by Foster, Lily
I’d been in a sour mood for the past three weeks. I wasn’t failing everything, just History and Physics. I didn’t even know how I was failing Physics. I actually understood the material but when it came time to take the tests, I was just tanking. Two failures and I was off the team. They didn’t do exceptions here and in truth, I didn’t want any. I didn’t want to be given any special treatment—the slow, learning disabled kid who couldn’t pass.
I was desperate so I agreed.
I stopped by Connolly’s office a few minutes early on my way to meet up with her in the library. I poked my head in and asked, “So Carolyn’s ok with this?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Mrs. Connolly snapped without even looking up from her computer screen, dismissing me.
I sat at the table, waiting. My fucking palms were sweating. I was rubbing them against my jeans practically every five seconds. There was one other kid seated in the study room across the hall. My eyes were glued to the corridor, waiting on her. I saw her come in then, chatting easily with Paul Wiseman, two brainiac peas in a pod.
Carolyn looked down at a paper to see which room she was assigned to. In about a nanosecond she’d be wishing her paper read anything but Room C. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, meeting my gaze through the glass. She looked as if she was drawing in a deep, steadying breath before entering the room. Then she strode in with her game face on. “Jeremy,” she said, all business-like, without meeting my eyes.
“Um, are you ok with this? Tutoring me?”
She looked up at me defiantly. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I almost wanted to laugh. She sounded exactly like Connolly—Connolly’s evil spawn.
I must have been smiling at the thought because she looked offended when she asked, “Is something funny?”
“No,” I assured her, shaking my head. “Look, I appreciate you working with me, really.”
“I’m getting paid, Jeremy.” Her tone was sour. “Believe me it’s not out of the goodness of my heart.”
Fucking ouch.
She was in professional mode. We split the next ninety minutes prepping for my physics test and then outlining the chapter for next week’s history exam.
She didn’t work like Paul did. She took my old tests, broke down how my science teacher asked questions and then predicted how this chapter’s test questions might look. For history, she jotted down my text book’s publisher and edition number before she left and told me she’d have a better way for me to read the text by Thursday.
I sat for a few minutes after she left, reeling. Mainly, I was in awe of the girl. I felt like I’d been under the tutelage of an expert for the past hour and a half. It was like she understood how my mind worked and could break things down for me so that I wasn’t so damned confused. I always knew Carolyn was smart but I don’t think I understood how truly gifted she was. That, in turn, made me hopeful. I believed she could help me dig myself out of this hole.
I also felt lonely.
Seeing her back in Drew’s arms a few weeks ago started me off on a series of meaningless, shallow hook-ups. Today, spending time with someone I cared about—someone that I genuinely liked as a person—made every other interaction seem that much more superficial…shittier, really.
I was now in the habit of swinging by Beth’s once a week. She would have preferred three times a week, minimum, but I felt so dirty after leaving there that I couldn’t bring myself to answer her texts most of the time. I did start to see her in a different light, though. She was lonely too, married to some old guy who was trying to relive his youth. A guy who really didn’t know her, left her for weeks at a time in a town where she knew no one, and where the local society gals looked down on her as the uncultured gold digger that she was. But wrong was wrong. She was married so I was guilty for my part in this. She was wrong too, obviously. I mean, if my life was an episode of Law and Order, what she was doing could—save for a few months—technically be construed as rape. I did not see it that way, though. I looked way older than eighteen, so Beth probably didn’t know she’d been luring in jail bait. I don’t think she did, anyway.
Beth wasn’t the only one who left me feeling empty. I started up again with some girl, Willow, who’d graduated last year and was now at a college less than an hour away. Some nights she’d just text and show up at my house. I was willing. I’d first hooked up with her last year after Taylor and I burned out. I liked Willow but she dumped me right around the time prom dates were being negotiated. I offered to take her and her response was to look at me with a mixture of pity and humor. Was I serious? She couldn’t go with a junior. Dumb ass me, right? When I thought about it, she and I never did anything but hook up in her pool house—we were never a couple in public. Fine. She used me last year and I was using her now.
