Page 51 of Campus Heat

“It’s building,” she gently corrected.

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No,” she slid a flashcard toward me. “Humiliating is failing because you didn’t try. This is you trying.”

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a comeback. She was completely right, and it was something that couldn’t be argued. So I kept pushing with the idea that it would leave me with something, but an hour in, the words just started blurring together.

“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “What is the difference between aerobic and anaerobic respiration?”

“The one requires oxygen, and the other doesn’t,” I said immediately.

“And?” she asked as if I had forgotten the most important thing.

“And… one makes more ATP?”

Elizabeth gave me one of her unreadable looks, and for a moment I didn’t know if I was in trouble or not. Did I get it wrong?

“How much more?” she carefully asked.

“Just more,” I scoffed.

“Ethan…”

I dropped my head, and it landed on the desk with a dull thud. I didn’t mean to be difficult or to act like an idiot. My mind had just stopped cooperating, and I was having a really hard time coming up with the right answers.

Elizabeth laughed softly. “Hey.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.”

“It’s only been an hour.”

I looked at my watch. “Seriously? It feels like it’s been a lifetime and then some.”

She moved the book aside and leaned forward. Her expression was soft and caring, but it still felt like I was about to get chewed out.

Instead, she nudged my shoulder and said, “Come on. The hits you have taken were far worse than this.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it, though? You thought statistics was an invincible beast, but when you compared it to football, you came out on top.”

I lifted my head again. “Aerobic yields… thirty-six? Thirty-eight?”

Her eyes lit up, and I could tell that I was onto something. The question was, were the figures right?

“It will depend on the cell,” she said teasingly. “But yes.”

I exhaled slowly. “Okay… making progress. Just gotta keep my eyes on the prize so I can keep going.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t last as long as I had hoped it would. Twenty minutes later, I was in exactly the same spot again.

“What feeds into the Krebs cycle?” She asked.

“Pyruvate?” I breathed.

“And before that?”

I just sat there blinking at her as I willed my mind to come up with an answer. She waited patiently, but my brain felt like it was on a constant buffering loop.