by Amy Sparling
I swallow as I take in his features. Neatly trimmed hair, clean fingernails gripping the strap of his messenger bag. There’s the faint scent of soap coming from him, and now it all makes sense. Jonah Garza.
He was the biggest nerd of elementary school. Always dressed in neatly ironed clothes, his hair always combed to the side and gelled in place. He was a world class dweeb, and such an easy target for bullying that the meanest bullies just left him alone. It wasn’t worth it to pick on someone so obviously dorky. I mean, where’s the skill in that?
We were never really friends, Jonah and I. But we have had some classes together. He must have learned how to blend into high school because I can’t remember ever seeing him around campus.
“You can’t tutor me,” I say, meeting his concerned look with an annoyed one of my own. “You’re a freaking student.”
“You’re a student too,” he says, the corners of his lips twisting into a grin. “I’ve been tutoring my peers since freshman year. Mrs. Reese gave me a rundown of your situation, so I’m all ready to begin tutoring tomorrow. Just wanted to introduce myself today so you’ll know where to find me in the library after school.”
“Wait—No.” I hold up my hand and shake my head. “I’m sorry but, um, yeah no.”
“You okay?” Jonah asks.
I can’t even find the words to describe exactly now not okay I am right now, so I brush past him and march back toward the school.
“Nat?” April calls out.
I give her an apologetic look. “Can you wait like five minutes for me? I have to go settle something in the office.”
“No problem,” she says, leaning up against the brick wall.
I head into the school, walking as fast as I can through the wave of students all trying to get out of the building. I hear Jonah call my name from somewhere behind me, but I don’t stop to answer him.
I walk as fast as my feet will take me until I get to the double glass doors of the office. Two teachers are eating cupcakes in the lobby and I step around them.
“Natalie!” Jonah calls. I glance back and see him slip into the office, his eyes wide.
“You can come if you want,” I tell him. “I don’t really care either way.”
The assistant principal is sitting behind her desk in her office, her eyebrows pulled together while she stares at something on the screen.
I don’t bother knocking, I just walk right on in, throwing my hands in the air. “I can’t be tutored by a student!”
She startles at my sudden appearance, nearly knocking over a half-empty coffee cup on her desk. “Shit!” she breathes. She puts a hand to her chest. “Natalie, you scared me. What on earth is going on?”
Her eyes flit from me to Jonah, but she still doesn’t get it. I repeat myself. “Jonah can’t be my tutor. He’s a student.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she says, folding her hands together over her chest. “Do you and Jonah have a personal conflict that would prevent you from working well together?”
“No ma’am,” Jonah says. “We don’t even know each other. I’m happy to work with her.”
I shoot him a look and he flinches. “Mrs.…” I exhale and realize I’m going to have to call her by her name. “Mrs. Reese, you said I’d have to be tutored but you didn’t say it would be by a student. I thought you meant someone professional.”
Her lips form a flat line. “Honey, peer-to-peer tutoring is how it’s done in high school. You’re free to hire an outside tutor all you want, but for school purposes, we always match students up with other students. In fact, most of them prefer it this way. Isn’t tutoring with a friend better than with a teacher?”
“He’s not my friend,” I say without thinking. I turn to Jonah. “No offense… I just don’t know you.”
He shrugs.
I look back at Mrs. Reese. “I’m just not sure I want to be tutored by a fellow student. We’re the same age…it’s just…insulting.”
She barks out a laugh and then quickly composes herself. I grit my teeth because while I don’t appreciate being laughed at, I know I should probably keep my cool right now.
“Natalie, you may be peers in age but Jonah is well equipped to tutor you.” She turns her gaze on him. “What’s your GPA, Jonah?”
“Four-point-oh, ma’am.”
“And yours is hovering around the two-point-oh range if I recall,” she says to me.
My cheeks flush red, which is another example of why I shouldn’t be tutored by a student. It’s embarrassing that he knows how badly I’m failing my classes. If I were taught by a random adult, I wouldn’t really care.
I heave a sigh. “I guess I’m not getting out of this, am I?”
“Of course you can get out of it,” she says rather sarcastically. She picks up her office phone and puts it to her ear. “Let me just call the local McDonald’s and see if they’re hiring a high school dropout. Maybe in twenty years of hard work, you’ll be able to make assistant manager.”
I scowl as my cheeks turn even redder. “I get it,” I say with a sigh.
She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Jonah, you let me know if she gives you any trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. I shoot him another look and he pales. I can tell he wants to apologize to me for being rude, but he won’t because he’s in front of an administrator.
I hold back an eye roll of epic proportions and walk out of the office, not caring at all if Jonah is following me this time.
I’m steaming mad and horribly embarrassed, and as if having detention twice a week for two months wasn’t bad enough, now I have to spend it being tutored by a nerdy guy who’s the same age as me.
What the hell kind of crap is that?
It’s not like I’m some druggie delinquent who skips school to get high and break into cars. I’m trying to take care of my mom here. But the school doesn’t see it that way. They don’t care if my intentions are noble, they only care that I can memorize chemistry equations that I’ll most certainly never need in real life.
