Giving him a weird look, I asked in a rude way, "What?"
Samuel took a deep breath before straightening himself up.
"Um, do you want to start tutoring today...?" A light pink dusted his features. Marisol giggled beside me, but stopped when I gave her a look.
"Whatever," I grumbled and was about to turn back to continue walking, when Samuel stopped me again.
"Uh, where do you want to do the tutoring?" he blurted out. I paused, the question surprising me for a second, and thought about it. I wasn't all that excited about going over to his house so I said the only reasonable thing, "At mine."
"Thanks," Samuel breathed and gave me a small smile. I snorted and walked inside the school, Marisol trailing close behind me with an annoying grin on her face.
~*~
"Let us welcome a new student, class!" Ms. Pamelo, the English teacher, announced in first period. "Ms. Grace, would you like to introduce yourself?"
A girl with multi-colored hair, ranging from red to purple, and multiple ear pierces stood next to her. She wore a gray shirt with the words "Bad Girls Don't Die" written in red and ripped navy blue jeans, a little faded at the knees. With a huge smile, she nodded and took a step forward.
"Hello everyone!" she chirped with a heavy accent that I immediately identified as German. "My name is Vaneesa Grace, but you can just call me Chloe."
I tuned her out after that as she began to introduce herself like every newcomer would. I caught words here and there, like how I was right when she said that she was from Germany. I stared out the window for most of it, watching birds flying and the clouds rolling by.
It was when Ms. Pamelo talked again that I came back to my senses. "Thank you so much for sharing about yourself, Vaneesa!" she smiled.
"Chloe," Vaneesa, or Chloe, corrected her.
"Yes, Chloe," Ms. Pamelo said, changing her words. "Well, welcome to Harken High! I hope that you'll like it here."
"I most definitely will!" Chloe said gratefully.
Ms. Pamelo picked up her clipboard and flipped through the pages for attendance. She scribbled something on the last page, probably Chloe's name.
"Where would you like to sit?" she asked Chloe, once she was done writing.
"Oh, I would like to sit there, close to the window," Chloe pointed at the seat to my left.
"What?!" I immediately screeched and shot up from my seat without thinking. "She can't sit here!"
Ms. Pamelo gave me a cold stare. "Ms. Fyer," she said coldly. "That is not how we treat new students. Chloe may sit there if she wants to. Now, sit down."
I groaned and sank back down in my seat as people sent me looks. Marisol was amongst them. None of them said a thing, but I could almost hear their thoughts in my mind. Oh, look. Eleanor isn’t having what she wants today.
This wasn’t the first time I had suddenly lashed out during class. Many people who knew me were already used to this.
Ms. Pamelo returned to her fake happy mood and smiled and said kindly to Chloe, "Of course you may have that seat! Why don't you go ahead and make yourself comfortable?"
Chloe seemed as if she didn't even notice my sudden rude manner towards her. She kept her smile as she strolled over to the empty desk next to me.
She dropped her black backpack on the floor beside the desk and slid into the seat. She dug around in her backpack for a moment before pulling out a rainbow colored notebook that matched her hair and a black pencil.
"Take out your Literature Books," Ms. Pamelo instructed, a way she used to start class. Chloe flipped her notebook open to a random page and got ready to take notes.
The person sitting behind her gently tapped her shoulder. Chloe turned around to face the girl, whom I recognized as Alicia Berkley.
"Um, there's this textbook you need to use under your desk," she whispered in a hush, trying not to catch Mrs. Pamelo’s attention. Chloe looked confused.
"Where?" she asked. Alicia pointed under her desk.
Chloe seemed to understand because she bent over and saw the textbook.
"Oh, what textbook," she said and pulled the book out from a little basket under the desk. She plopped the textbook down on her desk just as Ms. Pamelo said, "Turn to page 312."
Chloe flipped through the pages until she found the correct one. Satisfied, she pulled her notebook from under the textbook and set it on top of the page next to 312, ready to take any necessary notes.
I sighed exasperatedly and scooted a little to the right, trying to keep as much distance between us.
Ms. Pamelo talked away for the rest of the class about parts of speech and figurative language. I twirled my pencil in the air with a bored expression for most of the time while continuously glancing at the clock at the back of the room, each time hoping that a large chunk of class had passed.
Finally, after what seemed like an infinity, the bell rang, signaling that class was over. Students immediately began to pack up their things, throwing papers and notebooks into their backpacks as fast as possible.
All I had to do was to stuff my pencil in the front pocket of my backpack, slinging it over shoulders, and marching out the room. Marisol had Geometry next while I had Social Studies, so we had to part ways.
I dragged my feet to the Social Studies room. The hallway slowly cleared itself until it was almost bare except for a few running late students speeding down the hall like a bull and one or two teachers who went to get coffee and didn't realize the time.
