The pain in my stomach intensified, burning through the night,
making it impossible to sleep. I needed money for rent, so I got a job as
a janitor for the engineering building. My shift began every morning at
four. Between the ulcers and the janitorial work, I barely slept. Jenni
and Robin kept saying I should see a doctor but I didn’t. I told them I
was going home for Thanksgiving and that my mother would cure me.
They exchanged nervous glances but didn’t say anything.
Charles said my behavior was self-destructive, that I had an almost
pathological inability to ask for help. He told me this on the phone, and
he said it so quietly it was almost a whisper.
I told him he was crazy.
“Then go talk to your algebra professor,” he said. “You’re failing. Ask
for help.”
It had never occurred to me to talk to a professor—I didn’t realize we
were allowed to talk to them—so I decided to try, if only to prove to
Charles I could do it.
I knocked on his office door a few days before Thanksgiving. He
looked smaller in his office than he did in the lecture hall, and more
shiny: the light above his desk reflected off his head and glasses. He
was shuffling through the papers on his desk, and he didn’t look up
when I sat down. “If I fail this class,” I said, “I’ll lose my scholarship.” I
didn’t explain that without a scholarship, I couldn’t come back.
“I’m sorry,” he said, barely looking at me. “But this is a tough school.
It might be better if you come back when you’re older. Or transfer.”
I didn’t know what he meant by “transfer,” so I said nothing. I stood
to go, and for some reason this softened him. “Truthfully,” he said, “a
lot of people are failing.” He sat back in his chair. “How about this: the
final covers all the material from the semester. I’ll announce in class
that anyone who gets a perfect score on the final—not a ninety-eight
but an actual one hundred—will get an A, no matter how they
performed on the midterm. Sound good?”
I said it did. It was a long shot, but I was the queen of long shots. I
called Charles. I told him I was coming to Idaho for Thanksgiving and I
needed an algebra tutor. He said he would meet me at Buck’s Peak.