Using and being used…it felt like crap.
Thursday at 2:40 sharp I was waiting in Room C, anxious, afraid that she wouldn’t show. She walked in at 2:45, right on schedule. Carolyn still looked wary and wore a bare, serious expression again. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
She didn’t waste any time. She set me up with a tablet that had both my Physics and Global History books uploaded on it. Carolyn explained that it was audio enabled but the text was also converted to a dyslexia-friendly font. “To me it just looks like the letters are bottom heavy and slightly squiggly, you know?” Her eyes lit up then and she smiled. “But to you and to Thomas, it makes the letters look more distinct. It’s amazing really, Jeremy. You’ll make way fewer errors. Isn’t that crazy?” Her excitement was infectious. “It’s downloaded onto this tablet so any book you read will be written in this font.”
“Wow,” I whispered, looking it over.
“This is really new. They didn’t have this when you were at Briarwood, right?”
“No.” I looked up at her then. “Thanks, Carolyn.”
She shrugged her shoulders, brushing me off. “It’s nothing. Come on, let’s get to work.”
And so it went.
I thought I’d feel uncomfortable around her, maybe embarrassed having her teaching me, but I never did. She might not like me, but Carolyn was always respectful and never condescending. She always made me feel at ease when I didn’t get something. And with her, I didn’t care about stumbling over a word here and there.
Two weeks later when I got my first science test back and scored a seventy-eight, I was ecstatic. I slapped it down on the table grinning when I walked into the room. She looked at it and then looked up at me, tilting her head, curious. “Are you satisfied with that?”
“Hell yeah, Carolyn. That’s passing. It’s more than passing.”
She smiled softly and nodded her head, looking down at the paper again. After an excruciatingly long minute, Carolyn said, “But you’re really smart. You can do much better than this.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a seat across from her. “Listen, if I pass then I can play. I’m not looking to get into Harvard, all right?”
She reached across and laid her hand on top of mine. “Hey, I’m sorry, Jeremy.” When she said my name it did something to me. It shook me up. It made me dream of things. What would it feel like to hear her say my name all the time…if she was mine, if she was my girl?
When I looked up at Carolyn, she was smiling at me softly. “You’re right, I was just a bit of a buzz kill. And Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know?”
My hand felt cold as she slid hers off mine.
“How slow is he?” Drew asked as we sat together studying for AP Physics.
“He’s actually really bright, Drew. Just like Thomas is, you know? Like a different type of intelligence where you’re just held back by reading.”
“Couldn’t one argue that if you cannot read, then you’re not intelligent?”
Drew wasn’t being a jerk, he was asking innocently. “No. I mean, it’s like the brain just isn’t wired for reading. If you speak the information to people like Jeremy and then let them speak their answer, you se
e that the reasoning process is intact. School is just extremely frustrating for people like him. He is smart, though, without a doubt.”
“How are you two getting along?”
“Fine, I guess.” That wasn’t a lie; things had gotten somewhat easier between us over the past few weeks. “We’re not BFFs but he’s polite and I think he appreciates the help.”
“I find him hard to read, you know?”
I nodded because, yes, I certainly did find him hard to read. There were times when we would have a moment during our sessions—a shared laugh, a smile of appreciation—and then he’d flip the switch and go back to being taciturn and sort of irritated.
“Will and Mike think he’s a great guy but I don’t know…I think he’s got hard edges. And that girl, Vanessa? What could anyone see in her?”
“You don’t think she’s pretty?” I asked, truly surprised.
“If you’re into that, I guess. I predict she’ll be unmarried with three kids and three different baby daddies by the time she’s thirty. I can kind of picture her, tattoos covering her bony arms, smoking a butt on the steps of her double wide in the trailer park.”
