Page 54 of Fundamentals of Chemistry

My heart broke for him. This brilliant, kind, capable man—my classmate, my equal—hadn’t always been able to eat. No wonder he was furious to learn I was his competition. This job represented freedom to me, but to him, it was security.

“Don’t pity me.” There was a bite to his words. “I wasn’t special. It’s like that for a lot of teachers—most, actually.”

I stopped him with a hand on his arm. His dark eyes were cold, like they had been at the beginning of the semester.

“I don’t—”

“Seriously. I don’t need pity. I’m one of the lucky ones. Newbury pays more than triple what I earned at my last school.”

I squeezed his arm.

“I wouldn’t—”

He wrapped his long fingers around my wrist and held me still.

“You better keep fighting for this job. Don’t stop trying because you feel sorry for me.”

His gaze was so intense. The idea of quitting, of letting him have the job, had never occurred to me. It wasn’t in my blood. I didn’t owe Jack anything, but I could give him this—this piece of dignity.

“I promise.”

He studied my face, trying to decide if he believed me. I stared back, letting him see everything, my pride but also my integrity. He nodded and gently pulled my hand off of his arm before releasing it and starting back down the path. I fell into step beside him.

“So,” I started, eager to lighten the conversation. “How did you learn to teach like that in The Bronx?”

To my immense relief, he latched onto the subject change with alacrity. “The pay was shit, but I was lucky my school was flexible with the curriculum. After a couple of years of beating my head against the blackboard, I realized that I needed to go about things differently. So I decided to employ the scientific method.”

“Smart,” I said, and meant it.

“Ha. Thanks. Most people thought I was crazy. But I wasn’t crazy. I was just tired. So fucking tired of trying my hardest and getting nowhere. That’s the definition of insanity right?”

“Trying the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results.”

He smiled at me, a soft, sweet smile that touched his eyes. “Exactly.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well,” he continued as we approached the library, “I wrote out a hypothesis and a test plan.”

I snorted a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he confirmed. “I thought of everything I loved about chemistry and how best to showcase those things.”

“And that worked?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. I sounded like a used car salesman. The students hated it even more than the straight lecturing.”

“I could see that. Some adults don’t give kids much credit, but they can tell when you’re being authentic or not.”

We reached the library, and Jack opened the door for me. The familiar smell washed over me, and I hummed in pleasure. Jack gave me a funny look, and I blushed.

“That they can,” he said. “So, I went back to the test plan and turned that on its head. I stopped thinking about what I wanted and started thinking about them. What did the students want? They don’t care about molecular theory or thermodynamics.”

“Some of them do.”

“Sure, some of them do, but not most of them.”

“So what did they want?”