My very first semester as Heller’s tutor, only one person showed up on the first day – the roommate of someone I’d hooked up with two weeks before. I could barely recall the girl I’d spent a couple of hours with, but I recognized the roommate instantly, because there’d been an enormous bulletin board full of exhibitionistic selfies over her bed. They’d been … distracting. Like being watched by half-naked spectators. I’d found myself wondering – during the most awkward moment possible – what she did during Parents’ Weekend. Tacked posters of the periodic elements and Albert Einstein over them?
So during my first tutoring session ever, I drew charts on a whiteboard while explaining the difference between a downward shift in demand and a decrease in demand to one student. One student who was oblivious to the fact that I’d seen her topless selfie gallery. I couldn’t look her in the eye, or anywhere else, really, the whole hour, which was pretty damned awkward since she was the only other person in the room.
I had four students show today, all of them surprised that they were the only attendees out of such a huge class. None were Kennedy Moore or Jackie Wallace. I was relieved and disappointed – and I had no right to feel either of those things.
‘This is my third semester tutoring for Dr Heller,’ I said, facing them. Four pairs of eyes watched me raptly from their front-row seats in the tiny classroom. ‘Last year, every person who attended supplemental sessions two to three times per week for the entire semester made an A or a B in the class.’
Eyes widened, impressed. Clearly, I was a miracle worker.
Truth? Regular session attendees were usually the overachievers – students who only missed class for emergency surgery or when someone died. They did the assigned reading and the optional chapter quizzes. They turned in extra-credit assignments. Education was a priority, and most of them might have aced the class without me.
But the statistical data gave me job security, so I used it.
Every week, I allotted at least fifteen hours in class, in sessions, making up worksheets and providing individual assistance, either on campus or through email. Those hours added up to a quarter of my tuition, paid. Being Heller’s tutor wasn’t as lucrative as Job One – parking enforcement officer for the campus PD, or Job Two – working the counter at the campus Starbucks, but it was way less stressful than either.
Well.
Until her.
3
Landon
Dad didn’t seem to notice I’d quit hockey. He didn’t notice my detachment from friends or the collapse of my social life. He’d only arranged for a car to pick me up from school each day because I’d paused to ask him how I was getting home before I left his car on my first day back.
His Ray-Bans hid his eyes, so I didn’t have to witness the agony that scorched through them every single time he realized that Mom was gone, so she couldn’t do a thing she’d always done. Things someone had to do in her place. Like pick me up from my private school, because home was a twenty-five minute drive or a Metro trip I’d never taken alone followed by a several-blocks walk.
In my mouth were the words, I’ll just take the Metro – I’m thirteen, I can do it, when he answered. ‘I’ll … call a car to take you home. You’re dismissed at three o’clock?’
‘Three thirty,’ I said, shouldering my backpack and stepping out, anger building. I felt myself fracturing down deep, straining to contain it.
Mornings were still cool, not yet cold enough to see your breath. Kids who’d already arrived were hanging out front, waiting for the first bell while others exited their parents’ cars. No one was rushing inside. Heads swivelled, watching me. Parents, too, none of them pulling away from the kerb. Everyone slowed – suspended, watching. I felt their eyes like dozens of tiny spotlights.
‘Landon?’
I turned back to my father’s voice, irrationally hoping he’d tell me to just get back in the car. That he’d take me back home. Take me to work with him. Anything but leave me here.
I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to do this.
‘You have your house key?’
I nodded.
‘I’ll have a car here at three thirty. I’ll be home early. Five thirty, latest.’ His jaw hardened. ‘Lock the door when you get home.’ And check the windows.
I nodded again and shut the passenger door. He looked at me through the glass, and again, the crazy wish that he wouldn’t leave me here sprang up and grabbed me by the throat. He raised a hand and drove away.
So I’d never reminded him about hockey practice. I just stopped going.
When my coach finally called me, I told him I was quitting. He suggested that keeping previous routines in place would be good for me. Told me I could return at my pace, build back up. Said the team was ready to support me – that some of the guys had discussed having decals of Mom’s initials added to our helmets or sewn on to the sleeves of our jerseys. I sat stonily on the other end of the line, waiting for him to realize that I wouldn’t argue, but I also wouldn’t go.
I don’t know if Dad continued to pay or if they stopped billing him, and I didn’t care.
There was this girl I’d liked, before. (Everything now was either before or after.) Before-girl’s name was Yesenia. I hadn’t seen her since the last day of seventh grade, but we’d texted a couple of times over the summer and had been friends online, trading cryptic social-media comments, which is sort of like flirting in semaphore. Cool shot. Haha awesome. Pretty eyes. This last was from her, one comment of a dozen on a pic Mom had taken of me on Grandpa’s beach, standing in the surf at sunset.