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I glare at her.
“Didn’t think so. Hired a tutor?”
“You’re engaging my fight-or-flight response!”
“Good, because we’re fighting,” she says, completely calm. “Besides, you can deal with that in stress management. Not that you’ll need it after your golf class.”
“Hey, be nice! It’s my last semester. I had to fill it withsomething.”
“Let’s remember that the only reason you’re still here, in your last semester, is topass math.”
I grit my teeth and stand to gather my things.
“Grace. Don’t you want to graduate?”
No comment.
Ivy makes a sound between a sigh and a growl, digging into her stylish faux-leather tote bag and eventually pulling out her phone. I collect the garbage on my tray and, while she thumbs and scrolls, retrieve Trusty, the well-loved generic-blue backpack Benson gave me, along with its name, when I left for college. I hope she’ll let the subject drop and pray she isn’t calling my mom. As soon as she sets her phone down, mine buzzes in my back pocket. I pull it out and open her message.
“What’s this?” I ask, looking at the contact she sent me. “Who is Lupe Navarro? Are you trying to set me up?”
“Yes—”
“I haven’t even recovered from the last one!”
“Not on a date.She’s the math tutor who helped me get through stats last year, and she’s amazing.”
“Does she speak stupid?”
Ivy takes a deep breath. “Would I have passed stats if she didn’t? Stopactingstupid, and give her a call.”
“Iamstupid when it comes to math.”
“Well, I’m not much better off than you, and she pulled me through. Give her a try. You really don’t want to lose your dream job because you didn’t evenattemptto pass math.”
I stare at the contact information on my phone, knowing Ivy is right, knowing I have to try. “All right,” I say. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Ivy sits back with a smug smile. “You can do this, Gracie. I know you can. And youaren’tstupid. Just—”
“I know, I know:mathematically challenged,” I say, recalling the term Dad had once used in a lame attempt to shore up my junior high ego. The years haven’t done anything to increase its efficacy.
Chapter 3
Arithmophobia
I’m not scared of snakes,heights, tight spaces, spiders, or germs. I’ve been skydiving and spelunking, camped in the wilderness with no tent or sleeping bag, and lived for a year with random strangers in a third-world country. None of that gave me anxiety.
However, there is a single word that makes my blood pressure skyrocket, my palms sweat, and my stomach churn: algebra.
Arithmophobia is an actual thing, although I’m not sure it’s the correct label for my problem. I always enjoyed math in elementary school, but then—horror of horrors—they went and addedletters.
I’ve heard it was Satan himself.
Some kindred spirits have gone to the trouble of printing this theory on T-shirts and coffee mugs, although I personally don’t choose to advertise my deficiency.
Which is why I am pursuing a career that will involve much less frightening things, like spending the night with insects creeping over my limbs or army-crawling through a pitch-black tunnel that barely accommodates my shoulders or jumping out of an airplane at thirteen thousand feet. Recreation therapy and me? A match made in heaven.
Unfortunately, the powers that be have decreed that one must attain a certain level of math proficiency before one may graduate from Oak Hills. I managed to bypass the higher-math classes by ignoring the recommended statistics course and using Spanish skills honed during my year volunteering in Peru for the languages of learning requirement. I breezed through the rest of my generals, excelled in my major, enjoyed the social scene—other than dating—and pretended to forget about math.
