“Yeah, I haven’t tried anything here that I haven’t liked.” He took a scalding sip of his coffee. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
Her affable expression flickered. She smoothed the napkin in front of her, little frown lines touching her lips. “I read over your latest paper the other night.”
Lane nodded, already hearing the song “Taps” playing in his head at his failing academic career, the sad wail of the bugle. “Okay.”
“And…well…”
She seemed to be struggling to find the words, so he filled in some for her. “It’s so bad, you don’t know how to break it to me?”
She glanced up at that, surprise on her face. “No, it’s not that at all.”
His eyebrows lifted in challenge.
“It’s…smart and insightful and shows so much potential.” She reached down and pulled papers out of the messenger bag by her feet and set them on the table between them. “But it’s an absolute mess with spelling, format, and the structure of your sentences.”
He blinked, his brain hung up on the first words. “How could you say it’s smart if it’s a mess?”
She frowned fully now and tapped the pages. “Because the ideas are smart. I can see the points you were trying to make. They’re good points. Fresh perspective on the topics. But if I use the grading rubric to score this, you’re going to end up with a D, Lane. There’s no recovering from that with this being such a big percentage of the semester. And my class isn’t optional for the degree program you’re in.”
Lane’s fingers tightened around his coffee cup. “So you called me out here to tell me I’m going to fail your class?”
She sighed and folded her hands on the table, all professorial now. “Yes and no. I wanted to talk to you because there’s still time to fix it.” She met his gaze. “How d
o you think things would change if you tried to rewrite it? Took your time. Focused on following the directions and putting your thoughts into a more cogent form.”
“You told us there are no redoes.”
“I know, but I’m also not unreasonable. There can be exceptions for certain circumstances. I know you’re working a full-time job. I realize you’re having to squeeze classes in between the rest of your life. If this is simply a matter of you had to rush through this because you have all that going on, I don’t want you to fail because of that.”
Lane’s jaw flexed and he looked out the window at the people walking by on the street so that she wouldn’t see the truth on his face. What she didn’t realize was that he hadn’t rushed the assignment. He’d spent so much time on it, he’d lost sleep for a few days. He’d been painstaking with it. And that had earned him a D. If he tried to do it again, he had no idea how to even go about fixing it or doing better. He didn’t look her way. “That’s the best work I can do. I’ll just take the grade.”
“That’s a bullshit answer.”
His attention snapped to her. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you—”
“Have you ever been tested for learning disabilities? I think—”
Everything inside Lane went cold. “I don’t need to get tested. I’ll take the grade.”
Allison straightened at his harsh tone. “There’s no shame in getting tested, Lane. If they find out you have something like dyslexia, which is what I suspect, accommodations could be made for assignments and I would have options not to fail you and—”
“I don’t want special treatment. I don’t need an exception to be made. If I get this degree, I want to get it legitimately on my own.”
All he could see were the faces of his high school teachers from the fancy private school he should’ve never been in. Every time they handed him another failing grade, he got the same range of looks. Pity. Disgust. Looks that said he was hopeless, dumb, a charity case. Just the kid of the school janitor who was only there because his dad was an employee and he got free tuition. The teachers knew it. His wealthy classmates did, too. And things only got worse when they started making him go to remedial tutoring during his lunch period.
Allison gave him an exasperated look. “No one is going to give you a free pass to the degree. I’m certainly not. If you had impaired vision and I didn’t accommodate that, it would be putting an unfair roadblock in front of you. Right now, I think there are roadblocks for you. We could help with that.”
Lane didn’t say anything. His muscles felt tight, his skin hot. He feared his face was flushed.
She pulled out a page from beneath his paper and pushed it toward him. “This is a referral letter from me to the Learning Services Center. If you at least get tested, I can hold off failing you on this paper. But you’d need to get there soon. If they find something, there are ways they can help and you can have another chance on this paper. You’ve got the brains and the insight, you just might need to come at learning and assignments from a different angle.” She frowned, concern in her eyes. “Please don’t make me fail you, Lane.”
He blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair, the earnestness in her voice getting to him. “Allison—”
“Is this degree important to you?”
“Of course.” It was everything to him.
“Why?”