Ezra had never been particurly bad at science, but he had also never been captivated by it. It was interesting, sure, but it had always felt like a collection of facts and equations—something you memorized for a test and then forgot about.

  That was before he met Mr. Harding.

  Mr. Harding wasn’t like the other teachers at the school. He wasn’t just some guy reading from a textbook, handing out busywork, and droning on about Newton’s Laws. He was sharp, with a voice that commanded attention, and a presence that made even the most disinterested students lean in just a little closer. His energy wasn’t forced, wasn’t some desperate attempt to be the “cool teacher.” It was real. He cared, and that made all the difference.

  From the first day of css, Ezra knew this guy was different.

  Ezra had stayed after css one afternoon, flipping through his notes while Mr. Harding packed up for the day. The older man gnced at him over his gsses and smirked.

  “Something on your mind, Ezra?”

  Ezra hesitated for a moment before closing his notebook. “How does someone actually make it in science? Like, the big names—Einstein, Tes, Newton. What do they have that everyone else doesn’t?”

  Mr. Harding leaned against his desk, crossing his arms. “Timing.”

  Ezra frowned. “Timing?”

  The teacher nodded. “I was twenty-nine when I had my big idea. I was working with a research partner—an older scientist, well-respected in the field. Together, we were on the verge of something huge. A breakthrough in applied energy transfer. We were talking about technology that could’ve changed everything—how we power cities, how we harness and store energy.”

  Ezra sat up straighter. “So what happened?”

  Mr. Harding let out a short, humorless chuckle. “What happened was, I didn’t fight hard enough for my own work.” His fingers drummed against his arm, his gaze distant. “I was young. I respected my colleague. When the time came to publish, I let him take the lead, let him put his name first. I figured—hey, I’ll have more chances, right?”

  Ezra felt a sinking sensation in his gut.

  “And then?”

  “And then the world saw him as the genius. The innovator. My name was there, buried in the co-authors, but history only remembers one name.”

  Ezra stared at him, waiting for anger, for bitterness, but Mr. Harding just smiled, shaking his head.

  “That’s how it goes, Ezra. If you want to make your mark in science, do it before you’re thirty. After that? The world stops listening. People get rigid, stuck in their ways. They don’t want to hear something new from someone younger than them.”

  Ezra swallowed hard, the weight of that truth settling on him.

  “Science isn’t just about discovery,” Mr. Harding continued. “It’s about recognition. If you don’t cim your work, someone else will.”

  Ezra tightened his grip on his notebook. “So… what do I do?”

  Mr. Harding smiled. “You get smarter. You learn from my mistakes.”

  Over the next few months, Ezra soaked up everything he could from Mr. Harding. The man wasn’t just a teacher—he was a mentor. And the lessons he taught weren’t just about science—they were about life.

  Lesson One: Always Question the Status QuoOne afternoon, Mr. Harding scrawled an equation across the board and turned to the css. “Alright, what’s the answer?”

  The students scribbled in their notebooks, some confident, others hesitant. Ezra worked through the math and raised his hand. “It’s 4.8.”

  Mr. Harding nodded. “That’s what the textbook says, right?”

  Ezra frowned. “Yeah…?”

  Mr. Harding grinned. “Now prove it wrong.”

  The room fell silent.

  The students exchanged confused gnces.

  Ezra hesitated, gncing back at his notes. “But… if the math checks out—”

  “Then prove it another way.”

  Ezra sat up straighter, intrigued now. He ran through the equation again, this time questioning every step. What if one assumption was fwed? What if the method could be simplified? He started seeing the problem differently, realizing that science wasn’t about just knowing the right answer—it was about questioning whether the answer could be better.

  When he finally figured out a way to tweak the problem and got the same result through an alternate method, Mr. Harding grinned like he had just won a bet.

  “That,” he said, pointing at Ezra, “is how science actually works.”

  Lesson Two: Failure is DataEzra had botched an experiment. Badly.

  The circuit he had been working on sparked, shorted out, and left a burn mark on the table. The css erupted into ughter, and Ezra sat there, face burning, staring at the smoldering remains of his project.