The hallways are nearly empty now and I walk a little slower on my way back toward the parking lot. All of my energy has been zapped from that conversation with the woman who married my ex step-dad. This whole situation just blows.
I hear his footsteps jogging to catch up with me but I don’t acknowledge him, not even when Jonah falls into step next to me. He does smell pretty good for a nerd. Most guys smell like sweat from athletics or like too much of that cheap men’s body spray. But not Jonah. He smells like clean. Like he just showered. He looks so put together, so organized and creased. He probably never smells dirty.
“I’m sorry about this,” he says beside me. “I tutor to make my college applications look good, and they just call me in and tell me who to tutor each week. If it makes you feel any better, I think I’m the best one out of the other five student tutors.”
I look over at him and he’s smiling, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Why do you say that?”
“Well one of them is Justin Mark.”
I curl my lip. Justin Mark was a very large guy until two years ago when he got weight loss surgery. Now he spends every waking second talking about his workout regimen and how much weight he’s lost from day to day. Even the teachers always tell him to shut up.
“You’re definitely better than him,” I say.
Jonah’s smile widens. “The other tutors are girls. The Khan twins, Tamera Blight, and Jess McGovern.”
I stick out my tongue in disgust. “Wow. Yeah. I dodged a bullet here.”
Those girls are always fighting to be the smartest in the school, and oddly they’re all very popular. The Khan twins are also cheerleaders, which kind of defies the whole dumb cheerleader stereotype. They’re all into makeup and fashion and school work. I wouldn’t fit in with them at all.
I guess Jonah Garza is the best tutor I could have ended up with, all things considering. I turn to him, trying to force myself to think positively. “Wi
ll you be my tutor the whole two months, or will you switch off with the others?” We reach the doors at the end of the hallway and he pushes it open, waiting for me to go first.
“It’s up to you. If you don’t like working with me after a while, you can request another tutor.”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I think I’ll keep you.”
It could be my imagination, or some kind of trick of the sunlight as we step outside, but it almost looks like Jonah’s cheeks turn a little pink. April steps away from the wall and joins us. She’s still not on her phone, which is so weird to me.
“You ready?” she asks me.
“Yep.” I turn to Jonah. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He nods and adjusts the strap of his messenger bag. “Three p.m. sharp or I’ll make you write five hundred sentences about the importance of being punctual.”
“Seriously?” I balk.
“No.” He grins sheepishly. “I’m just messing with you.”
Chapter 8
I try to pay attention in class the next day.
I swear I try.
Each class is like one new nightmare after another, with lessons that don’t make any sense and teachers who talk too fast, but none of that is what’s bothering me. I can’t stop thinking about what happened last night while eating dinner with my mom.
“I wonder if I should just get a job,” she had said, pressing her fork to stand up in her bowl of spaghetti.
I nearly choked on my own dinner. “You have a job, Mom.”
She sighed. “I’m talking about a real job. Maybe I should fix up my resume and start sending it out places.”
My heart sped up in my chest. “You mean like over summer break?”
She shrugged and twirled her fork around the noodles. “Or now.”
“But then who would run the store while I’m at school?” I said. I refused to believe that she meant what it sounded like she was saying.
“We’d just close the store.” She said it simply and easily, as if it wouldn’t be a big deal at all.
I looked down at my food. “You don’t mean that.”
She sighed and went back to eating. I didn’t say a word and neither did she until her bowl was empty and she stood up to take it to the kitchen sink.
“I guess you’re right,” she said softly as she walked by and headed toward her room. “I’d be lost without the store.”
Now, as I sit in my chair at the back of the history classroom, I wonder how often my mom has thought about closing the store and getting a job. The very idea of it sends a weird mixture of emotions through me. I’d be heartbroken to lose The Magpie. There’s no way around that.
But if Mom really wanted to close it? If it would make her happy to get a normal job working for someone else without the stress of running her own business? I guess I’d be okay with the idea, so long as it made my mom happy. But I know that deep down she wouldn’t be happy at all. And she’s only thinking these things because money is tighter than tight and the store is doing worse than it ever has. I close my eyes and draw in a deep breath, pretending I’m on a tropical beach instead of in the classroom listening to a lecture on Texas History.
It doesn’t work very well.
***
As much as I want to forget all about my first tutoring session today, I know the AP would have my ass if I skipped it. I even remembered to bring along the stack of extra credit worksheets my teachers gave me. I’ve put them in a folder and all together, it’s about an inch thick. There is no possible way I’ll ever get through them all.
Lugging my textbooks along, I make my way to the library after the final bell rings.
Sterling High’s library isn’t as modern and large as some of the other high schools I’ve seen on TV, but it’s okay. The aisles are long and tall and filled with books that actually have interesting material in them, unlike the library at our junior high which is from the seventies and has mostly old smelly books.
I chew on my lip as I look for Jonah in the crowd. Most people are here for detention, which takes place in a classroom off the side of the library. To the right, the rows of bookshelves split in half and there’s a few tables in the middle of the library.
