“Please call me Robert.” Not a single flicker of recognition crossed his face as he clasped her hand with a firm, honest kind of grip. “Thanks for asking me here. Sorry I’m such a mess—I had to come right from work.”
“Not a problem.” And it wasn’t. His chambray shirt and jeans were dusty with a long day’s work in construction, but his long, graceful hands were clean. His hair, thick and inky, was pulled back into a long braid, highlighting the hard, high cheekbones and wide mouth. His eyes were serious, very dark, but she knew from watching him at various gatherings that they crinkled up when he laughed.
She struggled back into a professional demeanor. As they moved toward the middle of the room, Marissa liked the way his attention honed in on Crystal.
“Hi, honey,” he said, and raised a hand in a gesture of inclusion. “Why don’t you come on over here with us?”
The girl reluctantly slid out of her seat and shuffled over, dwarfed by her coat and baggy pants and all that hair sliding forward to hide her face. Her uncle slid an arm around her shoulders and embraced her quickly before he let her go.
They settled into chairs Marissa kept close to her desk for unruly kids. “Mr. Martinez—”
“Robert,” he corrected.
“Right. Robert, I was just telling Crystal that I think she’s very bright, and I’m worried about her.”
Robert glanced at Crystal, then back to Marissa, and she saw his concern in the darkness of those uptilted eyes. “She is smart,” he said. “But she doesn’t seem to like school very much.”
“Exactly. Maybe if we talk, we can get to the bottom of that. Make it better.”
“All right,” Robert said.
Marissa shifted slightly. “Crystal, can I ask you some questions?”
“I guess.”
“Have you made some friends here yet?”
A shrug, a dull glance outside the window. “Yeah.”
It was a lie and Marissa knew it, but she wouldn’t push. With a flash of inspiration, she dropped her usual spiel about the missing homework assignments and asked instead, “Tell me, is there anything you’re crazy about? I mean totally nuts. Like cats or horses or a book you’ve read?”
A small alteration in body language. Crystal’s gaze slid toward her uncle. “No,” she said.
Robert grinned. “You can tell her.”
Long lashes swept down. “No.”
Marissa glanced at Robert. He met her eyes, then reached out and put a hand on Crystal’s shoulder. “She’s not gonna use it against you, babe.”
Crystal shifted away. “Everyone makes fun of me. Like I have a sickness or something.”
“I won’t laugh. I promise,” Marissa said, crossing her heart and lifting a hand.
With a dark glare at her uncle, one that dared him to say a word, Crystal said distinctly, “No.”
“It’s all right,” Marissa said. “You don’t trust me, and you don’t really have any reason to.” She shrugged. “If you ever feel like telling me, I’ll be glad to listen—and maybe I can figure out ways to connect school, which you seem to hate, to whatever it is that you love.”
Crystal raised her eyes, and Marissa glimpsed something like surprise.
“Of course, that means we have to talk about the other things now.” Marissa folded her hands. It was always hard to know how a parent would respond to the kind of news she was about to deliver. Some reacted defensively. Some turned their embarrassment into anger at the child.
“The reason I wanted to talk to both of you together,” she said, “is because Crystal is doing very well on tests, but she’s not turning in homework. In math, since she’s obviously getting the concepts, I’d be willing to overlook the lack of homework, but I’m hearing about the same problem from other teachers, and they aren’t going to be as willing to overlook that work.”
Robert frowned, an expression of bewilderment more than anger. “She does her homework. I check it every night.” He turned to her. “Aren’t you turning it in?”
“I forget.”
Marissa carefully did not smile. Crystal wasn’t forgetting. Or if she was, it was a passive-aggressive kind of forgetting, a way to get what she thought she wanted. She’d discuss some ideas with Robert once Crystal left the room, but for now she let it go. “Crystal, I’d really like to help you get some good patterns going, so school is more fun for you. It would be criminal for you to waste that great mind.” She paused. “Do you have any suggestions?”
A sudden wash of tears filled the dark eyes, and she looked away sullenly. One hostile shoulder lifted and fell.
“How about if you come here for an hour after school, and I can help you with your work—not just math, but whatever you’re having trouble with?”
“I’m not having any trouble.”
“Well, maybe it would just be a case of you turning the homework in to me, then, so I can see that it gets to the right places.” She looked at the uncle, resisting that little zing of awareness he gave her. “Would that be okay with you?”
“What d’you say, Crystal? Maybe try it for a week or two, see how it goes, eh? It’s only an hour. What the heck?”
Heartfelt shrug, both shoulders. “I guess.”
Marissa smiled. “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow, here, then. And since you’ve been tortured long enough, how about giving me a few minutes with your uncle? You can get a soda or something, maybe?”
“Somebody here won’t let me drink pop.”
Robert chuckled, and reached into the pocket of his jeans. “I saw the Sno-Kone man out there. Get some ice cream. It’s good for you.”
“How come it’s good and pop is bad?”
“Because ice cream is made from milk, silly girl.” He winked at her. “Get me a couple of ice-cream sandwiches, will ya? I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Crystal took the money and gravely shook her head. “Someday, Uncle, you’re going to be as fat as a house. Or my uncle Gary.”
He laughed. “Probably.” He patted her shoulder and inclined his head. “Go on.”
Crystal shuffled out, and Robert turned back to Marissa, his face wiped free of amusement. “She’s not doing real well here, is she?”
“No.” Marissa, acting on a hunch, stood up and closed the door, then returned to her seat. “She’s been here…what? Four or five weeks? And I’ve never seen her even talk to another student. Other kids try, you know, to include her, and she’s not having it.”
He sighed, and then,
