Chapter 4
Four
YouTube short by @moodymakeup.
The library is spacious and well-lit, with tall bookshelves crammed full.
Groups of students study at tables around the room or laugh softly, their faces lit up by each other’s phones.
I used to love to read before my social life took over everything, and I still feel a little twinge of happiness at walking inside Monte Ville High’s library.
The smell of the books—paper and leather—wafts over me.
I walk past a table where Nick Faust and some other members of the football team are seated. Nick mimes barfing on the floor, and the other boys laugh.
My face flushes, and I hurry on. I weave through green and white couches and pass a motivational poster on the wall that reads, “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” I wave to Summer Folley, one of my fellow cheerleaders, and when I walk past her I catch a whiff of her perfume. I pause.
“Summer, are you wearing the new Dior Miss perfume?”
Summer’s already large brown eyes widen. “Yes, I am. Do you like it?”
“I’m dying to get my hands on a bottle,” I say. “Later, you’ll have to tell me where you found it. Right now, I have to go. See you at cheer?”
“Of course.” Summer nods. Her mouth opens, but she hesitates.
I pause. “What?”
“What Noah did to you wasn’t right.” Summer’s eyes are full of pity. “I’m sorry that happened.”
The hurt punches me in the chest again, but I give her my best smile. “I’m fine.” I hurry on before I start to cry.
Despite my worries about people thinking I’m stupid, I signed up for a tutor. Chemistry just about killed me last year, and I’m going to need all the help I can get if I want to keep at least a 3.3 GPA and stay on the cheer team.
I don’t know who the school assigned to tutor me, only that he’ll be sitting at a specific table in the back that’s mostly hidden by surrounding bookshelves—the place we’ll be least likely to be spotted. So, I head through the rows of shelves until I reach the back corner of the library.
The gossip that would make its way through the school if it got out that I was being tutored would destroy me. Callie Carter, famous for her stupidity. Callie Carter can do it all . . . except use her brain.
I can’t make it through organic chemistry without help, but I can’t let anyone find out about it.
Then I see my tutor, and I stop.
It’s the boy with the chunky fantasy book who sits alone at lunch day after day.
He’s sitting at a round table, hunched over an open notebook and scribbling away.
His warm brown skin stands out against the white paper, and his black hair is loosely curly.
Thick brows are turned down slightly in concentration, and a pair of dark gray headphones—the kind that cover your whole ear—dangle around his neck.
He’s not bad looking, and I wonder why he’s been sitting alone all week.
Not that I’ve been paying attention or anything.
I walk up to him, and my footsteps echo in this quiet corner, but he doesn’t even glance up from what he’s doing.
His t-shirt has a mountain image and says, “One does not simply walk into Mordor”.
I take a peek at what he’s so intently drawing, and it looks like a map, with large swooping strokes to represent mountain ranges and tiny triangles for trees.
“What’s that?”
The boy jumps. He looks up and closes his notebook in a leisurely way, not how I would snap it shut if anyone caught me drawing a fantastical map. The notebook’s cover is blue and plastered with stickers of dragons, trolls, and goblins.
“Dungeons and dragons?” I ask, reading what he’s written on it in block letters.
“Uhhh . . . yeah.” The boy stands and extends his hand. I shake it. “I’m Zeke. And you must be Callie?”
“Yep.” I take a seat next to him and haul my chemistry book out of my bookbag.
“Do you play?” Zeke asks. He looks like he’s about to smile, but I think that’s just his normal expression.
I set the book on the table with a dull thud. “Dungeons and dragons? Oh, no.” Though I’ve kind of secretly always thought it sounded fun. “So you’re my tutor? Are you new around here?” I’m curious about this boy who sits alone and isn’t afraid to wear what he likes.
“Yeah. We moved in a few months ago.”
“Cool.” I reach into my bag and take out a notebook and pen. “Well, Zeke, I’d rather people didn’t know I’m being tutored.” I bite my lip and hope that didn’t sound rude. “It’s just that . . . you know . . .”
“What’s wrong with being tutored?”
I stiffen. “Nothing! Nothing at all. It’s fine . . . for other people. But me . . . people talk about me.” Bleh. I sound so conceited. “It’s because of my dad, Ben Carter. He’s—”
Zeke slaps the table, and I jump. “No way. Your dad is Ben Carter?”
