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Blue: Interesting
“That isThe Iliad. You have O’Connor, right? She has her class read this every single year. It’s a bit harder to understand, so I’ve written lots of notes in the margins. Feel free to use anything you see there.”
Flipping through the pages was like watching a rainbow form. The colors scattered over the pages. Heknewhe’d picked the right tutor.
“Everything you need to know is clearly marked out in green. If it’s in orange, it will likely show up on a test because it did before. If it’s red, it’ll probably not be super important and Yellow is mostly anything you might need to memorize. I bet if you focus on just the green and orange, you’ll pass just fine.” She slid into her seat next to him, and pointed at the different colors as she said them. A bucket of relief flooded over him. It was like having a personalized treasure map that told you exactly how many steps to take to where the gold was hidden.
“What about the blue?” he asked, his eye-catching on a single blue line in a sea of greens and reds and oranges.
The blue line was one sentence:Hateful to me as the gate of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
She shrugged. “You can just ignore those. They’re mainly just things that I personally found interesting or stood out. You won’t necessarily need them for anything.”
Unlike most of the highlighted lines, the blue had no scribbled annotation next to it—leaving it waiting like an open-ended question.
He shut it and smiled up at her. This was all shaping out to be much easier than he expected.
“Thank you. This is amazing.”
She shook her head, denying his gratitude. “Don’t thank me. This isn’t a favor, it’s a deal. If you’re grateful, stick to your end of it.” She handed him one of the notebooks and pulled forward the thick physics textbook. “Now let’s get started.”
* * *
So maybe ‘easy’ was a bit of an exaggeration. Or perhaps he was overestimating his skills.
An hour in and his brain was fried.
Tully’s markings and notes did their job in narrowing down what he should focus on, but they did little in way of making it easier to understand. There were a significant amount of yellow lines in the physics book, and trying to memorize that many things was starting to jumble up his thoughts.
At least she was better at explaining how these things worked than Mr. Adams who rambled more than taught. When she told him to write, he wrote. When she said to make a note, he did.
Tully, on the other hand, looked like she had another three hours in her. And the worst part was she could take three more hours if she wanted because it was only six and the sun hadn’t even gone down yet.
She pointed at a green line and rambled something on about laws and motions. He blinked and looked at her face as if watching her say it would make it make more sense. But in all honesty, watching her was more distracting.
It’s hard to focus on equations when all he could think about was how her brow furrowed in concentration as she spoke in big words, or how she nibbled on the end of her pencil.
She really should break that habit—it’s bad for the teeth.
“Knock knock.”
Tully paused her lesson and Nathan snapped out of his boredom trance as a new voice interrupted the learning, followed by two small knocks not even a second before opening the door.
Sandy peeked her head in and smiled at the two of them, before opening the door all the way. She was terrible at making sure the coast wasactuallyclear before intruding on his space. It was the main reason he usually only brought girls home when his parents weren’t around.
She sure was lucky that they really were studying.
“I hope you kids are hungry. I made a roast.”
Indeed she did. With the door open he could smell the meat wafting into the room, and his stomach responded by turning over. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this hungry. Even basketball practice didn’t leave his stomach so empty.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Rondeau, but I should be getting home,” Tully answered right away, without giving the offer much consideration.
Nathan furrowed his brow. After all the help she’d just given him, he wasn’t going to let her just leave. “You should stay, it’s the least I could do for your help.” He stood up too. Tutoring or not, fake girlfriend or not, she was still a guest, and he’d always been taught to feed a guest. His encouragement didn’t faze her. Tully was already packing a few of her pens and pencils, but she left the books she’d brought for him on the table.
“My parents will be expecting me for dinner. I think my mom is making stroganoff, the kind with lots of mushrooms in it. Really good stuff, don’t want to miss it,” she said, and even though it made sense, her answer was rushed—a little bit jumbled, like she wasn’t quite sure what to say—but he could tell from the set of her shoulder that was the only answer he’d get right now so he let it go. She gave him a tight smile though, then turned to his mother. “Anyways, thank you so much for the offer. I really should be going.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and held her hand out one more time—a set of cards was in it. “Some flashcards for the stuff we just went over. I’ll be testing you on those later, so you better study them.”
He took them from her and nodded, grateful. “Yes, ma’am.”
