Chapter 4: Three Against One

We started at four in the afternoon and finished after dark.

By then the boy in the back row had stopped sleeping through fractions.

The man in work boots had found out he could solve a word problem if I made him say it out loud first.

The girl with the baby had finally stopped apologizing every time the baby cried.

I walked out of the library at seven with the group behind me, all of them talking over each other.

It was the first time anyone in that group had been loud about math.

The student parking lot was on the far side of the quad, under three lights, and one of the three was out.

The girl by the window had been quiet all day.

She stopped at the edge of the lot and said, "That's my brother's car."

Three men were leaning on it.

They were big, in their thirties, in work jackets with no company names.

One of them held up a phone and pointed it at her.

"There she is," he said. "Told you she'd come out eventually."

"I told you he's not here," she said. Her voice shook. "He doesn't live with me."

"But you've got a bag, and a bank card."

"That's my tuition."

"It's his debt."

He stepped toward her, and the others spread out to either side.

Everyone in my class stood still.

I said, "Go back inside, all of you."

"Talia," said the boy in the back, very low. "There's three of them."

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