Page 26 of Touch of Class

“Exactly! It’s like feminism,” the kid said excitedly, then seemed to catch herself. “Sorry, my mom told me not to bother anyone. I have to be polite and respect confidentiality.”

Gillian smiled. “A woman after my own heart. But I’m the one who interrupted your homework.”

“You didn’t exactly interrupt much. I’ve got all the problems done but the last one, and I’m stuck.”

Gillian stepped closer on instinct and glanced at the girl’s notebook to see a full page of math problems. It took her only a second to realize the questions seemed disproportionate to the apparent age of the person before her. “I can see why. That’s pretty advanced. What are you, like, ten?”

The girl looked offended. “I’m eleven and a half, and I’m in advanced math. I’m taking pre-algebra.”

“I didn’t mean to underestimate you,” Gillian said with the same seriousness. “I got underestimated a lot in school, too. It’s not fair.”

“Yeah, well, my new school is better than my old school, so maybe I’m sensitive.”

“Been there, too,” Gillian admitted, identifying with both the conflict and the girl’s self-awareness. “I moved to a better school when I was a little older than you. It’s good and it’s hard.”

“Yeah.” The girl sighed heavily. “Like the homework at my old school was easy, but I got bored every day. Now my classes are harder, and I like it, but it’s kind of frustrating. I got used to always knowing what to do, and now I don’t.”

It was Gillian’s turn to sigh as the sentiment hit a little close to home.

“Like on these problems, I have to use the distributive property to simplify the equation here. I did it with all the others, but this one has a fraction,” the girl continued, “and I don’t know if my teacher forgot to mention that part today, or if she didn’t mention it because the other kids in the class covered that last year before I moved. I feel like I should know this, or at least figure it out, but not knowing something drives me crazy.”

Gillian’s heart twisted at the insecurity mixed with the drive to learn. So many other people would’ve taken the excuse of a new place to justify accommodations, but this girl, like Gillian herself, was still grappling with the concepts the best she could on her own.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Gillian asked, careful not to sound overly eager, as she had a tendency to do with math and logic problems.

“Sure.” She slid the paper between them.

“Ah.” Gillian’s chest filled with a warm, fuzzy feeling. “I see. This is complex.”

“Right?” The kid seemed to find the comment vindicating. “Like, do I simplify the variables? Because they don’t all match up.”

“Do you know how to simplify fractions?”

“Obviously. I mean, I graduated third grade.”

Gillian bit her lip to keep from laughing. She liked the kid’s droll wit and confidence too much to undercut either. “I think if you separate out the variables first, then work on finding—”

“—the lowest common denominator,” the girl exclaimed, pulling the paper back toward her. She set to work scratching out figures and rewriting the equation, narrating her work as she went. “Three-ninths is actually one-third, and four-sixths is two-thirds, and if we put the x back in, we have one-third x times two-thirds, and then spit-spot, it’s all sorted.”

Gillian arched an eyebrow at the formality of the expression, and the kid must’ve caught her.

“My dad’s British. Sometimes people don’t understand me, but sometimes they think it’s cool.”

“I’m definitely in the latter category. A young, sword-wielding, binational, pre-algebraic math fan is very cool in my estimation. Plus, I like everything in my life to be well sorted.”

“Me too!” The girl beamed at her, for the first time revealing a full smile that hit Gillian squarely in the chest, not only because of its open sincerity, but also because of its familiarity.

The realization landed all at once and with force. The expression this girl had just bestowed on her was the same one Daphne had bestowed on Robin and many others over the years. Gillian’s joy at finally receiving one might’ve sparked emotional complexities on its own, but the fact that this one came not from Daphne, but instead from a child who upon further inspection also had her eyes and the same unruly curls as a girl Gillian had known created an extra level of dissonance.

“I’m Izzy by the way.” The girl extended her small hand.

Much like the child had worked out the math problem on the page, Gillian’s mind added one variable to another, from the mother in a session, to her being new in town, to the striking similarities suggesting a shared gene pool. Searching for common factors and boiling the equation down to its simplest form, she landed on the most likely and yet still seemingly unfathomable explanation. Daphne had a daughter.

Gillian shook her hand as the surrealness settled over her. “I’m Gillian.”

The girl’s lips formed a perfect “o” of surprise. “You know my mom.”

Gillian shook her head at how little she actually knew of the woman across the hall.