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meet for
individual tutoring sessions and we’ll coordinate from there.
    LM
     
    I clenched my jaw.
Though perfectly polite, the tone of his email reeked of condescension… until his
signature at the very end: LM . Was he being friendly, or casual, or ridiculing
my attempt to sound like a serious, mature student? I’d alluded to the breakup
in my email, hoping he wouldn’t want or ask for details. Now I felt as though
he’d not only eschewed learning the particulars, but he thought less of me for
letting a relationship crisis affect my academic life.
    I read his email
again and got even madder. So he thought I was too dumb to comprehend the
course material on my own?
     
    Mr. Maxfield,
    I can’t attend your sessions because I have art history MW 1-2:30, and I tutor at
the middle school on Thursday afternoons. I live on campus and am available to
meet late afternoons Monday/Wednesday, and most evenings. I’m also free on
weekends when I’m not tutoring.
    I’ve begun reading the course material on GDP, CPI, and inflation, and I’m working
on the review questions at the end of chapter 9. If you want to meet to pass on
the project requirements, I’m sure I can catch up on the regular coursework on
my own.
    Jacqueline
     
    I pressed send and
felt superior for all of about twenty seconds. In actuality, I’d barely glanced
at chapter 9. So far, it looked less like comprehensible supply and demand
charts, and more like gibberish with dollar signs and confusing shifts tossed
in for fun. As for GDP and CPI, I knew what those acronyms signified… Sort of.
    Oh, God. I’d just
haughtily dismissed the tutor provided by my professor—the professor who wasn’t
obligated to give me a second chance, but had.
    When my email
dinged again, I swallowed before clicking over to it. A new message from Landon
Maxfield was at the top of my inbox.
     
    Jacqueline,
    If you prefer to catch up on your own, that’s your prerogative, of course. I’ll
gather the information on the project and we can meet, say, Wednesday just
after 2:00?
    LM
    PS What do you tutor?
     
    His reply didn’t seem angry. He was civil. Nice, even. I was so emotional lately that I couldn’t
judge anything clearly.
     
    Landon,
    I teach private lessons to orchestra students—middle and high school—on the upright
bass. I just remembered I agreed to assist in transporting two of my students’
instruments to a program this Wednesday afternoon. (I drive a truck, to
accommodate transport of my own instrument, and now I’m constantly inundated
with requests to move large musical instruments, sofas, mattresses...)
    Are you free any evening? Or Saturday?
    JW
     
    I’d been playing the upright bass since I was ten. In fourth grade, one of the orchestra’s two bass players had a pee wee football collision the second weekend of school, resulting in a snapped collarbone. Our orchestra teacher, Mrs. Peabody, had looked out over the vast sea of violin players and pleaded for someone to switch. “Anyone?” she’d squeaked. When no one else volunteered, I raised my hand.
    Even the
half-sized instrument dwarfed me back then; I’d needed a step-stool to play it,
a fact that had provided my orchestra classmates with endless amusement. The
ridicule didn’t stop at school.
    “Honey, isn’t that
an odd choice of instrument for a girl to play?” my mother asked. Still
petulant over my rejection of learning piano—her instrument of choice—in favor
of the violin, she was immediately unsupportive of my new preference.
    “Yes.” I glared at
my mother and she rolled her eyes. She’d never lost her disdain of the
instrument I came to love to play for the way it grounded and directed the rest
of the orchestra. I also loved the disbelief on the faces of fellow contestants
at regional competitions, their surety that I wasn’t as good as they were
because of my gender—and the way I proved that I was better .
    By the time I was
fifteen, I’d reached my full