Marianne loosened her hold on her cardigan as the sunshine warmed her.

“But what distresses me … I—” he said. He looked around at the students starting to gather into little clusters. “Well, let’s head into the classroom,” he suggested.

Marianne followed him. They walked past Ms. Kelley.

“Hi!” Marianne greeted her. “How’s it going, Ms. Kelley?”

“Another day, another day,” Ms. Kelley said.

“I hope it’s a good one?” Marianne called out behind her shoulder as Ms. Kelley raised her voice to say back, “You and me both, kiddo!”

Once inside the math room, Mr. Garcia flipped on the overhead lights, and he took a seat at his desk, sliding his helmet and bag beneath it.

Marianne sat at hers.

In those positions, and without other kids around to hear them, he seemed a bit more comfortable.

It was as if outside the world of the math classroom, he was a totally different person: nervous, like Nina, and struggling with how to be friendly, like Vi.

He ran his hand through his hair a couple of times and rearranged a couple of items on his desk. “Ms. Blume, you’re at the point in your path, I believe, where you can choose: Am I who others expect me to be, or am I who I want to be?” He tapped both hands on the desks as if he’d perfectly said what he wanted to say. “Yes, that’s the crux of it,” he added.

“Okay? Sorry?” Marianne rubbed her fingers over the horse drawn on the desk.

Mr. Garcia sighed and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Look, I know you hate algebra.”

“I like it okay when I get it!” she interrupted before he could go on. “But that’s almost never! It takes me, like, months to get something other people get in a minute. Literally. And you know that.”

“You know … It’s true that many adults get through life without finding the slope or solving for X,” Mr. Garcia admitted, actually chuckling to himself a bit. “Even if I try to give you real-life examples in class … Listen—I know a lot of the stuff we learn won’t show up in your life…”

“Thank you! That’s what I’m saying, Mr. Garcia!” she exclaimed to him, pounding the table. “I’ve been trying to explain that to my parents!”

“But what will show up in all your lives,” he went on, appearing to concentrate on each and every word he said, “is that sometimes you have to struggle in order to learn something. Or achieve something.” He displayed a touch of the passion she saw sometimes at Quiz Quest.

Marianne had no response.

“I actually see this attitude from a lot of you Quiz Quest kids…” he said, standing up, pacing like Vi did.

He thought of her as a Quiz Quest kid?

“You guys think being smart means understanding something right away,” he went on, in lecture mode as always. He sighed and seemed to go into his own world, resting his hands against the teacher’s desk. “I just wish for you, Ms. Blume, and so many other kids, that you could sit in the discomfort of not knowing, of not getting it at first.”