Cassie was the daughter of a cattle rancher. She went to a small rural high school where she excelled. Her SAT scores were pretty good and she had no problem getting in to the State University. The day she showed up for school she had a really bad cold. Her mom had driven her and together they found her dorm room. A thin, silent Chinese girl was sitting on the lower bunk bed. Her mom had to go. Cassie hadn't a clue where to go to get her meal card, her sheets and towels - should she have brought her own? The bad thing was the bright white tennis shoes. Such a good idea at the time, but no-one else was wearing anything like them. The last view her mom had of Cassie was a pair of white blobs receding in the dusk.
Cassie was afraid. She didn't think she could hold her own among all these kids who seemed so smart, so beautiful. But after a few days she realized she could ace most of her courses if she kept her mind on her work. She found that her sour faced Taiwanese room mate had a dark and wicked sense of humor that collapsed the boundaries between them.
But she soon found out too that she was a pariah. A despoiler of the land, a ruthless exploiter of the national heritage of peerless wilderness. Child of a cattle rancher.
In her second year her father died of exposure when he was rounding up cattle to bring down from summer grazing. Cassie left school and she and her mom ran the ranch.
The brand inspector always said he never knew how her dad made money off the place, but he did know. So did the BLM. Her dad had perfected a strategy that allowed him to graze twice his allotted number of cattle on his leases. Cassie and her mom hadn't the nerve. After a couple of years they sold out and moved to town. She got a degree and a teaching credential and taught at the local high school. She taught an honors course. Ethics, Family and Society.
And some students left her class-room with their heads full of questions they knew they could never answer.