Jess blushed and glanced at the floor for a second. “We’ll see how it goes at the class tonight. It’s been a lot of years since I took it the first time.”
Aaron shook his head. “You’ll be fine. You really do have a great legal mind. That doesn’t go away just because you took a break to raise a couple of humans.”
The phone rang before Jess could respond. She started to rush for her desk to answer it, but Aaron said, “I got it. It’s not a PITA.”
A warm glowy feeling came over Jess as she sat at her desk. He had called her a great legal mind. He was thankful she had wandered into his office. He didn’t want her to abandon him and go off to law school, and yet, he had offered to help her get in. What an incredible difference from how she was being treated at home. Aaron appreciated her. He saw her potential. And somehow, that was enough to make her feel like she could take on the most Herculean of tasks.
* * *
“Welcome to Advanced LSAT Prep. I’m Nina Armstrong, your instructor. I’ve been teaching this class for eighteen years now and I love every minute of it. I have a BA in Social Science and my JD from Yale, and that’s all you need to know about me. I need to know even less about you. We’ve got thirty-six hours of instructional time, and I intend to use it to help each of you score in the top two percent, no matter how ignorant you might be of the law this evening. If my students aren’t at the top, I have failed. And if there’s one thing I don’t do, it’s fail.”
Jessica stared at the woman at the front of the room. Nina Armstrong was not what Jess had expected. Her long curly gray hair was pulled back in a low pony. She wore a caftan with what looked to be all the jewel tones thrown in, and a tattoo of a rainbow plumeria on her forearm. She would fit in better at the paint-your-own-pottery shop than a courtroom. But Jess liked her immediately.
There was something both intimidating and comforting about Nina. She knew who she was and nobody was going to convince her otherwise. Jess decided to soak in not just the information Nina would pass along, but her aura as well. She knew the other students wouldn’t do that. They were all in their early twenties and they’d only see a middle-aged woman who had information they required. Other than that, she’d have nothing to offer them. But Jess would absorb all she could from this woman, because she could see the wisdom that Nina encapsulated.
“Tonight, you will do a diagnostic test so I can see what your strengths are and what you suck at.” Nina paused and smiled. “Oh, excuse me, I’m supposed to use the phrase ‘areas of opportunity’ which I’ve been told is the polite way of saying ‘what you suck at.’” She picked up a pile of papers off her desk and started to pass them out. “Don’t worry. I rarely recommend someone drop out after the test.”
Jess offered Nina a bright smile when she handed her the test. In exchange, Nina muttered, “Midlife crisis?”
“Something like that,” Jess told her, suddenly feeling uncomfortably hot.
Nina made a grunting sound and moved on.
Two and a half hours and one bottle of water later, a blurry-eyed Jessica handed in her test. She was the last person left in the room, and that fact had ramped up the feeling of panic in her chest. Her hand was cramped from gripping the pencil and she stretched it out while she walked back to her desk to gather her things.
Nina, who had been watching a show on her tablet the entire evening, flipped through Jessica’s answers. “What made you want to start on this journey at your age?”
Ally McBeal.“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Let me guess, you had a family and pressed pause on your goals.”
Slinging her handbag over her shoulder, Jess nodded. “Pretty much.”
“How old are your kids?”
“Seventeen and fifteen.”
“That’s good at least. You know, every once in a while, I end up with a woman like you. If the kids are too young, they usually drop out, but you should be okay,” Nina said.
Jessica felt her spirits rise as she walked to the door. “Thanks. That’s good to hear.”
“It’s going to be hard, you know,” Nina told her, walking over to the light switch and shutting the lights off. The pair walked out into the brightly lit hallway and Nina turned to lock the door. “So much harder than you realize and not for the reasons you think. At our age, our brains don’t move as fast as all those young things you’re surrounded with. You’ll need to give yourself more time to do everything.”
“Okay, I’ll be sure to do that.”
They walked down the hall together and out the door in silence, while Jess let Nina’s advice sink in.
When they reached the parking lot, Nina stopped and stared at Jess. “Good night. Prepare to be extremely overwhelmed for the next few years. Law school will bring you to your knees, but I promise it’s worth it in the end. There’s nothing like being a lawyer. Nothing at all. You’ll get that respect you’ve been looking for and then some.”
Jessica got in her car, wondering how this woman knew she was looking for respect, but then she realized it wouldn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out. Wasn’t it what we were all secretly after?
17
“You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no.”
~ Unknown
Email from: Blaire Pritchard, PTA President