As I was walking, a voice called out to me, "Wait! Please wait!"
I paused and turned around, an eyebrow raised in suspicion. Chloe jogged up to me, breathless, her multi-colored hair flying around her face like a crazy rainbow.
"A-Are you the student... from Ms. Pamelo's class?" she asked, her face a little red and puffed out from running.
"Yes...?" I answered. Chloe's face brightened.
"Oh, that's good then!" she said happily. "That means you can help me find my next class, right?"
"Your next class?" I repeated her words in confusion. I had acted rudely towards her and yet, here she was, asking me to help her?
"Yes!" Chloe answered. "I have Chemistry with Mrs. Hoggins next. Can you show me where her room is?"
I looked up at the ceiling where a digital clock hang downwards. The time read 8:22. I still had three more minutes before the tardy bell would ring.
I sighed. "Yeah, sure," I grumbled. "Follow me."
"Thank you so much!" Chloe smiled as I began to walk down the hallway again. She followed closely behind.
We turned a few corners and walked down many hallways before reaching Room 2114, Mrs. Hoggins' room.
"This is it," I told her, while glancing up to check the time again. 8:24.
"Thank you!" Chloe said again. I shrugged.
"No prob."
Chloe opened the door to her class and was about to enter when she paused. She lifted her backpack off her shoulders and zipped open her front pocket. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me.
"For you," she told me before walking into the classroom and shutting the door behind her.
I stared at the sheet of paper. The bell rang above me and I knew I was late for class, but I unfolded the paper slowly and read the words scribbled on it. I immediately recognized it as one of those fortune cookies' slip of papers. It read:
You need to believe in everything, no matter how crazy they seem.
~*~
"So, she gave you a fortune slip?" Marisol asked as we walked down the hall crowded with a sea of people after school ended. I had told her the story of what happened and she immediately got interested in the topic.
"Yeah," I answered with a roll of my eyes. "But I'm not falling for any of those baloney fortunes. They aren't even real."
Marisol shrugged. "My dad got one before, saying something like 'You have a great accomplishment up ahead!' and it was true. He won the lottery a week later."
"So, you expect me to believe the fortune?"
r /> "That's up to you. I'm just telling you what happened from my experience."
I huffed in annoyance as we walked out the school and down the stairs. I stopped in my tracks when my eyes landed on a certain person.
Samuel seemed to sense me because he suddenly got up from the bench he was sitting at, stuffed the book he was reading into his backpack hastily, and turned around to greet me.
"Oh, uh, hey!" he smiled sheepishly.
I inhaled a sharp breath as Marisol patted my shoulder. "Well, it's as the Hunger Games says," she said. "'May the odds be ever in your favor'."
"Wait-"
But she was already jogging away and waving goodbye with that huge goofy grin she always had, leaving me completely alone with Samuel.
"So, uh... should we go?" Samuel asked awkwardly after a moment of silence. I remained in my position, staring at the spot where Marisol left, dumb struck, but I quickly regained my wits.
"Yeah," I grumbled. "Let's go."
CHAPTER 5: And the Torture Begins
There was a heavy silence between Samuel and me as we walked to my house.
Even left unsaid, I knew that Samuel was just as uneasy about this whole 'tutoring' thing as I was. He kept fidgeting with the straps of his backpack, twisting it back and forth to create small dents in the material.
I made sure that I was at least a good foot away from him. I tried to act cool like nothing was wrong by plugging my earphones into my phone, but I could feel my heart beat rapidly in my chest.
The music blasting from my earphones began to make me feel sick after a while so I ended up putting them away. For the rest of the walk, I didn't do anything else except kept my distance from Samuel as far as possible without walking into the grass and ruining my already-muddy-from-volleyball-practice shoes even more.
At one point, Samuel made an attempt at conversation.
"So, uh, do you have any siblings?" he asked awkwardly.
"No," I answered stiffly. "Why?"
Samuel shook his head. "Oh, it's nothing," he said quickly. "Just... curious."
"Do you?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"Do you have siblings?" I repeated, rephrasing my question.
"Yes," Samuel answered almost immediately. "I have a younger brother and sister. They're twins."
"What're their names?" I asked. Though my voice came out sounding calm and normal, in my mind, I was shocked and surprised. I couldn't believe I was actually having a conversation with the person I least expected to.
"Felix and Susanna," Samuel said with a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "They're only 4 years old."
"Oh."
There wasn't much to say after that so we went back to our silence for the rest of the way. Samuel didn't seem as nervous as before, but continued twisting the straps of his backpack. I did something that I never thought I would: I moved a little closer to Samuel. Not a lot, but just a little. It was basically a tiny shuffle his way.