I find Jonah sitting at one, bent over his iPad. He’s got a TI-84 calculator next to a fresh notebook and pencil sitting next to him. His messenger bag is on the seat to his left, so I go to his right and dump my backpack on the floor.
“Hey.” I pull out the chair and sit next to him. “What are you so enthralled with?” I ask, leaning over to peek at his iPad. I was hoping for some juicy snapchats or something, but no, of course not. He’s looking up microphones on some website.
“Hi, Natalie.” Jonah smiles at me, his eyes meeting mine. It’s such a friendly gesture it makes me feel bad for how much I totally hate that I have to be here with him for two hours. It’s not his fault he got stuck as my tutor. He probably doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.
Jonah closes the leather case over his iPad and tucks it into his messenger bag. “You ready to get started?”
“Not really,” I say, grabbing his calculator. “Let’s do something else.”
“Something else?” he says slowly. I press random buttons on the calculator, and he watches me, looking as though he’d really like to tell me to stop. He’s such a nerd he can’t even ask for his calculator back. I roll my eyes and set it on the table.
“Yeah, something else.” I look around conspiratorially. “How about we sneak out of here and go get a snow cone next door?”
He frowns. “Natalie, we have to study.”
I give him my best innocent look. “Or we could not study and pretend that we did?”
He ignores me and turns to his notebook. “You’re failing math, chemistry, and history,” he says, pointing at each subject as he says them. “You’re also hovering by with a seventy one in English so we should work on that one, too.”
“What is this?” I say, snatching the notebook from his hand.
“Hey!” he says, but his voice is meek because we have to be quiet in the library. I know he’s too nice to steal it back from me, because all nerds are too nice. I almost feel a little bad at how his manners restrain him so much.
I stand up so he can’t even try to grab the notebook back. He doesn’t leave his chair, but he is staring at me, his dark eyes more serious than I’ve ever seen them.
I look over the page in front of me. My name is at the top, handwritten in neat letters.
He’s listed out my classes with my last progress report grade next to them. No doubt this information was given to him by the assistant principal, much to my chagrin. He’s highlighted my failing subjects in blue and English in yellow. That must be his code colors for MISERABLY FAILING and ALMOST FAILING.
Underneath that, he’s written the dates we’re tutoring.
“Natalie, please,” Jonah says, his voice one level above pleading. “Please give it back.”
I shake my head and turn to the next page, finding another student’s name and grades, as well as their tutoring schedule.
The pages before mine are filled with more of the same, only these must be old students because after the original grades, he’s written in new grades which are much higher than what they started out with.
“Natalie…” Jonah says. “Sit back down. Let’s get started.”
I’m starting to feel a little bad for stealing his notebook and goofing around when we should be working, but I can’t help myself. No one actually takes these things seriously, right?
I walk back to my chair and flip the notebook to my page. That’s when I notice the upper right hand of the page has been dog-eared.
Jonah reaches for the notebook. “Hand it over, please.”
I flip up the corner of the page. In tiny handwriting, he’s written another note, but this one is slanted and rushed, like a quick note to himself.
brown hair
Short
Pretty
&n
bsp; I look up and find Jonah staring at his hands. His cheeks are pink and he’s clearly mortified that I saw his note to himself. I hand the notebook back to him and then sit in my chair.
“Thank you,” he says quietly as he reaches for a math textbook. “We can start with math, since that’s often the hardest subject. After this, the other subjects will feel easy.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t let this go,” I say, leaning back in the padded library chair. He looks at me, lifting an eyebrow. “You think I’m pretty?”
His ears turn redder than a stop sign and he looks down at the textbook in front of him. “We should focus on schoolwork.”
“Come on, Jonah,” I say, nudging him in the shoulder. “That note was about me, right? You probably wrote it after Mrs. Reese showed you my picture as a way to remember what I looked like?”
His jaw works but he doesn’t say anything. He also doesn’t look at me, choosing rather to stare at page 312 in the book. “Can we please get started on the work?” he asks, still not looking at me.
“Fiiiine,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll drop it. It’s just that no one’s ever called me pretty before so—”
His head snaps up, his eyes shining with disbelief. “That’s not true.”
“Uh, yeah it is,” I say sarcastically even though this topic makes my chest hurt. “I think I would know.”
Some of his initial embarrassment has faded away, now replaced with pure skepticism. “There’s no way you’ve gone your whole life without being called pretty.”
I nod quickly. “I’m serious. I mean, okay, maybe my mom has said it once or twice, but she doesn’t count. As far as guys go, it’s never happened.”
I cast a glance at his notebook. “Unless you know, you want to admit you wrote that note about me.”
His bottom lip pulls under this teeth. “I bet every guy in this school thinks you’re pretty. If you haven’t heard anyone say it, you’re just not listening. Probably the same way you don’t listen to teachers in class.”
Something in the way he makes this bold statement, all matter-of-factly and with no hesitation at all, makes my stomach flutter. I meant it when I said I’ve never heard those words from a guy before. One time last year I was wearing leggings with a shirt that wasn’t long enough to cover my ass and Jeremy Rodriguez yelled out, “Damn, Natalie! That ass is fine!” But in no way shape or form is that considered being called pretty.