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“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. Fucking grade it already.” I rubbed my hand over my face, not liking this at all.
“It’s not for a grade,” he reminded me.
“Whatever. Fucking tell me how fucked I am, then.”
He raised an eyebrow, coming back to sit at the table, taking the test and the pen back. “You don’t like taking tests, huh?”
“Who the fuck likes taking tests?”
He shrugged and I rolled my eyes.
“Youlike taking tests.”
“I don’t hate it,” he admitted. “But a lot of people do. It’s stressful. That’s why we’re going to make sure when Friday comes, there’s no stress to fuck you up.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I’d like to see that magic trick.”
* * *
“Well, I have good news,”he finally told me, about seventy-five hours after he sent me away from the table for being distracting and obnoxious and spinning the pen around, and I’d spelled out every swear word and insult I could think of on the freezer, getting creative with the spelling and making up some new ones because there definitely weren’t enough magnets.
Good news seemed unlikely. “What?” I asked, turning around to look at him.
“You passed.”
That seemed even more unlikely. “I thought it wasn’t for a grade?”
“It’s not, smart ass. But if it were, this would be a C. So you’d still be close to the edge as far as staying off AP, but technically you’d be hanging on as long as you kept doing well on everything else.”
“Wait,really?Likeseriously?Like I’m... Like I…”
He nodded, smiling, reaching across and patting the table, calling me back to sit down. “Like you’re going to pass. I keep telling you, you’re learning more than you think. This is good.Really good,Logan.And we have the whole week to bring it up higher, really pull you out of the danger zone, give you a buffer going into the next section.”
I sat back down, feeling stunned. I had a week to spare, and I was already clued in enough to make my grade. That seemed… well, like a lie, actually. But also like something part of me didn’t want to be true.
“And then what?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“I become like a genius at chemistry and don’t need your help anymore. Then what?”
Seemed pretty obvious the answer would be then you go back where you actually belong because there’s no fucking reason for you to be here. Also seemed pretty obvious that was a fucked up way to look at things and probably not what he was thinking it all, but right now, the fact that Ihadto be here, for grades, for school, for football, was a big part of what was keeping me sane.
He reached across the table and grabbed my hand, and I let him. “This is a very good practice test,” he told me slowly. “And I’m very proud of how well you’re doing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Passing doesn’t mean you’re ready to ditch your tutoring sessions. We’re gonna have to keep studying for awhile. Just to make sure you stay on track. With everything.”
I twisted my mouth into an embarrassed little knot, all that soft, fake bullshit I needed to hear filling me up inside, reassuring me, telling me I wasn’t going anywhere without making it seem like I was the one begging to stay. Thank fucking god he could read me like a book and liked playing games as much as I did, because I didn’t know any other way to get through this. Whatever this was.
“Okay.” I nodded and bounced back up from the chair, going over to the freezer and scattering all the letters again, and starting to line them up, building an offense and a defense as best I could. “Come over here. I’m gonna teach you a fishhook play.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I slid into my usual seat in the libraryon Tuesday, ready to fuck around under the table again, or at least give it a go, but right away I could tell something was up. There were no cards spread out on the table or even any dumbass practice test waiting for me. Instead, The Beast was frowning at his phone. I didn’t like seeing him frown. Unless it was at me. Sometimes I liked that.
“What’s up? Everything okay?” I grabbed for the stack of cards that were still rubber banded together and started snapping one of the rubber bands, making a loud flicking noise that was annoying as fuck, but I couldn’t stop doing it.
