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Brianna a CD,  “I downloaded a bunch of Love songs for you.” Adam blushed.  “I mean, you know, songs by the band Love. I burned you a copy.”
    “Thanks, Adam,” Brianna said, smiling as she took the CD and put it into her bag.  She wondered briefly if his making  her a CD  meant anything.  She hoped not.  He was her only ally in calc class, and she didn’t want anything messing that up.
    Brianna refined the timing of her walking and snacking and arrived in class two minutes early.  She had a fluffernutter in her bag because she’d been craving one so bad after yesterday that she’d called Dad at work to ask him to bring home fluffernutter supplies.
    Eccles went over the homework, and then started back in on the mind-blowing stuff.  “Critical to our work in this class are quantities we shall refer to as infinitesimals.  These are quantities which are infinitely small.  Now what could I possibly mean by this?”
    He waited for a hand to go up, but nobody budged.  Nervous and uncomfortable, Brianna reached up to scratch the side of her head.
    This, apparently, was a mistake. “Ms. Pelletier, as I know you only slightly, I don’t know whether you were raising your hand or gathering steam for a head scratch, but, nonetheless, you can handle my question, yes?.”
    “Okay,” she said, and paused for a minute.  She wanted to make sure she said exactly what she meant to say.  She saw some of the other kids smirking, but she wasn’t going to open her mouth until she had it right. Finally, she answered, “Well, between zero and one there have to be an infinite number of points that match up to fractions where the denominator keeps getting bigger.  So like something like one over two times ten to the 500 th or whatever is going to be really really small, almost zero.”
    “Yes, Ms. Pelletier, indeed.  As the integers grow infinitely large, fractions grow infinitely small, and as we follow those fractions toward zero, we will reach a point so close to zero that it is, for many purposes, zero, except when we don’t want it to be.”
    The rest of the class looked about as baffled by that as Brianna was.
    Everyone was silent, and Eccles seemed to savor the confusion, and just as he was about to speak, Brianna felt that familiar tickle in her throat.  She tried to fight it, but the tickle got worse and worse, and she had to let one cough out, one tiny little cough so small that most people probably wouldn’t even register it.  Unfortunately, letting that cough out led to more coughing, which led to more coughing, and pretty soon she was hunched over her desk, face red, knowing she had to go to the bathroom and hawk one into the sink.  Still coughing, she got to her feet, looked at Eccles, who nodded, and left the room.
    It took her another minute to stop coughing, and another couple to fight back the post-tussive emesis, which is what the doctors called it when she coughed so much she puked.  She stood over the toilet for a minute, willing herself not to vomit. After getting it under control,  she splashed some water on her face and went back to class.
    Everybody was trying to solve a problem when she got back, so she took out her notebook and started working.
    By the time class was almost over,  when everybody was trying to pack up and get down to lunch, Adam did it again.  His hand shot up, and Eccles kind of sighed and said, “Mr. Pennington?”
    “Did you play guitar in a band called Love?”
    “Mr. Pennington, in my youth I did a number of regrettable things, and so there are several years for which I have only the foggiest memories.  I certainly remember something about playing guitar, but beyond that, it is all somewhat of a purple haze.”  He gave this big grin, and then said, “Don’t forget your homework, which is on the board, and have a wonderful remainder of your day.”
    Adam was right next to her as soon as she walked out of the classroom.
    “It’s totally him!  Did you