“You’re just mad because you know she could probably kick your ass,” I teased, tickling Drew.
He pinned my wrists and flipped me over onto my back, straddling me on the couch. “Oh, now you’re gonna get it, Harris.”
I did like working with Jeremy. It was a challenge but I was learning so much, getting a window into the way his brain worked and gaining a deeper understanding of why certain teaching strategies were more effective than others.
While those were perks, there were challenges—lots of them. For example, I found it hard to concentrate at times, especially when Jeremy would take his pencil and tap the eraser against his bottom lip when he was lost in thought…or when Jeremy would run his hands through his hair when he was frustrated…or when Jeremy smiled in triumph as he mastered a difficult concept.
I liked him.
Like, I liked him.
The warm, buzzy feeling I had in my chest when I was with Jeremy wasn’t very different from the butterflies I’d felt for him back in sixth grade. The only difference was that instead of daydreaming about him kissing me chastely, I would now sometimes find myself gazing off into space, wondering how it would feel to have his hands grasping my hips, holding my body close as he kissed me deep, his tongue exploring my mouth.
As I took my seat across from Jeremy today, I wasn’t lost in naughty thoughts, though. Today I was wondering why I felt lightheaded and sweaty all of a sudden. And why the room was kind of spinning.
“Carolyn? Are you all—”
I darted up, knocking my chair out from under me. I clamped my hand over my mouth as I struggled with the doorknob and then ran to the girls’ bathroom. I just barely made it, sweat pooling on my forehead, before falling to my knees and heaving into the toilet. It felt never ending. How much food was in my stomach? I kept heaving even after there was simply nothing left. Oh, yeah, those really attractive noises you make when you dry heave? I realized mid-lurch that Jeremy was witnessing the whole show.
I wiped my mouth on my sleeve when I felt him come up behind me. He gathered my hair and ran a wet paper towel across my forehead and down along my neck. I was about to try and laugh it off and attempt some clever comment but my stomach was again overtaken by aliens at that very moment. I think what I ate last month decided to make a comeback.
How humiliating.
And how sweet he was.
After what seemed like a lifetime, I rested my head in my hands and slid my butt onto the bathroom floor. “God, don’t look at me, I’m gross.”
He chuckled softly and said, “I’ve seen worse.” He turned and got some fresh paper towels that he wet and wrung out before handing them to me. I wiped my mouth and my hands. Then Jeremy reached down and gently pulled me up.
“Thanks, Jeremy.”
“You good? Think you’re done?”
“I’d better be.”
“Jeez, you look green, Carolyn.”
“I feel like death warmed over.”
“Do you have a car?”
“No. My mother is picking me up.”
“Give me your phone.”
“It’s back in the room.”
When I tried to take a few steps and teetered, he steadied me. “Whoa. You stay here,” he said as he propped me against the wall, “and I’ll get your stuff. I’ll be right back.”
By the time he returned a few minutes later, I’d slid down the wall into a sitting position. I didn’t even have the energy to stand. I felt like absolute crap. “Hey, you doing all right?” he asked as he crouched down next to me. “I called your mom, she’s on her way. I’d have driven you myself but I have my bike today.”
I croaked weakly, “Yeah, I don’t think I’m up for being on the back of a motorcycle right now.”
He laughed. “I don’t think I’d be able to drive the thing knowing you could puke on me at any moment.”
I tried to laugh but just keeping my eyes open was a major effort at that point. I noticed Jeremy looping both of our backpacks onto his shoulders and before I knew it, he was reaching down to scoop me up in his arms. “I can walk,” I said, even though I was grateful that I didn’t have to.
“No way. And before you go getting all mushy on me, Carolyn, I’ll remind you this is purely selfish on my part. I need my tutor to make a full and speedy recovery. Next week I’ve got two huge tests, got it?”
“Got it, Daniel-san.”
“Huh?”
I breathed out, exhausted with the effort of speaking—of thinking, for that matter. “Karate Kid. You’re Daniel-san, I’m Mr. Miyagi.”
