Betting Blind (Betting Blind #1) by Stephanie Guerra

Author:Stephanie Guerra
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Skyscape
Published: 2014-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sessions with Mr. Newport were killing me. He was prepping me for the final, which was coming next week, and I was worried I was going to blow it to hell. I didn’t know how Bs in science at Jefferson translated to “don’t know jack about science” at Claremont. But I hadn’t given up yet.

Wednesday, the day after seeing Irina, I pushed open the door, and Newport looked up from his computer. His desk was messier than most people’s lockers. It was buried under about fifty pounds of paper, dirty mugs, and Post-its. He smiled. “Hi, Gabe!”

“Hey, Mr. Newport.” I dropped my bag and sat across from him.

He put his laptop on the floor and swept his arm across his desk like a plow, clearing a space between us. Then he fished through the stacks on his desk and pulled out some brochures. “Take a look at these.”

I looked. Colleges spent a lot of money on those things. Big pictures of shiny weight equipment and giant pools and classrooms that look like doctors’ offices. Kids smiling way too hard. At least one black, Asian, and Latino kid in every picture. I opened up one and pretended to look through.

Mr. Newport lowered his curly head, trying to meet my eyes. “I don’t want to be nosy, but Ms. Tacquard told me that you still haven’t taken the SAT. That’s something you should have done last year. But there’s still time. We can get you signed up for a test this month, and you can get some applications in.” He patted the brochures. “I’ll help you through the process.”

I stared at the Olympic rings on his desk from too many hot coffee mugs. I almost didn’t have the guts to tell him, but I made myself push through it. “I’m not going to college. Didn’t Ms. T. tell you that?”

Mr. Newport did the head thing again—dip, force me to look at him—and said, “Gabe.” His voice was strong, and his eyes were on fire. Damn, this was why he got that education degree. “Don’t talk that way. You’re a smart kid, I can tell. I think you’ve had a bad hand in terms of your prior education, but that doesn’t have to hold you back.” He tapped his head. “You’ve got the ability. The rest is just makeup work.”

His eyes were blazing so hard they got my attention. What if he was right? I mean, sometimes I did feel smart. Or at least, not dumb. I had good ideas, I got jokes quickly, I remembered stuff easy if I could say it out loud. But the reading and writing thing . . . Why couldn’t I get it right? I almost wanted to ask him, but I didn’t want him to change his mind about me being smart.

Mr. Newport put his elbows on the desk. “Did you know that over the course of a lifetime, college graduates make more than twice as much as high school graduates?”

“Really?” I said.

He nodded. “And they’re way more likely to get jobs.

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