He looked at her crookedly, a look so familiar and universal that Carol knew exactly what it meant.
“I mean. Well, what I really mean is that I haven’t been a very …” She tilted her head back and forth while she tried to find an accurate word that wouldn’t send him running. “I haven’t been a very dedicated student so far, but I want to be better. I want to do better, but I don’t really know what that means.”
He leaned back and crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, affording Carol a good look at gray pants that just made the whole shirt-tie disaster worse. She tried not to hold it against him, which wasn’t easy.
“Let me tell you something, Carol. Any teacher given the choice between a student who might not be at the top of the class but tries and a slacker genius will always choose th
