Page 70 of The MC's Little Brother

“Linear equations,” he mumbled, pushing the paper toward me. “I don’t remember learning about that.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay. Neither do I.”

He snorted and some of the dread washed off his face.

“Wait here.” I ducked into my office, grabbing my laptop. There wasn’t a single thing I couldn’t find on the internet. Somewhere out there was information to explain it to us. When I came back, Xander was playing with his phone, and when I sat next to him, I noticed him scrolling through the app store.

“Find any games to play?”

He shrugged, his nose wrinkled. “I dunno. It all seems boring.”

“Work on this worksheet for thirty minutes and I’ll show you the stuff I like on mine. Deal?”

He grinned and nodded, and together we looked up some videos online. Some were ridiculously boring, but some of them were stupid enough to make Xander laugh and keep his focus. I took a few notes on my phone, and when we tried it out on the worksheet, we got through at least a couple before he started to struggle.

“Relax. No one is asking you to get them all right on your first try. If you don’t know it, move on and come back to it.”

“Math is stupid,” he griped. “When am I ever going to use this?”

That was a fair question, and my answer shocked him. “Unless you’re a math major or an engineer or something, never. That’s true with a lot of the shit you learn in school. But if you decide down the road that you want to become a scientist or something that needs it, you’ll wish you paid attention.”

“Are you supposed to tell me that?” he grinned.

I shrugged. “I’ll always tell you the truth, Xander. Unless it has anything to do with the details of my work. You want to know about that, learn to code, and join the bureau. Then I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Is coding hard?”

There was a knock at the door before I could answer. I frowned, looking at the clock on the stove. It wasn’t overly late, barely past seven, but I didn’t get visitors randomly. Except for maybe…

I tried not to sigh when I opened the door and the CPS worker stood on the front steps. Her last visit didn’t go well. I almost wished I could tell her to come back when Mel was around to play mediator.

“Good evening, Mr. Ruiz,” she said primly.

“Miss Packman,” I replied, taking a step back. If I wanted full guardianship of Xander, I needed to play ball with the woman. Didn't mean I had to be happy about it.

“Am I interrupting dinner?” she asked as she came inside, eyeing Thor warily as he came up to say hello. I sent him back to the kitchen, since she was obviously uncomfortable. When I turned back, the woman was looking around with that narrow-eyed expression that she had the first time she showed up. Like she was expecting drugs out on the tables or weapons lying around. Why the hell did wearing a vest automatically make me a bad person?

“No. We’re doing homework,” I grumbled, heading back towards the kitchen.

“Oh?” She sounded surprised, and it took work not to roll my eyes. Xander had no such control and rolled his, but he was facing away from her, doodling on the corner of his notebook.

“Xander started school today.”

She joined us in the kitchen, pointing to the chair on Xander’s other side. “Can I sit?”

Xander shrugged and nudged Thor out of the way, keeping him within arm’s reach for support. He refused to look at her. I patted his shoulder and jerked my chin at the woman when he looked up at me. With a sigh, he turned and gave her his attention. She smiled at him.

“Hello, Xander.”

“Hi,” he grumbled.

“How was school today?”

Another shrug. Sometimes it was really easy to tell we were related. If we weren’t comfortable with people, neither of us was really chatty.

The CPS woman was probably used to this response because she didn’t push for more. She asked him about how he was sleeping and if he was eating enough. She made a comment about how he looked healthier and asked if he felt better. His responses were short and a little terse, but who could blame him when he was being interrogated by the woman?

“So. Last time I was here, you mentioned going to family therapy. Has that been helping?”

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