I’m begging him now, and I can feel tears welling in my eyes. I am not a crier typically, but I can’t ruin this for Cara. She has worked so hard taking extra classes so she can meet our parents’ demands and follow her own dreams. Not to mention the impact this would have on my own future. There’s no way word of this wouldn’t get back to my coach. I’d be off the team and expelled before I ever made it back to the west coast.
I think frantically of some way I can convince him to hear me out. “I’ll race you for it,” I blurt out.
“What?” he asks incredulously.
Warming to my plan, I say, “I’ll race you. Pick a calculus problem. If I can solve it faster than you, you’ll give me a chance to explain before going to the dean.”
“Ms. Tanner, I don’t know what you think you’re doing. I have four degrees in mathematics. I’ve been teaching calculus for almost a decade. You can’t possibly solve an equation faster than I can.”
Probably not, but I have to try. I have to do something to save my sister’s future and my own.
“Then you have nothing to lose.”
Something in my expression must melt a little of Professor Stewart’s icy cold heart because after staring at me for a long moment, he sighs heavily and shakes his head.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this. One problem. That’s it.”
I nod eagerly, and he walks over to his desk, grabbing a textbook, pens, and a couple pieces of scrap paper before returning to me.
“You open the book. We solve whatever problem is number two on the page you open. If there isn’t a number two, we’ll turn the page until we find one. Deal?”
I nod again and sit at the desk. He stands next to me and places the book between us, gesturing for me to go ahead. With shaking hands, I open the page, scanning it quickly for number two. As soon as I find it, I get to work.
The tension in the room is heavy as we each scribble quickly. It’s an equation that I’m familiar with, but I’m no match for his experience, and he finishes well before I do. Still, I don’t set my pencil down until I’ve finished the problem.
He’s silent as he looks over my work. My shoulders slump, defeated. I gave it my best shot, and still came up short. It feels like falling during that triple axel all over again. I’d been overly confident that I could pull it off, and I’d failed. I move to stand, but I’m stopped by a warm hand on my shoulder.
“Against my better judgement, Ms. Tanner, you’ve convinced me to hear you out,” he says.
My heart jumps with excitement and hope, which he must sense because he continues, “I’m not saying I won’t still take this to the dean afterward. But I’ll at least hear what you have to say.”
“Thank you,” I say eagerly, “That’s more than I deserve. I only agreed to this switch because—”
“Not here,” he interrupts. “I don’t want to risk anyone overhearing this conversation. We can meet somewhere this evening.”
“Where?” I ask.
He thinks for a minute, then says, “We can’t meet in public. You’re a student, or at least your twin is. It wouldn’t be appropriate. Does Cara live in student housing?”
I grimace as I respond, “Yes, she has her own apartment, but it’s in a student complex.”
“We’ll have to meet at my place then. Do you have a car?”
I nod, more than a little conflicted about going to his house, but what choice do I have?
He flips over his piece of scrap paper and jots down an address and a phone number before handing it to me.
“Meet me here in two hours,” he says.
Chapter 6
Gabriel
I pace my living room as I wait for Lorelei to arrive, wondering for the hundredth time what I’m doing. I’m risking my own career by not reporting Cara and Lorelei’s cheating to the dean. Everything I’ve worked for through two undergrad and two graduate degrees could be for nothing if someone finds out.
When Lorelei challenged me to that race solving a math problem, it had been like a punch to the gut. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been challenged to prove my skills to anyone, much less someone like her. Sure, Lorelei doesn’t have the experience I do, so she couldn’t match my speed, but she knew what she was doing, and she didn’t back down. Even when I finished the equation well before she did, she saw it through to the end. Something about her determination and her obvious devotion to her sister called to me.
I had never experienced that before. Yes, I know what it is to be determined. I’d single-mindedly pursued my career in mathematics since childhood. Something about numbers just calms me. Numbers are predictable, reliable. Two things I’d had very little experience with growing up. My mother had tried, but raising me on her own after my father had taken off hadn’t been easy. She’d worked multiple jobs, so she hadn’t been able to attend most school performances or mathlete competitions when I was growing up.
