Chapter 7
While David cooked dinner, Callie sat at the kitchen island. “She probably thought you wanted her out of here sooner rather than later,” he said nonchalantly.
She ran her fingers through her hair and knitted her brows, thinking she’d misheard him. Callie had a stressful day, grading papers that were far less coherent than she would’ve hoped, and she was still stuck on the whole bookstore job debacle.
“What?” She half laughed.
“I think she probably assumed you wanted her to leave the house—”
“No, I heard you, I just don’t understand what you’re getting at. Why would she think I’d want her out of here?”
“Maybe she thinks you want to get her a job so she can find her own place,” he suggested, stirring the pasta sauce on the stove. “It’s only been a week, you know? Don’t put too much pressure on her.”
“Who’s putting pressure on her?” Callie scoffed, throwing her hands up in the air. “That’s the exact opposite of what I’m trying to do!”
“Okay—”
“I don’t care if she gets a job,” Callie said, talking over him. “I was the one who said she could stay as long as she needed, and I meant it! It’s just that Kate mentioned she was looking for some help, and I thought Sasha liked the bookstore... I was just trying to help.”
“I know that,” David said, “but Sasha might not. I was doing some research on some of those women’s shelters, and a lot of them require you to have a job, and if you lose the job, you can be kicked out.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I’m not sure if the one Sasha was in was like that, and I understand why they have those policies, but it might make Sasha a little sensitive. You just need to make it clear that she’s welcome to stay here even if she doesn’t get a job right away.”
“That’s a given!” She straightened up in her seat and tapped the counter.
“But she might not know that.” He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “Maybe you should just tell her outright, make sure it's clear to her.”
“I’m happy to do that. I just wish you’d been in the room earlier when she and I were talking! You could’ve cleared everything up and she wouldn’t have left in a huff.” She sighed and let her head rest heavy in her palms. The granite countertop was cool underneath her arms.
“Why does this feel like a déjà vu,” she mumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“You just seem to understand Sasha in a way I don’t. And you’ve connected with her in a way I haven’t. It reminds me of Mallory. You two always had a special way of communicating. Like you had your own language.”
David chuckled. “I could say the same about you and the other two. Taylor and Ariel basically worshiped you and I was always second best.”
Callie smirked, but her head was still down so David couldn’t see. “That’s not how I’d phrase it… And it’s not the same. Taylor and Ariel talked to you sometimes. You could get through to them. But with Mallory... I always felt like I was talking to a brick wall.”
“Is that how you feel with Sasha too?” he asked.
She paused, then shook her head. “No, it’s not that bad. I’m just being dramatic. It’s been a long day, that’s all.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Do I want to talk about my day? With David? Like we used to…
“That’s okay,” she said, sliding off the stool and pushing the hair out of her face. It felt strange, talking with him like that. “I need to finish grading a couple more papers and take a shower before dinner. Thanks for cooking, by the way.”
“Of course.” He smiled. “It’s been kind of nice, don’t you think? Sitting down to dinner every night? I can’t remember the last time you and I even shared a meal that wasn’t leftovers I brought home from a work event or whatever.”
Callie smiled. “Yeah, it is nice. We should try to make it a more regular thing even after Sasha leaves. But maybe not every night. My fingernails are a wreck from having to do so many dishes.”
“Once a week would suffice, I think,” he said.
She nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
*
Standing in front of her Rhetoric 101 class, Callie waited for at least one of her twenty-two students to answer her question. They all stared at her with blank expressions. Was she the only one who could move? Who could talk?
But when a girl in the second to last row popped her gum, she realized they were just brain-dead after sitting in the stuffy classroom for over two hours.
“Alright, I can see we’ve reached the point in my lesson where you all tune out,” she said, “so I’ll let you go a little early tonight.
” At that, everyone stood up and started packing their things.
“But don’t forget that your midterm paper summaries are due Friday!
Don’t brush off those summaries just because they aren’t the real paper.
