16
Author: Ryan Calloway
Eli didn’t like tutoring freshmen. They either hated math or thought they were too good for help. But Maya was different. She didn’t look at the clock once.
By the fifth session, she was asking about more than equations. About colleges, plans, the way he’d chosen his major. She smiled like she was memorizing him.
He realized, later, that she was — not him, exactly, but the version of herself she wanted to be. Confident. Capable.
When the semester ended, she left him a note: “Thanks for helping me believe I could do it.”
It wasn’t love, not really. But it was something that stayed with him; proof that sometimes teaching someone else is just a way of learning who you are.
