Chapter Eight
Aiden’s cellphone slipped from his hand and thudded to the ground. Slowly, Aiden opened his eyes, staring at the unpainted ground and his arm swinging over the edge of his bed. I forgot something. Yawning and body creaking, he dragged the phone off of the floor and stared at the notifications.
A string of silenced alarms starting at nine in the morning.
He had slept through his classes.
Aiden blinked, swiping the notifications away one at a time.
His heart remained still, and his mind fogged over.
What’s the point? With a sigh, he flopped back down on the bed and stared at the light bulb buzzing overhead.
I hope she doesn’t lecture me for wasting money on electricity. The light bulb flickered.
The phone buzzed. Wearily, he raised the phone back up to see Javier’s text reminding them of the study group. He glanced at the time.
His eyes snapped open. His heart jumped. He leapt out of bed.
Aiden stumbled as he threw on his clothes, almost tumbling to the ground. He reached into his wallet and pulled out the picture of his brother. I can’t carry this with me anymore, he decided, recalling the inspecting eyes of both Mr. Zhou and Mr. Yang.
He hid the photograph underneath his pile of textbooks, grabbed the backpack, and dashed out of the basement.
“Where are you going?” His stepmother stepped out from the office downstairs with a folder of papers gripped in her hands.
“I have a school thing. I’ll be back after it.”
“Do not stay out longer than necessary. I have important things for you to do when you’re back.”
“I won’t.” He crashed out the door.
Freedom filled the air the minute he stepped foot out of the Uber and onto the crooked sidewalk of the hilly campus road. The sun burned bright against a brilliant blue sky. The bustling of students who spared no glance at him allowed his heart to soar and his body to float.
He was a stranger in people’s eyes, and suddenly, the anonymity felt like a gift from the skies.
He climbed the steps up to the library where Brendan and Christina waited.
He met eyes with Javier, who suddenly took off in a mad dash.
Confused, Aiden picked up his own pace, reaching the other two before Javier.
His friend arrived last, bent over wheezing.
“I thought I wouldn’t be the last one for once,” Javier managed to squeeze out between his gasps.
Aiden shared a glance with Brendan and Christina. “Are you an idiot?” Christina asked, knocking on Javier’s head.
“Says the girl who needs tutoring,” Javier continued to gasp.
Aiden and Brendan laughed. “Sorry, Javier. Next time, I’ll walk slower,” he said with a smile, but his heart descended slowly into his stomach.
He mustn’t believe these days could continue forever.
Suddenly, Javier straightened himself, no longer dying for air. “All right, let’s go. I’m going to blow your minds at how easy math actually is.” He rushed into the library without sparing a second glance at the others.
“He is, without doubt, a big fat liar,” Christina mumbled.
Brendan, on the other hand, was strangely quiet. He glanced at Aiden and reached into his bag to pull out a water bottle. “In case you forgot,” he said. “And as an apology ahead of time.”
Aiden accepted the water bottle. “Apology?”
“For how bad I’m going to be.”
Christina and Brendan’s faces, grey with doom, and their sagging shoulders of despair overtook the chirp in Javier’s voice and the bounce in his feet.
They navigated to the private rooms in the back of the library and closed the door.
Javier eagerly set down his own backpack and pointed at Aiden.
“You take care of Brendan, I’ll take care of Christina, and then we’ll switch at a certain point. Got it?”
Aiden nodded and settled beside Brendan. His chest squeezed when Brendan continued to remain silent, sitting down beside him while hugging a backpack.
“You didn’t do well on your test?” Aiden finally asked.
Mouth pressed tight, Brendan nodded and showed his exam.
Aiden peeked at the failing score. A relieved sigh slipped out, and a soft smile stretched across his face. “Brendan, this isn’t bad. You don’t need to feel ashamed.”
“My parents have always been good at what they want to do,” Brendan admitted. “And I’m already failing a class in my first year.”
Ah. Aiden leaned forward on his hand. I understand.
He scooted closer to Brendan. “Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses in certain subjects. Math isn’t easy for me either. I figured out how to best study for it is all.”
“Well, Javier aces everything,” Brendan muttered.
Aiden laughed. “Javier struggles with other stuff. Like being on time. Let’s just go through each problem you missed and figure out why you got it wrong, and then we can talk about how to solve it correctly. Okay?”
