His Lips

Define History

|Chapter 3|

"I want to be honest, I want to be bad. I want to destroy you, I want to move fast. I want the attention, I want all the cash. I want all the ass, is it too much to ask?" The lyrics to "Lurk" by The Neighbourhood flooded through my iPhone to my headphones to my ears. I sometimes wished I could be all of those things: greedy, selfish, rebellious but I wasn't Jess.

I was walking through one of the many buildings included in the 132 acres of the University of Pittsburgh. All of the buildings were about the size of a small town hospital which was ridiculous if you asked me, a girl whom had lived in a town of 3,000 people her whole life until getting a scholarship to this place. I walked slowly to class, knowing I was a good 30 minutes early but I had always been punctual.

The door to the classroom was already open, so I walked in to see my History professor for this semester. He was a man, about 55 I would assume, with brown hair and a receding hairline, round glasses and a large nose that seemed to be the focal point of his face. He glanced up from some papers on his desk and greeted me, "Hello." I replied, "Hi."

I took a seat toward the back of the room, set down my purse and checked social media sites on my phone until class began. Students piled in and I paid them no attention, classes like these weren't meant for making friends.

There was about 50 students in the room when the clock struck three and class began. Our professor stood up, "Welcome to 170: American History. I'm Mr. Sheffield. I'd like to begin by saying, I will not accept an idler in my class. If you fall behind, it is not my job to help you catch up. So keep your head up and your mind open."

He talked for a while about himself, which was more interesting than I would've expected. He had experienced a lot in his career, things most of us could only dream of doing. I wasn't a History major but still things I would love to experience in my Political Science career.

After his speech, he clasped his hands and glanced over the crowd, with a thoughtful expression and said, "Define what you think history is?"

Without giving us any time to think, he pointed at someone in the crowd, "You, what do you think?"

We all looked at the unfortunate bastard he had chosen. All I could see was the back of a black man, with short, buzzed hair. He didn't speak for a moment and hell, I probably wouldn't be able to either with the glare Mr. Sheffield was giving him. The man finally spoke up, "Well, it's the study of past events."

His answer sounded like something straight out of the dictionary but that wasn't the most troubling part. The voice... it was none other than Carter Sanders. I couldn't see his face but I already knew it was him. My heart started pounding out of my chest. What the hell was this, a scene out of a movie? Shit like this didn't just happen, especially not to me, especially not in a college with 35,000 people!

Mr. Sheffield look annoyed, "Thank you for the simple answer."

Mr. Sheffield scanned the crowd for another victim, I stopped breathing when his eyes landed on me, "You, please enlighten me with a better answer."

Shit, shit, shit.

The entire class turned to look at me and I could see Carter, smirking at me from the front of the class. I kept my eyes toward the front, trying to focus strictly on the question in order not to embarrass myself like Carter did.

I closed my eyes, there's no way I could think properly with Carter staring at me.

I took a deep breath, "History is knowledge. It's the fundament of every truth we know today. It's the past but it's why we do what we do in the present and it's what influences our futures. It's long and detailed and bloody and peaceful and beautiful. It's more than the boring facts that spilled out of our high school history teacher. It's more than the stories are grandparents tell us. It's happening every second, because 5 seconds ago was history. History is never-ending and it's fucking important."