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Professor Shackleton would give her students more time to enter the classroom before the lesson really got underway, but she thought she'd open up the discussion to those already present, in an effort to both keep them from boredom and to gain their perspective about her favorite subject.
"So, how many of you are concerned about the mathematical portion of this course? Don't worry, you can be honest. I won't judge you negatively."
Wesley, a extremely small girl of eleven, had just taken a seat in the very back when Professor Shakleton asked her first question.
It didn't take her long to find the answer. This was actually the one class Wesley had been looking forward to the most. Out of her list of things that scared her, numbers were among the few that were not present. Numbers were solid. They were always the same. There was no guessing; everything was black and white.
Although...come to think of it, Wesley didn't enjoy subtraction or division. She always felt sorry for the numbers, making them smaller. It wasn't fair.