Chapter Five: The Science Shelf

Monday mornings always felt longer than they actually were.

By the time the assembly ended, the sun had already begun to warm the dusty field where we stood in neat rows, pretending not to whisper while one teacher after another reminded us about punctuality, neatness, and homework.

The moment we were dismissed, everyone scattered toward their classrooms.

Some ran and some walked.
A few stopped to buy biscuits from the woman who sold snacks beside the school gate.

I headed for my class, my school bag bouncing lightly against my back.

Our classroom wasn’t much to look at. The walls had once been painted cream, but time had changed them into something between brown and grey. The wooden desks carried the names of students who had come years before us, scratched into the surface with razor blades and compass needles.

I always wondered where those students were.

Whether they had become doctors.

Teachers.

Drivers.

Maybe one of them had become an engineer.

That thought stayed with me longer than it probably should have.

“Prince!”

I looked up.

It was Tunde, waving from the back row.

“Come and sit here before Chinedu takes the space.”

I laughed and squeezed past two desks before dropping my bag beside his.

Lessons began as they always did.

Mathematics.

English.

Social Studies.

The hours drifted by.

Some subjects held my attention.

Others didn’t stand much of a chance.

Whenever a teacher explained how something worked, I listened carefully.

Whenever they simply asked us to memorise pages from a textbook, my mind wandered somewhere else.

It wasn’t that I disliked learning.

Far from it.

I wanted to understand things.

There was a difference.

One Wednesday, our Basic Science teacher walked into class carrying a medium-sized cardboard box.

The room became unusually quiet.

Without saying a word, he placed the box on the table and slowly opened it.

Inside were different objects.

A small magnet.

A torchlight.

A dry cell battery.

A length of copper wire.

A tiny electric bulb.

Even from where I sat, I leaned forward.

He hadn’t said anything yet, but I was already interested.

“Today,” he announced, “we’ll talk about simple electric circuits.”

Several students groaned.

Someone behind me whispered, “This one has started.”

A few laughed.

I couldn’t understand why.

This was the first lesson all week that made my heart beat a little faster.

The teacher held up the battery.

“Who can tell me what this is?”

Almost every hand stayed down.

Mine shot up before I could stop myself.

“Yes, Prince?”

“It’s a battery, sir.”

He nodded.

“What does it do?”

“It stores energy.”

“Good.”

He smiled briefly before picking up the bulb.

“And this?”

Again, my hand was already in the air.

By the end of the lesson, I had answered more questions than anyone else.

Not because I knew everything.

Some answers were guesses.

Others came from things I had observed at home.

When the bell rang, the teacher called me over.

“You seem to enjoy this subject.”

“I do, sir.”

He studied me for a moment.

“Come with me.”

I followed him across the corridor and into a room I had never entered before.

It wasn’t a laboratory.

Our school didn’t have one.

It was a small storage room with dusty shelves lined with old science textbooks, cracked measuring cylinders, faded charts of the human body, and a skeleton model missing one arm.

To most students, it would have looked abandoned.

To me, it looked magical.

The teacher walked to the back shelf and pulled out a thick book.

Its cover was faded, and the corners had curled with age.

He brushed away the dust before handing it to me.

I read the title aloud.

Understanding Simple Machines.

“You can borrow it.”

I looked up, surprised.

“Really?”

He nodded.

“But bring it back.”

“I will.”

“And don’t write inside it.”

“I won’t.”

I held the book carefully, almost afraid to bend the cover.

As I stepped out of the room, I felt as though someone had handed me a key instead of a book.

That afternoon, I reached home earlier than usual.

My mother called from the kitchen.

“Have you eaten?”

“I will.”

She smiled.

“You’re carrying that book like it’s made of gold.”

“It almost is.”

She laughed without asking another question.

I barely touched my food before opening the first page.

Some of the words were difficult.

A few diagrams confused me.

I kept reading anyway.

Whenever I came across something I didn’t understand, I drew it in my notebook and tried to imagine how it worked.

Hours slipped away unnoticed.

By the time I looked outside, evening had already settled over the neighbourhood.

The mosquitoes had begun their nightly patrol.

Someone nearby was listening to the news on the radio.

My mother called my name twice before I realised she had been speaking to me.

I closed the book reluctantly.

As I slid a piece of paper between the pages to mark where I had stopped, something fell onto the floor.

It was an old library card.

The name written on it had almost faded away.

Someone else had once borrowed this same book.

Someone else had sat where I was now, turning the same pages and asking the same questions.

I picked up the card and smiled.

For the first time, it occurred to me that curiosity could travel from one person to another, quietly, without either of them ever meeting.

I slipped the card back into the book and closed it gently.

Tomorrow, I told myself.

I’d read the next chapter.