Chapter 1 #2
I look at him. He’s still shirtless and is brandishing a banana.
There is a smudge of something on his jaw that I think is Sharpie.
The boy is going to play in the NHL someday, and I cannot fully believe that the world is going to allow it.
I’m gripping onto a tutoring form like it’s going to end my career before it’s even started.
Keeping the Hawthorne House rules is easy.
Not falling in love has always been the number one rule.
“Aye,” I say.
“Aye,” Stanley bellows, throwing up both hands. “The rule stays! Hawthorne House Bylaw, season twenty-four-twenty-five — no falling in love. Effective immediately. Thank you for coming to—”
“Put a shirt on,” Rowan says.
“—my TED talk.”
He puts a shirt on quickly, smiling with triumph. The shirt’s inside out. Nobody tells him.
I take the stairs two at a time and shut my bedroom door behind me, and the noise of the house cuts down to about half — Stanley’s voice rising again about something, Blue’s groan — and I sit down on the edge of my bed and just look at the wall for a second.
The wall holds my schedule. I am, increasingly, a deeply scheduled person.
There’s a paper calendar on it. There’s a workout block schedule next to that.
There are two photos thumbtacked above the desk — one of my dad in his office at Lakeshore High, sitting at his principal’s desk in a tie and pretending to look stern, and one of Gianna at her high school graduation, in her gown, pulling on the tassel of her cap and laughing because I had just said something to her that I cannot remember anymore.
I’m in a Camden hoodie in the photo. She was eighteen. It was three years ago.
Well, it’s time for another thing to write down on the wall. I take out my phone and the flyer. I dial the number. It rings twice.
“Camden Tutoring Center, this is Karen.”
“Hi, Karen. This is Benson Reeve. I—”
“Wolves?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Coach sent you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mm-hmm.” I can hear her clicking. “What’s the class?”
“STAT 215.”
“Preferred times?”
“Uh — afternoons are best. After 3:30. I have practice in the mornings and classes.”
“How does Tuesdays and Thursdays sound?”
“Either’s fine.”
More clicking. “All right. We’ll match you today. You’ll get an email with your tutor’s name and your first session.” She pauses for a second. “Within forty-eight hours, that work?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Call if you need anything.” She hangs up.
The speed of that conversation made me feel like I had been processed by a benevolent DMV. Then I get up because Rowan is yelling something that sounds like food.
“Sit down,” Rowan says when I get back to the kitchen, “before he eats it all.”
“I am not going to eat it all,” Stanley says with his mouth full of food, eating most of it.
A frying pan sits in the middle of the table and has an entire frittata in it. There’s a pile of bacon, a stack of pancakes, and a small bowl of cut strawberries. Rowan is the cook of the house, and he always makes sure we’re well fed.
“Why is there this much food?” Blue asks, sitting down.
“Because I went to Costco.”
“You went to Costco at what time?”
“Seven.”
“Damn,” Stanley mutters. “That’s dedication.”
Percy’s book is next to his plate, face down.
Stanley gestures at me with a fork. “Reeve, so what’s this about missing the home opener?”
“I need to get a tutor right away and bring up my grade,” I say.
The table falls silent.
“Shit,” Blue says. “The semester just started.”
Rowan says, “I had a tutor sophomore year,” he slides a slice of frittata onto my plate. “For that comp class. The guy I got was fine. It was helpful.”
“Oh yeah?” Stanley says.
“Yeah. Helped me pass. I literally cannot remember his name. He knew nothing about hockey.” He throws a forkful of food in his mouth and nods.
“That is the dream tutor experience,” Blue says pointedly. “I had one freshman year, and all he wanted to talk about was hockey.”
“Should be fine,” I agree, picking up my fork. “I just don’t want to miss the opener.”
Stanley shakes his head. “Definitely not.”
An echo of agreements buzzes around the table.
My phone screen lights up, so I pick it up because it might be from my dad. I haven’t texted him back about the Sunday call. It’s an email.
