either, then pull out his phone and look it up right alongside me, no pretense that he already knew everything. “We’re figuring this out together,” he’d say. “That’s still figuring it out.” I never once heard him complain about the hours it cost him, even after a full shift at the warehouse where he worked nights sometimes.
One night around eleven, I said I was done and I was quitting the problem set.
“Read it to me one more time,” he said. “We’re not stopping yet.”
We didn’t stop that night, not until close to midnight, when I finally got the whole page of problems right, every single one, and he made us both a late bowl of cereal to celebrate like we’d won something real.
“You know I never actually finished this class myself,” he admitted that night, milk still on his spoon. “Dropped out senior year,
