two other students. Needless to say, that was the last official congregation. When I asked Murphy about the potential of any new meetings, he simply said that Shaw didn't plan for another. After asking Shaw, I realized that I wasn't the only one who was disheartened at the lack of success the film club had. 

I was heading to philosophy when I ran into Shaw. "Ava! Hello."

"Hi there, Mr.Shaw. How's it going?"

"Good, all things considered. Planning on helping out with COY today?" He asked.

"Of course. Do you have an idea for what you want to do?"

"I've got something, so there's that. Heading to philosophy?"

"Yup," I glance at my watch and notice that I'm a minute past the my usual time, "I should get going though, I like to get there before the bell."

"Well look at you being all studious, "Shaw joked, "Have fun and I'll see you seen, yeah?"

"Yeah," I smiled and we parted ways. 

Philosophy was the same as usual. Each day was a new lesson or an activity. Since the weather was getting better, we often spent classes outside on the bleachers. We were nearly done our social and political philosophy unit which meant a test was inevitable. Along with the test, we were also going to the museum as a field trip. According to Murphy, it was going to be a scavenger hunt where we would look for things that we thought were aesthetic. Today, we were going over the aesthetic elements that we would be looking for as well as the review for the test. Once we were finished discussing both topics, Murphy gave us the rest of class to work on one of our assignments. In reality, Mia and I were talking more than working. One of the topics included the music video to Billie Eillish's "Bad Guy" which I had not seen until Mia mentioned it.