What is he doing?
Over the next few minutes he rearranges several more students until most of us are seated in pairs.
“I’m going to put a differential equation on the board. You’ll work through it as a team. The result will count toward your final grade, so give it everything you’ve got.”
The curly-haired guy next to me stares at what Professor Vaughn is writing on the board, mild panic in his eyes, then extends a hand.
“Leopold. Nice to meet you,” he says, and a heavy wave of cigarette smoke rolls off him in my direction.
“Amalia,” I whisper, my nose wrinkling slightly before I can stop it.
When the equation is fully written out, one glance at Leopold’s big, lost eyes and I already know I’m on my own. I start working through it, sliding the paper toward the center of the desk so he can follow along, but he stares at what I’m writing like it’s ancient hieroglyphics.
Not even ten seconds pass before Leopold’s thumbs are moving across his phone screen. I have to work very hard not to introduce him to the colorful vocabulary I picked up from Lupe over the years. I understand not knowing how to solve it, but at least pretend to be engaged so it’s not painfully obvious this team has exactly one active member.
You need a good GPA. You need the scholarship. You cannot put more pressure on tío Felipe. Solve the fucking equation, Amalia.
A few minutes in, I look up and lock eyes with the man who seems to genuinely feed off the fried brains in this lecture hall, and he’s already watching me. I expected to see some satisfaction there given that I’m visibly carrying this alone, but all I find is a clenched jaw. He’s standing with his arms folded across his chest, his right index finger tapping a slow, clipped rhythm against his left bicep.
Tap. Pause. Pause. Tap. Pause. Pause.
“Wow, you’re actually really good at this,” Leopold says, genuinely impressed. He props his chin in his hand and looks at me.
Not at the paper, not at the work. Directly at me.
“I haven’t seen you at any of the campus parties,” he continues, visibly intrigued by my apparent social deficiency.
“I don’t really do parties,” I mutter, checking my work until I’m sure my whole forehead is creased with concentration.
“That’s a shame,” he says, and I catch him smiling out of the corner of my eye.
“The same could be said of your GPA, Mr. Mendoza.”
That voice makes me flinch and look up. Professor Vaughn looks genuinely irritated. “I said teamwork, not unprompted charity.”
Then his gaze moves to me, and I could swear I see disappointment in it, so I drop my eyes instinctively. I hate that feeling. I know I’m doing all the work. I know we’ll both get the same grade. But what’s the point in making a scene? It’s not the first time I’ve had to do twice the work to cover for a partner.
And every time I’ve said something about it in the past, all I got in return were dirty looks and whispers behind my back.
Professor Vaughn steps away from our desk, but I feel his gaze return to me again and again, like something burning.
After thirty minutes of solid writing, I’m confident the solution is correct, while Leopold has the nerve to stretch dramatically, as if he’s the one who spent 1,800 seconds hunched over that paper until his wrist forgot what a normal position feels like.
Every student turns in their sheet with both names on it. I do the same then turn back to pack up my things. The image of Professor Vaughn’s expression keeps looping in my head, from the exact moment it became obvious I was carrying the wholething. I’m so deep in my own thoughts that I don’t even realize I’m the last one left in the room until a shadow falls across my colored markers.
I don’t need to look up to know who it is. His presence seems to register in every nerve ending I have.
“Kindness is a virtue, Miss Sanchez. Stupidity is not. I’ll let you decide which category the last thirty minutes fall under,” he says, clear and deliberate, with a faint roughness to his voice.
Then he sets the equation sheet on my desk, and with one stroke of his pen, draws a line through Leopold’s name.
No, I think. Kindness is the currency you pay for the right not to be left alone. And the price keeps going up. It’s not easy to make friends when your grades are always above everyone else’s. It’s not easy to have a lab partner when the professor keeps reminding him that Amalia works harder than he does. It’s not easy to say no when all you want is to fit in. And for just a second, I wish I didn’t feel like I always have to give something away in exchange for being accepted.
“Miss Sanchez, look at me,” Professor Vaughn says quietly.
I lift my eyes to his. A few strands of hair fall loosely across his forehead, and from this angle I can make out his features more clearly. A slightly aquiline nose. Black rectangular-framed glasses. A few days of stubble that somehow make my fingers itch to reach out and touch his jaw.
What am I even thinking, for the love of Pythagoras?
