6. Amalia
It’s raining outside. No. Scratch that. It’s pouring outside.
The hallways are packed with students rushing between classes, and I’m one of them, because I have math and I hate being late.
My phone rings, and I can’t help the small frown when I see the name on the screen.
“Sí, se?or Gustav.”
“Amelita, I need a little help…” Before he can finish, I’ve already stopped walking and set my laptop on a windowsill. “Some clients got locked out of their accounts and can’t log back in.”
I roll my eyes because this is a recurring problem. When you tell people to set a password they don’t breathe out loud, for the love of Newton, everyone looks at you like you’ve just asked them to lasso the moon.
“Which clients, se?or Gustav?” I ask, already pulling up the database to make sure those accounts get flagged as inactive until I sort it out.
He gives me the names, and the noise around me fades out.
This is why I love my projects. They have real stakes. What this code does impacts real companies and real clients.
Once I’ve confirmed that every device connected to those accounts has been logged out, I generate a new password reset link and send it over to se?or Gustav so he can forward it to the clients.
Could my former teacher handle this himself? Technically, yes, but I built the entire database infrastructure with the latest tech and extra authentication layers he considers more trouble than they’re worth.
So he’d rather pay me than deal with the headache. Especially after last year when his attempt to fix something on his own went sideways and nearly a thousand invoices vanished from the database.
“You should have an email…right about now,” I tell him quietly.
“Perfecto, gracias, Amelita! You saved my life. You know my poor heart can’t take these jobs anymore, but what can one do? Life is expensive, mija,” he says, laughing, and once again I roll my eyes at the dramatics, which I’ll admit work on me every single time.
“Anytime,” I say, hanging up and glancing at the corner of my screen to find I have exactly one minute to get to class. I couldn’t make it even if I flew.
I shove my laptop into my bag and spin around…straight into someone’s chest. My glasses go slightly crooked from the impact, but I’d recognize that combination of fresh laundry and mint anywhere.
For Euclid’s sake, I helped someone not even sixty seconds ago. Where’s my good karma?
“Miss Sanchez. I see that rolling your eyes in the hallway takes priority over arriving on time to my class,” says Silas Vaughn, looking at me like he has X-ray vision and can see straight through to my gray matter.
I straighten my glasses and tug my pink sweater back into place.
“It was an emergency,” I mutter.
“I’m sure you single-handedly stopped an alien invasion from that windowsill.”
I almost roll my eyes again but catch myself at the last second (thanks Almighty Gauss), because he clearly doesn’t understand that a stressed se?or Gustav is worse than any alien invasion.
The one time the man called me with an emergency and I didn’t pick up for twelve minutes because I was in the shower, he was already on his third heart pill by the time I called back.
How someone that brilliant can be that much of a worrier is genuinely beyond me.
Rich coming from you, Amalia.
“I don’t teach vectors in the hallway, Miss Sanchez,” he says at last, taking two steps back to let me pass.
No, that course would be called “How to Be More Insufferable Than the Three Perpendiculars Theorem.”
By the grace of Gauss, my thoughts stay exactly where they are.
I feel his footsteps behind me, so I force my legs to widen the gap. When the lecture hall comes into view, I exhale with relief and practically sprint through the door. I drop into the front row, spread out every marker I own, and sit up straight, eyes on the heading written on the board.
A moment later, two guys walk in laughing, like class hasn’t technically been in session for the past ten minutes. One is tall, close to six foot four, with dark curly hair. The other has a close-cropped cut and an outfit whose brand I could read from the moon.
The relaxed way they stroll in earns them a sharp look from Professor Vaughn.
I’m fairly convinced the sign above his classroom door should read:
Enjoys watching people suffer. Please be visibly distressed upon entry.
“Next time you’re late, don’t bother coming in at all. Punctuality is a virtue I like to cultivate.”
Muffled apologies ripple through the room, but I find myself staring at Professor Vaughn in quiet disbelief because he was late to his own class, yet apparently the rules apply selectively.
And because the Almighty Gauss has clearly clocked out and there’s no one left to stop my mouth, I hear myself whisper, “A virtue that apparently doesn’t apply to professors.”
The second the words leave my lips, I want to slam my face into the desk because his eyes cut straight to me.
Of course he heard every word.
A slow, subtle smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, and I swallow hard as I watch him take two deliberate steps in my direction. He shifts his gaze across the back rows, and instantly every whisper in the room dies.
Is it weird that I can already tell he’s planning something guaranteed to fry my brain?
“You. The tall one who walked in late. Come down to the front, next to Miss Sanchez,” he says, and I feel the panic climb straight up into my chest.
What is he doing?
Over the next few minutes he rearranges several more students until most of us are seated in pairs.
“I’m going to put a differential equation on the board. You’ll work through it as a team. The result will count toward your final grade, so give it everything you’ve got.”
The curly-haired guy next to me stares at what Professor Vaughn is writing on the board, mild panic in his eyes, then extends a hand.
