Grit was supposed to be this equal-access path to success, but what if I was just lost? What if I kept stumbling down all the wrong paths until it was too late? If I couldn’t get gritty about something on my own terms, then I would no doubt get forced into one of my dad’s “practical” career paths. There were plenty of people who wanted to become engineers and doctors. I wasn’t one of them.

The Grit Quiz left a giant, bleeding stain in my mind that I couldn’t wash off. What it didn’t leave was a how-to guide. If I wanted to be gritty, I needed a passion—that much was obvious. But as far as I could tell, Professor Mallard’s site didn’t offer a BuzzFeed-style quiz for that. Instead it linked to her bio, which noted her summer office hours: Mondays 2–4 p.m. and Wednesdays 8–10 a.m.

If I was going to take control of my life, I had to prove this diagnosis wrong. The first step would be showing up at Professor Mallard’s office on Monday. No one was better equipped to reverse my track record than the expert herself. Since her website wouldn’t tell me how to improve my grit score, I would solicit her guidance in person. I had no choice but to get gritty about grit.

I woke up about an hour into the bus ride. I could hear Fiora riffling through a newspaper, folding it, and scribbling with a pen before I had even opened my eyes.

“You know you were snoring,” Fiora said. She was curled up in the fetal position, her legs digging into the seat in front of her.

“Well . . . you’re scribbling in a newspaper,” I muttered back.

“I’m not scribbling, asshole, I’m doing a crossword.” I’d known Fiora for less than an hour and she had already called my bluff, endured my snoring, and dubbed me an asshole. And I wonder why I’m still a virgin.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m in a weird place right now. I’m kind of discombobulated from my nap and from life and—”

“Discombobulated from life?” She looked up quickly and tilted her face sideways in an attempt to read mine. I froze. “Join the club.”

Again with the words behind her lips. This girl had a story. May I continue?

“I like that word,” she continued. “Discombobulated. It’s exactly fifteen letters. Fits perfectly into a standard grid. I take it you’re not a cruciverbalist?”

“A cruci-what?”

Fiora pointed at her newspaper. “A cruciverbalist. Someone who’s into crossword puzzles. Like when you have a bunch of boxes going across and down, and you have to fill them with . . .”

“I know what a crossword puzzle is.”

“Do you solve them?”

“I don’t,” I said. Fiora shrugged and went back to her crossword. This should have been my cue to take another nap—or better yet, think about what I’d say to Professor Mallard—but all I wanted was to keep talking to Fiora. There was this relentless force whirling between us, magnetic but not quite two-sided. It was more like a hurricane, sucking me into the eye of the storm. Her eyes. God. They were turned away, yet I could still feel their pull.