For forty-five minutes, she'd actually engaged. Asked questions. Made connections. Retained information.
Then I'd made the mistake of suggesting we try math.
I watched Cassidy's entire demeanor transform the moment I set the thing on the table. The girl who'd been leaning forward, asking questions about revolutionary France, had vanished. In her place sat someone with hunched shoulders, crossed arms, and eyes that refused to focus on anything below her hairline.
Well. This is going great already.
"Okay." I tapped the page with my pencil. "Let's start simple. Basic algebraic equation. Solve for x."
The problem was straightforward. 3x + 7 = 22. Middle school material. The kind of thing you could solve in your head while ordering coffee.
Cassidy stared at the page like I'd asked her to defuse a bomb.
"Just isolate the variable," I said. "Subtract seven from both sides first."
Her pencil touched the paper. Hesitated. Lifted again.
"The numbers are..."
