After she got home that afternoon, Tess jumped right into Spanish and completed a tedious writing assignment and several conjugation exercises, which took her far longer than she wished it had to. Then, she tried to focus on her Calculus homework. She still felt weird about what she'd learned about Tisha and Isaac at school that day, and she found it hard not to let her mind wander, but she did her best; she wanted to get as much done as she could before Miguel arrived at 6.

Tisha's replacement. We know what she's up to after school.

Tess frowned, erasing a few lines of calculation from her worksheet.

It's not like you're out to mess anything up, Tess. They broke up last year.

She tried to concentrate on the problem at hand, tapping her pencil against the paper.

The real news here is that they're recycling old garbage.

Tess shook her head. That had been a really weird way to think about horrible rumors. She wondered how Tisha felt. Did she miss Isaac?

It's just guys being horrible.

Maybe it was. Maybe it was just a couple of guys being jerks, like the others had said. It wasn't like Isaac was participating in the lies.

"Tess?" Tess's mother called up the stairs.

"Yeah, Mom?"

"Your tutor is here."

Startled, Tess reached over and tapped her phone. The screen came alight, revealing the time—5:56 PM. She'd only gotten halfway through her Calc, she'd been so unable to focus. "Coming!"

Grabbing her notebook, the stack of sources she had printed out, and the proposal Ms. Keene had marked up, Tess darted out of her room. At the top of the stairs, she hesitated, suddenly shy.

"Tess?" her mother called again.

With a deep breath, Tess descended the stairs. As she passed along the short hallway to the kitchen, she heard her mother's cheerful voice.

"...gets so absorbed in that math stuff. Here you go."

Tess rounded the corner into the kitchen slowly. Clarette had just placed a glass of lemonade in front of a young man who sat with his back toward the entry into the kitchen, and she was pouring a second glass.

"Thanks," the man said. "You said you just moved here?"

"Yes, just at the beginning of the summer, in fact. We're Minnesotans."

"Oh, wow. How are you liking Virginia so far?"

Clarette noticed Tess loitering in the doorway and lifted her eyebrows as she set down the second lemonade. "We love it. Don't we, honey?"

The young man sitting at the kitchen island turned around, and Tess's face grew warm at the first sight of him. She hadn't expected her tutor to be cute. He had tan skin and a broad smile, and his black hair was disheveled, which made him look less intimidating—and younger—than she'd expected. The frames of his glasses were dark blue, and so was his polo shirt.

"Hi," said Tess, barely hearing her own voice. Why did her tutor have to be cute? She was going to feel awkward enough. She had almost forgotten he was a college student, only a year or two at the most older than she was.

Miguel stood up and stepped toward Tess, reaching out a hand. She shifted the books in her arms and took it, and smiled nervously in response to Miguel's firm, respectful handshake. "Hello, Tess. It's great to meet you."

"Likewise. Thanks for coming."

"I'm looking forward to working with you. Can I help with that?"

Tess blinked. She realized she had brought down quite the stack of schoolwork, but she shook her head. "No, thanks. I thought we could just sit here." She walked past Miguel to the kitchen island and put down her stuff, taking the seat next to the one in which he'd been sitting. He sat down again, too, moving his lemonade out of the way.

"Do you like brie, Miguel?" Tess's mom asked.

"I've never met a cheese I don't like," he replied, smiling.

She chuckled. "Nor have I. I'll whip up a quick snack for you two."

He raised his hands, palms out. "That's really kind of you, Mrs. Morrison, but don't mind me."

"You don't want to argue with my mom about food," said Tess, trying not to focus too much on the weirdness of hearing her mom called 'Mrs. Morrison.' "It's kind of her thing."

"Tess." Clarette pursed her lips, but then shrugged. "She's right. It's kind of my thing." She opened the refrigerator and began searching inside.

Miguel raised his eyebrows, glancing from Tess to Clarette and back again with an amused smile. "All right, then. No arguments from me. Where should we start, Tess?"

The very thought of where to begin was overwhelming. Tess looked at the stack of work in front of her and drew a deep breath. She let it out in a sigh as she shook her head.

"A little overwhelmed?" he guessed.

"A lot overwhelmed."

"This looks like some kind of a research paper." He reached out and plucked the first of Tess's printed and stapled sources off of the pile. "Do you have the assignment?"

"I wrote down all the stuff she told us about it," Tess said. She flipped through her notebook until she found the relevant page and handed it to Miguel. With an article in one hand and a source in the other, he began to skim through the information, quickly familiarizing himself with the assignment.

"All right, this is straightforward enough. I'm guessing this is the first draft of the proposal?" He set the notebook aside and picked up the red-penned version. "Have you gone through the feedback?"

"I tried. I think I have a revision in here somewhere." As Tess flipped through the huge amount of paperwork in front of her, Clarette set a plate down in front of them. On it were some crackers, and on the crackers were artful little smears of brie and perfect dabs of jam.

"Here you go, kids. I'm going to get some yard work done, so just give a holler if you need anything, all right?" Clarette said.

"Thanks, Mrs. Morrison," said Miguel.

"Thanks, Mom." As Clarette left them alone, Tess finally found the revision. "Here! I wasn't sure what to do about this part where she says, 'Elaborate.' I think she could have, like..."

"Elaborated on what she meant?" Miguel suggested.

Tess laughed. "Well, yeah."

Thus began the first session Tess had with her tutor. As they munched on crackers and sipped lemonade, Miguel and Tess reviewed her research proposal together and spent some time reading through her sources. Then, he helped her understand some of the feedback Ms. Keene had left her, and he provided some more guidance on Tess's second draft.

"But really, the difference between these two drafts is significant," Miguel said after they had discussed all Ms. Keene's comments. "So good job. You still have some work to do, but I think you're on the right track."

"This is helpful." Tess smiled down at her second draft. Miguel had left plentiful notes in blue pen; he had a neat, small hand, in contrast to Ms. Keene's rounded cursive notes. "Thanks."

"My pleasure. So, the next step is a rough draft of the paper, right?"

"Yeah." She'd felt for a moment that she'd had a handle on the situation, but remembering that her rough draft was due on Monday took the wind out of Tess's sails.

"Hey, what's that look for?" Miguel cocked his head at her with a disarming smile.

"What look?"

"You look like I just kicked a puppy."

"Isn't that the universal look of students who're working on research papers?"

Miguel laughed. "Hey, there are nerds among us who don't mind research papers," he said. "Now, can I be honest?"

Tess set her marked-up proposal aside. "Um...okay?"

"This source sucks, Tess." Miguel held up one of the articles Tess had printed, a one-pager that had more pictures than text. "When half the page is taken up by advertisements that have nothing to do with the content of the article, it's probably a bad sign. And this one—I'm afraid everyone's favorite online encyclopedia is great for learning about fruit bats at 2 AM, but not so great as an academic source."

Tess winced. "I kind of anticipated that some of those sources wouldn't work. I was trying to find anything I could."

"Do you have a school log-in for your library website that you can use at home?"

Tess nodded. "Would you be okay with helping me find some better articles?"

"Yes, I most certainly would. That's what I'm here for! Grab your laptop and we'll take a stab at it."