Brendan nodded.
“So, some of my questions might sound obvious, but bear with me. First, why did you choose to solve the problem the way you did?”
“I…honestly don’t know.”
“That’s okay. Let’s just start with your first step.”
Don’t feel bad. This is perfectly normal. Aiden hoped his voice conveyed that sentiment as he moved his finger carefully over the points in the problem that mattered the most. I can help you. I like helping you.
You can set the mood of a group early on by curating your behavior.
Set the mood to your best advantage. Make yourself the key master without needing to say a word, and you will have the ultimate control over people, Hui Ye had said, but Aiden strangely forgot.
He spoke slowly, moved deliberately, and smiled small.
He curated expressions and his body language.
He utilized techniques to help Brendan and not himself, and his own heart fluttered with warmth, spreading it with every beat against his chest.
“Wait, I don’t understand what you just did. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Aiden paused at the words. His hand reached for his cellphone and silenced it. “I’ll just go over it again.” Aiden shifted even closer toward Brendan, writing out the steps. “Got it?”
Brendan stared and tipped his head, but the smallest smile finally appeared at the corner of Brendan’s mouth that had been frozen in a frown. “Actually, yeah, I think so.”
Brendan’s smile turned wider and brighter. The familiar warmth in Brendan’s voice and eyes returned in full when he arrived at the right answer. What is he worried about? Look at him. He’s improving so quickly.
Aiden unknowingly scooted even closer, angling his body so close that his shoulder jostled into Brendan’s. He opened his mouth.
“It’s fine. Don’t apologize.” Brendan didn’t look up, working diligently on the problems. “You’re helping me right now. Don’t you dare apologize.”
The warmth of Brendan’s words transferred to the tips of Aiden’s ears. He nodded. “I won’t apologize,” he whispered.
Brendan nodded and continued solving questions.
Breaths echoing like horns in his ears, Aiden moved away. He pressed his hand against his burning chest. Stop heart. His chest pounded harder.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Brendan suddenly asked.
Aiden jumped in his chair. “What?”
Brendan leaned on his arm against the table and stared at Aiden’s face. His blond hair gently fell against his eyes. “You’re going to be a great teacher. It made me excited for you. That’s all.”
Brendan turned away, returning to his math problems.
Aiden’s burning chest twisted. Tears welled up in his eyes.
He scrubbed them away before Brendan could notice. Do you really think so? He wanted to ask out loud, but before he could, Javier hopped over. “All right, switch. I’m not making progress with Christina, and you seem to have better luck with Brendan, so I’m going to take over now and you help her.”
“You suck at tutoring, you know that?” Christina called from the other table.
“Yeah, sure.” Aiden moved out of the chair and sat down beside Christina.
She tipped her head. “Are you all right?”
Aiden blinked in surprise.
“You look upset is all.”
“I…” His voice hitched outside of his control, and he forced a breath to interrupt the cry stuck in his throat. “I was just thinking about how I want to be a teacher,” he whispered.
He clutched his hands and squeezed his eyes to prevent any more tears from leaking out.
Brendan said the words to him so easily, so nonchalantly.
His words opened a door to a future that Aiden never saw himself in, but a vision struck.
In a classroom, he learned his students’ names.
He decorated the walls with cartoon characters explaining difficult concepts.
A bookshelf sat in the corner, filled to the brim with various picture books, chapter books, and graphic novels.
His students moaned and groaned over difficult questions, and he swooped in with a smile, watching the stress ease from their tiny, scrunched foreheads only to be replaced with a proud swelling of the chest and the straightening of their backs.
He saw himself having fun the same way he was having fun tutoring Brendan, and the vision struck his heart with fervor and pain.
“I want to be a teacher,” he repeated. He continued squeezing his eyes, but the tears escaped from underneath, dripping down his cheeks.
He opened his eyes, ashamed, but Christina just listened. She nodded. “Then be a teacher, Aiden. Be whatever you want to be.”
But I can’t. He scooted forward and asked to see Christina’s exam. A swirl of joy and sorrow intermingled inside him, and he sagged in exhaustion at the both warring inside his heart. As the night continued, as Christina started to understand, sorrow won over the joy. I can’t be a teacher.
Even if his stepsiblings and stepmother didn’t love him, he didn’t have it in his heart to abandon them.
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