  Mr. Harding just chuckled and cpped him on the back. “Congrats, kid. You just learned something.”

  Ezra groaned. “Yeah, I learned how to embarrass myself in front of the entire css.”

  “No,” Mr. Harding corrected, “you learned that your circuit wasn’t stable. That’s data. Now you know what doesn’t work.”

  Ezra looked at the burned-out project, his frustration slowly shifting into something else.

  Maybe… maybe it was data.

  Maybe mistakes weren’t just failures. Maybe they were puzzle pieces, showing what not to do.

  Lesson Three: The Simplest Solution is Often the BestOne afternoon, Mr. Harding pced a tangled mess of wires, gears, and tubes onto Ezra’s desk. “Fix this,” he said, then walked away.

  Ezra spent two hours trying to repair it, adjusting connections, swapping out parts. Nothing worked.

  Finally, frustrated beyond belief, he ripped half of it apart and reassembled it with only the parts he absolutely needed.

  It worked perfectly.

  Mr. Harding smirked as he walked by. “Now you get it.”

  Simplicity wasn’t just elegance—it was efficiency.

  By the time winter was over, Ezra wasn’t just good at science—he was thinking like a scientist.

  He questioned things.He embraced failure.He sought out the simplest, most efficient answers instead of complicating things unnecessarily.

  And most importantly?

  He understood now.

  If he wanted to leave a mark on the world, he had to start early.

  Because if he waited too long?

  Someone else would take credit for his work.

  And Ezra refused to be forgotten.

  After css one afternoon, Ezra lingered at his desk, scribbling notes in the margins of his notebook. Julie, as usual, had invited herself into his space, perched sideways on his desk, twirling a pen between her fingers. Mr. Harding noticed them as he packed up his things, his sharp, observant gaze softening as he watched the two of them interact—Julie teasing, Ezra rolling his eyes, but still engaged, still entertained.

  "Ah, young ambition," Mr. Harding mused, leaning against his desk. "Tell me, Ezra, what is it you really want out of all this?"

  Ezra gnced up from his notes. "What, science?"

  "Science, success, your future," Harding crified, folding his arms. "You soak up knowledge like a sponge, but I wonder—what is it all for?"

  Ezra hesitated. He hadn’t really put it into words before. "I guess... I just don’t want to be forgotten. I want to make something real."

  Julie hummed, resting her chin in her hand. "Spoken like a true legacy seeker."

  Harding chuckled, shaking his head. "It’s good to want more. But I’ll let you in on something most young men don’t realize until it’s too te." He straightened, looking Ezra right in the eye. "We rise by lifting others."

  Ezra frowned slightly, processing the words. "Meaning?"

  "Meaning," Harding said, "that real success, the kind that sts, isn’t just about your achievements. It’s about how many people you bring up with you. I spent my younger years chasing glory, thinking I had to reach the top alone." He gestured around the cssroom. "But here I am, shaping young minds, and I can tell you—this is where my real impact is. Not in some footnote of a research paper."

  Julie smirked. "Transtion: Don’t be an asshole on the way up, or no one will catch you when you fall."

  Harding barked out a ugh. "Crude, but correct."

  Ezra leaned back in his chair, letting the idea settle. He had spent so much time thinking about how to leave his mark that he hadn’t considered who he was bringing with him. He gnced at Julie, who had been by his side through everything, and for the first time, the weight of that responsibility felt different.

  It wasn’t just about what he built.

  It was about who he built it with.

  Ezra leaned back in his chair, letting Mr. Harding’s words settle.

  "We rise by lifting others."

  It sounded simple. Too simple. But the way Harding said it, with the weight of years behind it, made Ezra pause. The man wasn’t just spewing philosophy—he had lived it.

  Julie, resting her chin in her palm, smirked. “So, what, you’re saying if you’d been a little more selfish back in the day, you’d be famous?”