I’ll be spending a lot of time this weekend going over your ideas and giving feedback that I promise will help you write a better essay, so don’t pass this up! ”
But her warning fell on deaf ears. No matter how many times she gave this speech, she still had students turn in a single-paragraph mess of half-baked ideas or ones that were stolen directly from an essay she could easily find online.
“Oh, and don’t you dare use AI for these,” she said. “I send your assignments through three different AI detectors, and if yours shows up as being written by a chatbot, you get an automatic zero.”
This seemed to get the attention of a couple of her students, who shot each other worried looks as they exited her classroom.
While most of the kids left, Calvin—her only favorite pupil—lingered.
“Great lecture tonight,” he said. “I really enjoyed that section on female American authors. I wrote down the entire list and I’m gonna head to the library right now.”
Callie smirked. “Are you trying to get extra credit or something?”
“No, I mean it!”
She gave him a look. Calvin was an excellent, hardworking student, but he was also a bit of a suck-up. She had a feeling he was about to ask her for something. An extension perhaps?
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want?”
He slumped his shoulders. “You make me sound so devious… But since you asked, there is something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. It’s the whole AI thing.”
Callie folded her arms. “What about it?”
He winced. “The chatbots are so good now, they’re tricking your scanning programs.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my last paper was written by AI and you gave me an A.”
Callie gasped. “Calvin! How could you do that?”
He reached into his bag and pulled out a stack of paper. “I wrote a real essay too. I just turned in the AI one to prove a point. You need to find another program or figure out a different system.” He handed her his other essay. “Just so you know.”
She sighed with the weight of a twenty-first century English professor and tucked the paper under her arm. “Okay. That’s… good to know. But don’t pull another trick like that again.” Callie arched her brow.
“Sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It was a little underhanded, I know… Honestly, I just wanted to see how good the chatbots were and, well, they’re pretty advanced.”
“Great...” Callie pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes briefly. “So, none of my students are going to learn how to write in this class, and the art of literary analysis is over...”
“Well, anyway,” he said with an awkward grin, “have a good night.” He waved and turned to leave.
She waited until he was gone before she started gathering her own things together.
In her work bag, she carried her laptop, the latest novel she was reading, the rhetoric textbook she’d practically memorized, and various pamphlets from the school.
Callie had collected them while in the campus library earlier that day, thinking she could give them to Sasha, having discovered she had an interest in Biology.
The day before, when Callie had asked Sasha to sit down and have a chat, Sasha had revealed that her childhood dream as a kid was to work with animals.
Callie had originally set out to make sure Sasha didn’t feel pressured to get a job, but by the end of their conversation, she had a new mission.
She was determined make Sasha's dream come true by helping her enroll in a few community college classes and get her as many scholarships as possible.
In Callie’s opinion, it was a great idea, she just needed to talk to David about it first. He would know how to present the idea to Sasha in a way that didn’t incidentally offend her.
Shoving the two essays she’d received a week late between the pamphlets, she headed toward the door. Her phone rang just as she was flicking off the classroom lights. Digging around in the bottom of her bag, her fingers finally curled around the cold metal of her phone.
She answered without even looking at the screen. “Hello?”
“Hey, mom.”
“Ariel!” She brightened and shifted her bag to the other shoulder so she could hold the phone more easily. “Hi, my love, how are you?”
“I’m doing alright,” she said. “I just got the kids down for the night and finally have a second to myself.”
Callie checked the time. It wasn’t even nine. “Wow, you’re a supermom, aren’t you? I don’t know that I ever got all three of you down this early once you guys were old enough to know how to work the TV.” Ariel’s kids were ten, eight, and five. “Doesn’t Hannah give you trouble?”
“Hannah always gives me trouble.” Ariel sighed.
“But she signed up for volleyball this fall, and the practices are for two hours after school, so she’s actually tired when I want her in bed.
It’s a miracle. If I’d known that signing her up for sports would do this, I would’ve put her in every sport I could since the day she could walk. ”
Callie chuckled, passing through the side door of the building that led directly into the staff parking lot. “Ah, yes. Your dad and I used that trick too. Remember that summer we put all three of you in daily swimming lessons even though Taylor already knew how to swim?”