“You’re who? Holy shit,” he whispered. Then he placed his lips against my forehead. What the? Was he kissing me? That’s nice, I thought, but messed up, considering I probably smelled of puke. “I think you’re delusional with fever,” he said. Oh…he’d been checking my temperature…no kiss.
I closed my eyes at that point and didn’t perk up again until I felt him lower me into the car. “She’s really sick, Mrs. Harris. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone throw up that much.”
“Ok, let’s get you home, sweetie,” my mom said as she clipped my seat belt over my lap. “And thank you…um…I didn’t get your name.”
“Jeremy Rivers. Carolyn tutors me.”
“Jeremy? The one Thomas talks about? Did you go to Briarwood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well thank you, Jeremy, for taking care of Carolyn. I’m so happy I finally got to meet you.”
The next twenty-four hours were a blur. When I awoke on Wednesday afternoon, I was covered in a sheen of sweat, thirsty and a little hungry. That was a good sign. Like a mind-reading angel, my mother entered my room with toast and tea on a tray.
“Ah, how did you know?”
“I could tell the fever broke. I knew you’d need a little something in your tummy.”
“What time is it?”
“Four o’clock.”
“What day is it?”
She smiled. “Wednesday.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. “I feel so much better.”
“Good, but I think you should stay home to rest tomorrow.”
“I really don’t want to miss another day, Mom.”
“Why? Your grades won’t suffer.”
I couldn’t tell her why. “I just need to go in. If I feel bad tomorrow morning, I won’t go, I promise.”
She sighed. “All right.” As Mom went to prop my pillows up so I could sit up and eat, she said, “What a nice boy that Jeremy Rivers is.”
I nibbled on my toast as I gave a noncommittal nod of assent.
“How has it been for him, coming back to Westerly?”
“I would say good overall. He’s kind of a big man on campus, football star and all. He’s popular with the girls,” I said, rolling my eyes.
She smiled, laughing. “I meant academically,
Carolyn.”
“Oh,” I said, recovering. “He has accommodations like extra testing time and technology assistance but it’s a struggle for him, I think.”
My mother looked disappointed. She was thinking about Thomas. “I mean, he’s passing, Mom. He doesn’t complain. But I feel badly sometimes. It’s like he doesn’t expect to excel. He’s happy with just getting by, you know?”
“All those years of just anticipating failure, Carolyn…I imagine it’s hard to set new expectations for yourself.”
“Yeah,” I answered absently. I was thinking, wondering if I could help Jeremy to see himself in a different light. I felt terrible about the day I shot down his happy mood when he showed me his mediocre test grade. He was proud of himself but I knew he could do better. I was determined to make him see himself the way I saw him.
Thursday I returned to school and was disappointed when I realized there would be no tutoring that day either. When I saw Kerri at our lockers in the morning she relayed the lunchroom scene from the day before, telling me how Jeremy, looking positively green, practically knocked Samantha off his lap onto the floor as he rushed to the bathroom. Apparently I was contagious. She laughed recounting Samantha’s attempt to play the concerned girlfriend, which lasted for all of about two seconds. Samantha took off once she caught a whiff of puke.
I had last period free so I ditched. Not having a license when all of my friends did…it just blew. I walked the distance home and then took my mother’s cast off old beater, a Volvo wagon that I assumed was still in the garage because it would one day be mine. I drove, my permit on the seat beside me. I figured that if I was pulled over, I’d play dumb.
By the time I reached Jeremy’s place, I was a nervous wreck. I was relieved to see his truck in the driveway but parking parallel alongside it took several attempts. Forget how I must have looked backing into that spot on Main Street…I can only imagine.
“Hello,” a startlingly good looking man said, his expression curious as he opened the door. He looked to be about forty, with clear, bright eyes and tan skin that looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors. It was Jeremy, twenty or so years from now.