  Harding chuckled, shaking his head. “Famous? Maybe. But fulfilled? That’s another question entirely.” He turned his gaze toward the window, his voice dipping lower, like he was reaching into an old memory. “I used to think success was about being the first one to the top. About being remembered. But the truth is, Ezra…” He gnced back at him, sharp but kind. “The names that st in history? They didn’t get there alone.”

  Ezra frowned, tapping his pen against his notebook. “But you still regret it, don’t you?”

  Harding exhaled, smiling faintly. “Sometimes. But then, something happened a few years back.” He folded his arms, leaning against the desk. “A student I had—bright kid, reminded me a lot of you—came back after years. He walked into my cssroom, now a full-blown physicist, and he told me… ‘I wouldn’t be where I am without you.’”

  Ezra’s fingers stilled.

  “That,” Harding said, “was the moment I realized I had never really lost anything at all.”

  For the first time, Ezra felt unsettled. Not because he disagreed—but because it forced him to question himself.

  The bus ride home was quiet, the sky outside dark with winter clouds, the streetlights flickering to life as the city slipped into evening. Ezra sat near the window, his breath fogging the gss as he stared outside, his mind spinning with Harding’s words.

  "We rise by lifting others."

  It made sense in theory, but when Ezra tried to apply it to himself, something gnawed at him.

  He had spent so much time focused on his own ambitions. Wanting to prove himself. Wanting to make a name that would be remembered.

  But… had he ever really done it alone?

  He thought about his father. All the years Seth had worked to give him a good life. The early mornings, the long hours, the quiet sacrifices that Ezra had never fully acknowledged. His father had never cared about credit, never cared if Ezra saw the work he put in. He just did it.

  He thought about Julie. His partner in crime. The one who had always been there—pushing him, challenging him, making him ugh when everything felt like too much. She had never asked for anything in return.

  Even Bruiser. The old rivalry had faded, repced by something unexpected. Ezra had given him a chance, taught him strategy, helped him with history. And in return? Bruiser had started changing too.

  Ezra exhaled slowly, leaning his head against the cold window.

  Maybe Harding was right. Maybe it wasn’t about being remembered. Maybe it was about who you left behind to carry your influence forward.

  And maybe… it was time to test that lesson for himself.

  The next day at lunch, Ezra was eating alone in the library, flipping through his physics notes. The familiar quiet was soothing—until he heard a frustrated sigh from the next table over.

  A freshman sat hunched over a notebook, brow furrowed, tapping his pencil rapidly against the desk. Ezra had seen him around before—short, kind of nervous-looking, always carrying more books than he probably needed.

  Ezra gnced at the equations sprawled across the page. Basic physics. The kid was stuck on something that Ezra could solve in seconds.

  He hesitated.

  Then, Harding’s voice echoed in his head.

  "We rise by lifting others."

  Ezra sighed, grabbed his tray, and walked over. “You look like you’re one bad test score away from flipping that desk. Need some help?”

  The freshman looked up, startled. “Oh—uh, I—yeah. Maybe.”

  Ezra pulled out a chair, gncing at the problem. “Newton’s Third Law?”

  “Yeah,” the kid muttered, looking embarrassed. “I don’t get how the action and reaction thing actually works.”

  Ezra thought for a moment. Then, he smirked. “Alright, check this out.” He grabbed two apples from his lunch tray and set them on the table. “Imagine these are spaceships, right? If this one pushes off the other one…” He nudged one apple forward, causing the other to roll back slightly. “The force works both ways. The second apple moves back, even though it wasn’t the one doing the pushing.”

  The kid blinked. “Oh… oh, that actually makes sense.”

  Ezra grinned. “Yeah? Not bad, huh?”

  The freshman scribbled a few notes down, looking visibly relieved. “Thanks. I was seriously about to throw my book across the room.”

  Ezra chuckled. “I get it. Science can be brutal.”

  As he walked back to his table, something felt different.

  For the first time, Ezra wasn’t thinking about what he got out of this.

  He wasn’t thinking about legacy, or being remembered, or making a mark.

  He had just… helped.

  And it felt good.

  Harding had been right.

  Maybe the real win wasn’t in climbing alone.

  Maybe it was in bringing people with you.