I smile slightly, and pride fills me up. It’s not easy having a famous actor for a dad, and sometimes I wish he would do anything else, but I am proud of him for living his dream. “Yep. The one.”
Zeke grins. “Oh my holy fudge. Your dad was amazing in that last Marvel movie!”
“I’ll pass on the compliments,” I say. “But, you get it, right? A normal person could get tutoring, and no one would even notice. But me . . .”
Zeke nods. “People would talk.”
“Exactly.”
Zeke’s eyes meet mine, and his are an intense brown. “Why does it matter what they say?”
I blink. “It . . . it just does.” I think for a minute.
Mom has always worried so much about what other people think of her that I sort of absorbed her attitude without ever pausing to question why.
“When people talk about you behind your back, ripping you apart or criticizing you online, it hurts. We all want to be liked and have friends, right?”
I don’t know if I’m quite explaining myself, but Zeke nods. “Your secret is safe with me, Callie.”
“Thank you.” The conversation has unsettled me, and I’m not sure why. “Should we get started?” I ask. “I can’t get kicked out of cheer. Last year was too close.”
“If it’s that important, then I’ll do my best.”
We spend forty or so minutes going over organic chemistry equations until my head aches. No one approaches us, but every time I hear footsteps get remotely close, I freeze.
“Anything else you wanted to work on today?” Zeke asks. “A lot of people ask for my help with calculus.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Math is the one thing I’ve got down.”
“Oh, yeah?” Zeke smiles a half-smile. “Why don’t you show me, just to make sure?” Zeke writes down a derivative and looks at me with a challenge in his eyes.
Is this how nerds flirt? I can’t decide if I’m enjoying this or not.
“Challenge accepted.” I glance over the problem, and ooooh it’s tough. It’s a differentiable function with an epsilon-delta definition of the limit. Zeke wasn’t kidding around.
I attack it with a fury and actually enjoy myself. Calculus has always seemed more like a puzzle to solve than math.
I solve the problem in record time and pass the paper back to Zeke. “Done.”
Zeke’s eyebrows rise. “Very impressive.”
I blush. I’ve revealed a piece of myself that hardly anyone knows about. I can’t be seen as being too dumb, but I can’t be seen as being too smart, either. It’s ridiculous.
“Have you thought about joining the mathletes?” Zeke says. “They could use you. I’ve seen those posters all over school. They’re recruiting for a big contest or something.”
I quickly shake my head. “No. I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
I pause. All my reasons sound frivolous and silly, even in my own head. It’s not that I want to care about social standing so much, it’s just that high school has given me no other choice. I was thrust into the spotlight, and now everything I do is scrutinized.
“Again, people would talk. They have an image of me in their heads, who I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to do. The mathletes are . . .” Part of the nerd crowd, I want to say. But I don’t want to offend Zeke. “Different than me,” I finish lamely.
“I get that. Being in the spotlight is no joke,” Zeke says. “Believe it or not, I’m partially famous myself.”
“You are?”
Zeke opens YouTube on his phone. He taps on a clip of what looks like a video game walk-through.
I’ve watched Noah play a few video games, though they were shoot ‘em up, kill-all-the-aliens type of games, and this looks different. The character wearing blue with blonde hair looks familiar. Then Zeke’s voice starts playing in the video, welcoming his viewers.
“Is this your channel?” I ask.
Zeke smiles, but his shoulders hunch towards his ears, like he’s embarrassed.
“I’ve always loved playing video games, and my brothers kept asking me how to do certain things or solve the puzzles, so this was my way of sharing it with them.
People liked it, and the channel took off.
” Zeke runs a hand through his curls, and one flops onto his forehead.
“Now, occasionally random people off the street hear my voice and know who I am. It doesn’t happen super often, but it’s still weird.
There’s a surprising amount of people at this school who are into Zelda games. ”
I look at the video stats. “You have 406K subscribers? Ummm, what?”
Zeke smiles shyly. “Yeah.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Should we move on to American history, then?”
I want to ask more questions, but he seems self-conscious, so I don’t push it. “Yes, please.”