How does the description of how Zoë's "heart raced and her breath tightened" affect the text? It helps establish an anxious tone.

It creates a moment of comic relief.

It gives background information.

It describes the main conflict in the story.

Read the passage.

Numbers

A little red circle with the number 1 appeared over the e-mail icon on Zoë’s phone. Her heart raced and her breath tightened, like there was a big, yeasty mound of dough rising in her chest. Maybe this was it—maybe this was the acceptance letter she’d been waiting for. She tapped the icon and saw the subject line, “Make Fluffier Pancakes This Weekend!” It was just junk mail. She felt both a pang of disappointment and a rush of relief.

No acceptance, but no rejection. Okay. Time to focus on something else. It was her first day as a data-entry intern at the video library at Tall Pines Film Studios, and she needed to be there by 8:30. She had wanted an internship because she knew it would look good to an admissions committee—and she was hoping that this one, which at least was in the realm of what she wanted to study in college, would make her stand out among other applicants. She rushed downstairs to grab her bag and say goodbye to her mom.

“Good luck today, sweet pea,” her mom said. “I’m so proud of you. Don’t forget—you have that stochastic probability final on Monday. You should probably study when you get home this afternoon.”

“Got it, Mom. Thanks,” Zoë said. As she pulled her bike from the garage, she started thinking about stochastic probability. She started pedaling down the street and began pondering a conditional statement: Given that a person is granted early admission to college, what is the probability that she had completed a related internship beforehand? Then, even though she knew it would tempt fate, she flipped the conditional statement and considered the converse: Given that a high school student had worked in a related internship, what is the probability that a college would grant that student early admission? She told herself that the odds were in her favor, but she knew she’d just have to wait it out.

The Tall Pines receptionist guided Zoë through the labyrinthine corridors to the video library, which had a long counter at the front and a glass panel blocking stacks of video cassettes, discs, and reels at the back. Everything was a bright antiseptic white, making the place look more like a clean room than a library. Even the man clacking away at a computer on the counter seemed robotic and no-frills; he wore a barely blue shirt and a deadpan expression, and the receptionist introduced him as Todd Guzman, the library manager.

“Hi, I’m Zoë,” Zoë said, extending her hand to Todd, who didn’t reciprocate and just kept typing.

“We’ll have to get you up to speed quickly,” he said, his eyes still on the computer monitor. “Basically you’ll be entering codes into a database—but you need to wrap your mind around the naming convention so that you can read large sets of numbers and key them into the system without having to verify if you’ve entered them correctly. You’ll get about 30 people making requests in an hour. It gets chaotic really quickly.”

Zoë had always loved and been very good with numbers and had figured this internship would be a snap. It’s not like she actually had to do any math—she just had to collect discrete chunks of three or four digits each and type them into a spreadsheet. How hard could that be? But as Todd demonstrated what she’d be doing, his fingers skipped across the keyboard and his eyes darted back and forth between the screen and the pages of data. Zoë felt that rising in her chest again and started to doubt she would be able to match his accuracy or his speed; meanwhile, more and more people streamed into the library.

“Okay—it’s your turn,” Todd said. “Take over that other terminal.”

Zoë entered the first code into the system without a hitch. Given the uncertainty she’d been feeling, what was the likelihood that THAT would go so well? she thought. Maybe this won’t be so difficult after all. But then she mistyped the second and third codes, and her mistakes got more frequent as the line snaked out the door and into the lobby. Then she started to stop and check after every second digit to see if she’d typed it correctly, making the entire process even more glacial. The line grew longer, and the exasperation and impatience of the people in line bore down on her. Then Todd said to her quietly, “Don’t focus on them—just try to enter the numbers accurately every time. That’s all you have to do.”

Zoë inhaled slowly and tried another code and then another. She made a few more errors, but by the end of her five-hour shift, she found a rhythm and some confidence and felt as though she might be able to master it with more practice.

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