Subject: Tutoring Match Confirmation — STAT 215 From: Camden University Tutoring Center
Hi Benson, you’ve been matched with Lucy Moss for STAT 215. Your first session is scheduled for Tuesday at 4:00 PM, Library, Third Floor, Study Room 3B. It will run every Tuesday and Thursday. Lucy will reach out separately to confirm. Good luck with your studies! BATC
My mouth opens as I read it. Then I close it and read it again, because of the name.
That’s — that’s my sister’s roommate. That’s Gianna’s Lucy.
That’s the girl who lives over the Vietnamese place on Main, the math-and-psych one, the one Gianna has mentioned before.
I have never officially met her. I’ve seen her name exactly once, on a Venmo request, when I covered Gianna for groceries last spring and Lucy paid me back $12.
43 for what the memo line said was the little salad cucumbers, sorry! !
That’s it. That’s what I know about Lucy Moss. And she’s my Stats tutor. There couldn’t be another Lucy Moss, could there?
“Reeve.”
I look up.
Stanley is holding his fork at me like a pointer.
“What?”
“What’s on your phone?” He mocks me, holding an invisible phone in his hands.
I roll my eyes and set the phone down. “I got a tutor,” I say, “I think it might be my sister’s roommate.”
The table goes quiet. Rowan stops chewing. Blue lowers his fork. Percy looks up from his book without lifting his head, which is the most attention he has given a conversation today.
Stanley’s eyes go big. “The math girl?”
“What?” I question. How the hell would he know that? “Math girl?”
He nods. “The math girl.”
“Stanley.”
“So you know her?” Blue asks.
I shake my head and take a bite of bacon. “No.”
Stanley says, “You’ve never met her?”
“Not exactly.”
Rowan shakes his head. “But she’s your sister’s roommate? I don’t understand.”
I shrug. “I’ve never been in the same room as her.”
“How?” Rowan asks.
Stanley adds, “Yeah, tell us how the hell that’s possible if she lives with your sister.”
“I don’t know, man, my sister and I –– our circles don’t — I don’t go to her apartment. She doesn’t want me over there. When she comes to home games, I don’t think she’s ever brought her roommate. I don’t bring my sister here to keep her away from—”
“It’s a red flag if she doesn’t come to games.”
“It’s not a red flag, Stan—” What the hell?
Stanley leans across the table, setting down his fork. He has put his hands flat on the wood like a man delivering very important news. “Senior year. Day one. The universe — the universe, Benson — has handed you a hot tutor who is also your sister’s best friend.”
I flinch. “I don’t know if she’s hot.”
His eyes widen. “She’s hot. Friends of sisters are always hot. It’s a thing.”
“He has a point about it being a thing,” Percy says, mildly, picking his book back up. “Statistically.”
“Et tu, Deveroux.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Pers, I will throw this banana at your head.”
“You ate the banana.”
Rowan exhales through his nose, the long Rowan exhale, the one that says I am the only adult here and the burden is heavy. ”Okay. Hey. Benson. It’s a tutor. It’s not that deep.”
“It’s not that deep,” I agree.
“We have the first Hawthorne House rule to follow,” Stanley says.
My phone rings. It rings face-up, on the table, where everyone can see it, and the screen lights up with Gianna and a photo of her at fifteen wearing a homemade Halloween costume of a dustpan. I have had this contact photo for six years, and I’m never changing it.
The boys all look at the phone. It keeps ringing.
“Oh,” Stanley says, slowly, his entire face starting to do something terrible, “oh this is going to be good—”
I pick up the phone and walk into the living room.
“Benson Allen Reeve.”
I swallow. “That’s a lot of names this early in the day.”
“Why,” she asks, “did you request Lucy as your tutor?”
I stop pacing. “I didn’t request anyone specific. I called the tutoring center thirty minutes ago and gave them my class.”
