“You can come if you want,” I tell him. “I don’t really care either way.”
The assistant principal is sitting behind her desk in her office, her eyebrows pulled together while she stares at something on the screen.
I don’t bother knocking, I just walk right on in, throwing my hands in the air. “I can’t be tutored by a student!”
She startles at my sudden appearance, nearly knocking over a half-empty coffee cup on her desk. “Shit!” she breathes. She puts a hand to her chest. “Natalie, you scared me. What on earth is going on?”
Her eyes flit from me to Jonah, but she still doesn’t get it. I repeat myself. “Jonah can’t be my tutor. He’s a student.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she says, folding her hands together over her chest. “Do you and Jonah have a personal conflict that would prevent you from working well together?”
“No ma’am,” Jonah says. “We don’t even know each other. I’m happy to work with her.”
I shoot him a look and he flinches. “Mrs.…” I exhale and realize I’m going to have to call her by her name. “Mrs. Reese, you said I’d have to be tutored but you didn’t say it would be by a student. I thought you meant someone professional.”
Her lips form a flat line. “Honey, peer-to-peer tutoring is how it’s done in high school. You’re free to hire an outside tutor all you want, but for school purposes, we always match students up with other students. In fact, most of them prefer it this way. Isn’t tutoring with a friend better than with a teacher?”
“He’s not my friend,” I say without thinking. I turn to Jonah. “No offense… I just don’t know you.”
He shrugs.
I look back at Mrs. Reese. “I’m just not sure I want to be tutored by a fellow student. We’re the same age…it’s just…insulting.”
She barks out a laugh and then quickly composes herself. I grit my teeth because while I don’t appreciate being laughed at, I know I should probably keep my cool right now.
“Natalie, you may be peers in age but Jonah is well equipped to tutor you.” She turns her gaze on him. “What’s your GPA, Jonah?”
“Four-point-oh, ma’am.”
“And yours is hovering around the two-point-oh range if I recall,” she says to me.
My cheeks flush red, which is another example of why I shouldn’t be tutored by a student. It’s embarrassing that he knows how badly I’m failing my classes. If I were taught by a random adult, I wouldn’t really care.
I heave a sigh. “I guess I’m not getting out of this, am I?”
“Of course you can get out of it,” she says rather sarcastically. She picks up her office phone and puts it to her ear. “Let me just call the local McDonald’s and see if they’re hiring a high school dropout. Maybe in twenty years of hard work, you’ll be able to make assistant manager.”
I scowl as my cheeks turn even redder. “I get it,” I say with a sigh.
She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Jonah, you let me know if she gives you any trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. I shoot him another look and he pales. I can tell he wants to apologize to me for being rude, but he won’t because he’s in front of an administrator.
I hold back an eye roll of epic proportions and walk out of the office, not caring at all if Jonah is following me this time.
I’m steaming mad and horribly embarrassed, and as if having detention twice a week for two months wasn’t bad enough, now I have to spend it being tutored by a nerdy guy who’s the same age as me.
What the hell kind of crap is that?
It’s not like I’m some druggie delinquent who skips school to get high and break into cars. I’m trying to take care of my mom here. But the school doesn’t see it that way. They don’t care if my intentions are noble, they only care that I can memorize chemistry equations that I’ll most certainly never need in real life.
The hallways are nearly empty now and I walk a little slower on my way back toward the parking lot. All of my energy has been zapped from that conversation with the woman who married my ex step-dad. This whole situation just blows.
I hear his footsteps jogging to catch up with me but I don’t acknowledge him, not even when Jonah falls into step next to me. He does smell pretty good for a nerd. Most guys smell like sweat from athletics or like too much of that cheap men’s body spray. But not Jonah. He smells like clean. Like he just showered. He looks so put together, so organized and creased. He probably never smells dirty.
“I’m sorry about this,” he says beside me. “I tutor to make my college applications look good, and they just call me in and tell me who to tutor each week. If it makes you feel any better, I think I’m the best one out of the other five student tutors.”
I look over at him and he’s smiling, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Why do you say that?”
