Call her out (Study 3)

You may have struggled with math yourself as you came back from lockdown, but you've been studying what Mister Ketchup has been teaching enough yourself to catch her in the act. At one point, she is following the steps of a problem right before she "spontaneously" does something wrong. It happens again, and again, and again. Finally, it becomes too obvious. You put your pencil down and sit up straight, looking to the left at her sitting at her desk. "Okay...wait. Back up. This doesn't seem right."

She looks over at you, curiously. But is that a faint note of panic in her eyes? You focus very hard on her scratch paper and start drawing lines and connections.

"This..." you tap with the pencil. "...is a very complex, but successfully deciphered matrix. You seemed to do just about everything right...but then botched it, here. At the last second."

You draw a line to another problem. "Here is a much simpler matrix, as part of a matrix equation. You were able to perform the equation for the matrices...but again, there's this random number here that is just wrong. It's not any mistake I've ever seen anyone make. It's like you just...placed a number on the page, spawned it out of thin air."

You examine her face, worried and concerned, and finally make it clear, threading the needle. "I am having a really hard time grasping what you actually don't understand. It seems like, when I sit you down and ask you to do math, you do all the work right and then get the wrong answers. Or you skip steps that you remembered not to skip in other problems. When I can identify a mistake, it's a different mistake each time, it's almost as if--"

Madison's hand goes to yours. "--Please," she whispers. "Please. Stop."

"You can do this math, can't you?" you ask her.

She takes a deep, heaving breath.

"I don't get it," you say. "It's tens of thousands of dollars to be here, we're all going into debt. And here you are trying to--"

"--My parents are going into debt," she whispers.

"Still, what's the point?" you ask. "Why come to college and just...pretend to be stupid."

"I am stupid," she says.

You chortle. "You are not."

"Stop trying to make me feel better," she mumbles, but it's weak.

"I'm not," you say. "You not being stupid is an objective fact. It's reality. You can't just will yourself into stupidity. Nor do I know why you would want to."

"Listen," she says. "Can we just...like," the valley-girl word feels awkward and ****. "like, can we just focus on solving my problems with math?"

What problems with math? This whole thing is a farce. You should be with a student who actually needs you. So you shake your head.

"I'm sorry, Madison," you say. "I'm not going to help you until you're honest with me. And I can't. As a tutor, it's my job to identify what you don't understand and explain that to you. I really don't know, from this, what you don't understand."

"Fine," she says, and takes the paper back. "Give me one second."

She alters her scratchwork in about two minutes. Now, every single matrix is set up incorrectly. In this format, they can't be used to answer any of the matrix equations.

"...Okay," you say, looking carefully into her eye. If only because you know that you are not actually here to overcome this wall. That the roots of it are too deeply planted to be at your pay grade. You proceed to explain how matrices are set up to her. Ignoring the obvious insanity of the situation. She will occasionally stop, and ask you to put your corrections on ink, on her paper. In pen, that cannot be erased.

Anyone who sees this paper will see that you corrected her.

"I don't know what you're getting out of this, Madison," you say. "But I really hope it's worth it. I'll help you out again, but next time I expect some honesty."

You get up about to leave. And then suddenly, her hand is on your wrist. Her eyes are looking up into yours, scared. "...Can you stay? Just for a minute?" She asks.

You turn around and face her.

"I'll be...a little honest, okay?" she says, her voice taking on a tone that you haven't heard before. The valley girl accent is gone.

A harsh inner voice can't help but worry whether this will be a good use of your time, but you sit back down.

"The truth is..." she sighs. "Okay, I was smart. All throughout High School. But it didn't make me happy. So now, I'm training myself. There are hypnosis videos and audios that you can watch. They 'bimbofy' you. That's the goal. And I know, I have a long way to go. Clearly I've been on campus less than a week and someone has already found me out. But I'd really like if you didn't tell anyone else, and ruin this for me."

You think you've vaguely heard of this. Isn't it some kind of sex thing? You think really hard about this, and find that you can't deny your feelings about it...