“Well. I got a text from her ninety seconds ago that was your name in all caps and a screenshot of the email. I’m pretty sure she’s losing her mind right now.”
I sit down on the arm of the couch, confused. “Why is she losing her mind?”
“Because you’re my brother.”
She doesn’t explain, but I don’t need her to. We’ve done this before with her other friends. It was mainly back in high school when I loved the attention.
She says, “I texted her back and told her to cancel.”
“Don’t tell her to cancel,” I deadpan.
“Benson—”
“Don’t, G. I’m serious.”
She raises her voice a little. “You’re my brother, and she’s my roommate.”
“I need a tutor.”
“You can use me.”
“Coach said I have to get one through the college.”
I can hear her on the other end deciding whether to push it.
“Coach said,” she asks.
“Yes.”
“You’re failing.”
“I’m — I’m not failing. I’m not in great shape.”
“Stat 215?”
“Stat 215.”
She exhales hard into the phone. I hear her sit down on something. Through the wall, I can hear Stanley laughing at something.
“G, it’s two hours a week. We’re going to be talking about math.”
“I cannot do this again.”
There it is. I close my eyes and inhale. She’s terrified that I’m going to fuck things up like I did in high school. Funny thing is that was four years ago. You’d think she’d move on by now.
“G. Nobody is doing anything.”
“You don’t get it.”
“I do get it.”
“You don’t, Benson. You don’t. You walk into rooms and people — you do a thing. You don’t even know you’re doing it. I’m not letting it happen with Lucy.”
I stare at the ground in disbelief. She’s making this big of a deal out of this. It’s tutoring for crying out loud.
“She’s had a hard year. I’m not going to be the person who hands her to you and watches her get—” She stops. She does not finish that one either. When she speaks again her voice is smaller. “Just promise me you’ll tone it down.”
“Tone what down?”
“All of it. The captain thing. The voice. The whole — the whole Benson Reeve thing. Bring sixty percent.”
“I’ll be normal, G.”
“Listen to her. She’s really good at math. Let her teach you. Don’t — don’t make it a thing.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you mean it.”
She is quiet for a long stretch, and I let her have it. Stanley is still laughing downstairs. The white wall in front of me has a small chip in the paint near the doorframe that I have been looking at for the last three minutes.
“I’ll talk to you later, G. It’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be weird.”
“I won’t be weird.”
“Don’t captain her. I’m serious. Love ya.”
“Love ya too.”
She ends the call.
I stand in the living room with the phone in my hand. My sister has spent three years keeping her roommate as far away from me as possible, and I have been on the other end of every one of those years watching her do it and not knowing how to fix it.
I make my way back to the kitchen, catching the framed photo that Rowan put up last year — all of us Hawthorne House boys at a tailgate before it got cold.
Stanley has Blue in a headlock. Percy is looking at the camera like he is being forced to be there, which he was.
I am in the middle, not laughing, but doing the thing my dad does in photos where his mouth is closed.
Rowan took it on a timer and ran into frame at the end and got there exactly one second late, so there is just a blur of him on the right that is, I think, the funniest part of the picture.
I look at it for a second, knowing these are the best years of our lives.
Hence why Stanley is passionate about keeping our house rules. He’s trying to preserve these times.
“Reeve.” Stanley’s voice comes from the kitchen. He walks to the TV and grabs a remote controller. I can hear the FIFA menu music starting up.
Rowan says, “No, I’m not playing. I have to do the dishes.”
“I’ll play but only if I’m Brazil,” Blue says.
Percy walks to the couch and takes a controller.
“Reeve, we need you—”
I put my phone in my pocket and take one more look at the photo. Then I go to the couch and play FIFA.
Stanley nods his head, handing me a remote. “What’d your sister say?”
“Disappointed that I’m failing,” I mutter.
He laughs.
My phone buzzes, and I ignore it. I don’t need my sister making me more anxious than I already feel.
Tomorrow is tomorrow and today is fine.
The game starts up, and we play.