Page 14 of It's in the Contract
The boy jumps. He looks up and closes his notebook in a leisurely way, not how I would snap it shut if anyone caught me drawing a fantastical map. The notebook’s cover is blue and plastered with stickers of dragons, trolls, and goblins.
“Dungeons and dragons?” I ask, reading what he’s written on it in block letters.
“Uhhh . . . yeah.” The boy stands and extends his hand. I shake it. “I’m Zeke. And you must be Callie?”
“Yep.” I take a seat next to him and haul my chemistry book out of my bookbag.
“Do you play?” Zeke asks. He looks like he’s about to smile, but I think that’s just his normal expression.
I set the book on the table with a dull thud. “Dungeons and dragons? Oh, no.” Though I’ve kind of secretly always thought it sounded fun. “So you’re my tutor? Are you new around here?” I’m curious about this boy who sits alone and isn’t afraid to wear what he likes.
“Yeah. We moved in a few months ago.”
“Cool.” I reach into my bag and take out a notebook and pen. “Well, Zeke, I’d rather people didn’t know I’m being tutored.” I bite my lip and hope that didn’t sound rude. “It’s just that . . . you know . . .”
“What’s wrong with being tutored?”
I stiffen. “Nothing! Nothing at all. It’s fine . . . for other people. But me . . . people talk about me.” Bleh. I sound so conceited. “It’s because of my dad, Ben Carter. He’s?—”
Zeke slaps the table, and I jump. “No way. Your dad is Ben Carter?”
I smile slightly, and pride fills me up. It’s not easy having a famous actor for a dad, and sometimes I wish he would do anything else, but I am proud of him for living his dream. “Yep. The one.”
Zeke grins. “Oh my holy fudge. Your dad was amazing in that last Marvel movie!”
“I’ll pass on the compliments,” I say. “But, you get it, right? A normal person could get tutoring, and no one would even notice. But me . . .”
Zeke nods. “People would talk.”
“Exactly.”
Zeke’s eyes meet mine, and his are an intense brown. “Why does it matter what they say?”
I blink. “It . . . it just does.” I think for a minute. Mom has always worried so much about what other people think of her that I sort of absorbed her attitude without ever pausing to question why. “When people talk about you behind your back, ripping you apart or criticizing you online, it hurts. We all want to be liked and have friends, right?”
I don’t know if I’m quite explaining myself, but Zeke nods. “Your secret is safe with me, Callie.”
“Thank you.” The conversation has unsettled me, and I’m not sure why. “Should we get started?” I ask. “I can’t get kicked out of cheer. Last year was too close.”
“If it’s that important, then I’ll do my best.”
We spend forty or so minutes going over organic chemistry equations until my head aches. No one approaches us, but every time I hear footsteps get remotely close, I freeze.
“Anything else you wanted to work on today?” Zeke asks. “A lot of people ask for my help with calculus.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Math is the one thing I’ve got down.”
“Oh, yeah?” Zeke smiles a half-smile. “Why don’t you show me, just to make sure?” Zeke writes down a derivative and looks at me with a challenge in his eyes.
Is this how nerds flirt? I can’t decide if I’m enjoying this or not.
“Challenge accepted.” I glance over the problem, and ooooh it’s tough. It’s a differentiable function with an epsilon-delta definition of the limit. Zeke wasn’t kidding around.
I attack it with a fury and actually enjoy myself. Calculus has always seemed more like a puzzle to solve than math.
I solve the problem in record time and pass the paper back to Zeke. “Done.”
Zeke’s eyebrows rise. “Very impressive.”