“Leopold. Nice to meet you,” he says, and a heavy wave of cigarette smoke rolls off him in my direction.
“Amalia,” I whisper, my nose wrinkling slightly before I can stop it.
When the equation is fully written out, one glance at Leopold’s big, lost eyes and I already know I’m on my own. I start working through it, sliding the paper toward the center of the desk so he can follow along, but he stares at what I’m writing like it’s ancient hieroglyphics.
Not even ten seconds pass before Leopold’s thumbs are moving across his phone screen.
I have to work very hard not to introduce him to the colorful vocabulary I picked up from Lupe over the years.
I understand not knowing how to solve it, but at least pretend to be engaged so it’s not painfully obvious this team has exactly one active member.
You need a good GPA. You need the scholarship. You cannot put more pressure on tío Felipe. Solve the fucking equation, Amalia.
A few minutes in, I look up and lock eyes with the man who seems to genuinely feed off the fried brains in this lecture hall, and he’s already watching me.
I expected to see some satisfaction there given that I’m visibly carrying this alone, but all I find is a clenched jaw.
He’s standing with his arms folded across his chest, his right index finger tapping a slow, clipped rhythm against his left bicep.
Tap. Pause. Pause. Tap. Pause. Pause.
“Wow, you’re actually really good at this,” Leopold says, genuinely impressed. He props his chin in his hand and looks at me.
Not at the paper, not at the work. Directly at me.
“I haven’t seen you at any of the campus parties,” he continues, visibly intrigued by my apparent social deficiency.
“I don’t really do parties,” I mutter, checking my work until I’m sure my whole forehead is creased with concentration.
“That’s a shame,” he says, and I catch him smiling out of the corner of my eye.
“The same could be said of your GPA, Mr. Mendoza.”
That voice makes me flinch and look up. Professor Vaughn looks genuinely irritated. “I said teamwork, not unprompted charity.”
Then his gaze moves to me, and I could swear I see disappointment in it, so I drop my eyes instinctively.
I hate that feeling. I know I’m doing all the work.
I know we’ll both get the same grade. But what’s the point in making a scene?
It’s not the first time I’ve had to do twice the work to cover for a partner.
And every time I’ve said something about it in the past, all I got in return were dirty looks and whispers behind my back.
Professor Vaughn steps away from our desk, but I feel his gaze return to me again and again, like something burning.
After thirty minutes of solid writing, I’m confident the solution is correct, while Leopold has the nerve to stretch dramatically, as if he’s the one who spent 1,800 seconds hunched over that paper until his wrist forgot what a normal position feels like.
Every student turns in their sheet with both names on it.
I do the same then turn back to pack up my things.
The image of Professor Vaughn’s expression keeps looping in my head, from the exact moment it became obvious I was carrying the whole thing.
I’m so deep in my own thoughts that I don’t even realize I’m the last one left in the room until a shadow falls across my colored markers.
I don’t need to look up to know who it is. His presence seems to register in every nerve ending I have.
“Kindness is a virtue, Miss Sanchez. Stupidity is not. I’ll let you decide which category the last thirty minutes fall under,” he says, clear and deliberate, with a faint roughness to his voice.
Then he sets the equation sheet on my desk, and with one stroke of his pen, draws a line through Leopold’s name.
No, I think. Kindness is the currency you pay for the right not to be left alone.
And the price keeps going up. It’s not easy to make friends when your grades are always above everyone else’s.
It’s not easy to have a lab partner when the professor keeps reminding him that Amalia works harder than he does.
It’s not easy to say no when all you want is to fit in.
And for just a second, I wish I didn’t feel like I always have to give something away in exchange for being accepted.
“Miss Sanchez, look at me,” Professor Vaughn says quietly.
I lift my eyes to his. A few strands of hair fall loosely across his forehead, and from this angle I can make out his features more clearly. A slightly aquiline nose. Black rectangular-framed glasses. A few days of stubble that somehow make my fingers itch to reach out and touch his jaw.
What am I even thinking, for the love of Pythagoras?
“If I’d averaged your effort with Mr. Mendoza’s, you’d be walking out of here with a fifty.”
“You can’t give him a zero,” I answer in a small voice, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks.
“Would you like to test that theory?”
I give a quick shake of my head.
“Next time, ask to switch partners. Next time, smack him on the back of the head for freeloading off you. Next time…”
But he stops himself before he finishes, gives a slight shake of his head like he’s brushing away a thought, and turns abruptly from my desk.
Before he crosses the threshold, without looking back, he says,”Your mind is a privilege, Amalia. Stop carrying everyone on your back just to be considered a ‘nice’ classmate. At least in my class, I don’t need you to be nice. I need you to be smart.”
And with that, he walks out the door, leaving me open-mouthed and with something like a tornado trapped inside my chest. Because my whole life, I’ve been told to be good, and Silas Vaughn is the first person to tell me he doesn’t want that from me.