Still, it was a huge shock to me. What was happening to me? Why was I starting to feel comfortable around this person while a second ago, I couldn't even bare the thought of him?
I pushed those thoughts away when we reached my house.
Like usual, no one was home. My dad had some sort of project he had to do at work and Bailey probably went shopping or something else. This meant I was stuck in the house alone with Samuel for who-knows-how-long.
I took Samuel to the study room that was rarely used by my family and dumped my backpack at the door. I marched up to the window and drew back the curtains so that the sunlight could stream in.
The room was bare, except for an empty bookshelf that stood on the right side of the room against the wall and a square wooden table with two chairs placed on either side of it.
Just because my family rarely used this room didn't mean that we didn’t keep it clean. My dad couldn't stand a messy environment so he hired a maid to clean the room up every week.
Sometimes I completely forget that we even had this room in our house.
In fact, the last time I remembered walking into this study room was back when I was in the 6th Grade. Bailey was supposed to drive me to school that day because it was raining and I couldn't risk ruining my pink sweater. But she lost the keys to her car so we turned the house upside down looking for it.
After rampaging through the house for what seemed like forever, I somehow came across the door to the empty study room and thought that the keys might be there. I opened the door and looked inside.
Sure enough, Bailey's keys were lying on the third shelf of the bookshelf. I grabbed them and handed them to her.
Bailey said she remembered that she was upstairs and just so happened to be sorting out her handbag on the shelf and forgot to put the keys back in.
By some miracle, I remembered about this room today and thought that it might work for the tutoring.
Samuel and I sat down across from each other at the wooden table. Surprisingly, the chairs didn't squeak like I thought they would, judging by how little we used them and how old they were. They were here for a long time, all the way back from when I was born.
Samuel pulled out a bunch of binders, pencils, papers, and notebooks from his backpack and plopped all of them down on the table in from of him.
"I talked to Mrs. Jackling today and she told me that I would be tutoring you so that you could succeed in your academics," he said as he began to sort out the pile.
He pushed the stack of textbooks to his left and the notebooks and papers to his right with the pens and pencils placed on top of it.
"I'm not sure how long this tutoring will last, but I'll try to teach you as much as possible about the things that you will need to know," he continued.
He grabbed one of the textbooks and handed it to me. I stared at the title which read 'Geometry I'.
"Mrs. Jackling told me that you needed the most help in Math so I thought that we might as well start here," he explained and handed me a notebook. "According to your Geometry teacher, you're currently learning about the angle degrees, right?"
"Yeah," I answered with a boring tone. I knew the tutoring barely started but I was already bored.
Samuel nodded. "And that's why I'm going to help you understand the angle relationships and degrees of specific angles better today."
While Mrs. Turner, my Geometry teacher, was explaining about the different angles and their degrees today, I was busy checking my Facebook account so I didn't listen to a word she said. Now I wished I had because when Samuel opened the textbook for me to the chapter about angle relationships and degrees and began to explain, I didn't know a single thing he said.
His words sounded like an alien language to me. I tried to understand him, but gave up when he used the words 'Supplementary Angle'.
I followed him the best I could, but what he was saying was coming in through one ear and out the other.
Samuel continued explaining and at one point, he gave me some problems to try and solve. I messed up on the first one, on the first step. Though he didn't laugh, I could tell that Samuel was trying to hold back a smile as he pointed to certain parts of the problem and explained to me step by step on how to do them.
When I didn't exactly understand the first problem, he showed me how to do the second. Slowly, I began to understand what he was saying and what to do.
He let me do the third one by myself. I picked up my pencil and began to write numbers and letters onto my paper. I expected Samuel to jump in suddenly at any moment and tell me that I was doing everything wrong, but he didn't.
When I finished, he smiled and told me, "See? I told you could do it!"
I was surprised.
"I... got it right?" I asked in disbelief. My weakest subject was Math. Actually, I sucked in every class, but Math stumped me in every single grade I had been in, starting in the 4th grade.
Whenever I didn't understand something that a teacher said in Math, I found something around me to entertain myself
with and waited for class to end. This explained why I was failing Math the worst out of all my other classes.
"Yup!" Samuel said. "Angle Relationships aren't hard at all. When you understand how to find the degrees of all the angles, it's very easy."
I stared at my paper, still not believing that I was able to do the problem and got it right.
"Let's try the next one," Samuel said and pointed at the fourth problem with a triangle. One of the angle degrees was missing and I had to figure out what it was.
"Uh, right," I quickly shook myself out of my shock and began to solve the problem. My hand moved across the paper as if it had a mind of its own. In no time, I had finished yet another problem.
Thinking that I was starting to have a grasp on the topic at last, I began to solve the other problems. Samuel helped me with some that I was confused on and showed me short-cuts on certain questions.