I go so still for so long, I must look like I’ve malfunctioned. April waves at me from where she’s standing a few feet away. Concern is stitched all over her face and she’s got this questioning look like she’s wondering if she should walk home without me or maybe tell a teacher that I need help. I shake my head at her and hold up a finger, signaling for her to wait.

“You’re my tutor?” I ask, giving the guy a look over. “But…you go to this school?”

He stares at me like I might not be quite right in the head and then nods. “I’m Jonah Garza…I think we had a class together in junior high. Your name seems familiar.”

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. “Will 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.”