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

 

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.

“Well, believe me or not,” I say with a shrug. “No guy has ever told me that, so your note has totally made my day, whether you wanted me to see it or not.”

He clears his throat and focuses back on the task at hand. “So…math first?”

I shrug. “It’s up to you. You’re the smart one out of this duo.”

“Math it is. In two weeks, you’ll be having a cumulative test over the third quarter lessons in the book, so I printed out a few practice exams. I figure we can go over them together and whichever ones you have trouble with will tell us what to focus on studying.”

He talks quickly, his lesson plan already mapped out before we sat down today. After going over his plans for math with me, he moves to chemistry and history, where he’s put together study plans just like this one.

I watch him silently as he tells me all about the lessons and practice exams and gives me insight on how my teachers grade the midterms which are coming up soon. It blows my mind how smart he is, and we haven’t even officially started studying yet.

He’s still talking, reciting several pre-cal equations out loud as he writes them down on a sheet of paper. I try to focus, but I can’t help myself.

“Does it hurt your brain being this smart?” I say between watching him write one equation to the next.

His dark eyebrows pull together. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“You’re incredibly smart, Jonah. My brain hurts just listening to you talk. Surely your brain hurts, too, doing all that thinking?”

He shakes his head, looking at the paper in front of him. I’ve noticed that a lot about the last half an hour we’ve been working together. If he can look at his paper instead of me, he does. I wonder if he thinks I’m pretty, pretty, or just normal pretty. Just like he wrote the word pretty to mean I wasn’t some hideous monster roaming the hallways.

“My brain feels fine, Natalie.” He covers up the top part of the paper. “Can you recite to me the quadratic formula? Mrs. Mafi gives five extra points if you write it on the top of your test.”

I sigh and rest my chin in my hand. “This is going to be a long two months if all you want to do is talk about school work,” I say.

“What else would you suggest we talk about?” This is the first hint of friendliness he’s had since we started the tutoring session.

“Tell me your favorite color.”

He grins, then looks back at the paper. “Get an A on your next test and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”