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His frown moved from his phone to the cards, and he glanced around and then reached over and put his hand on top of mine, curling his fingers and holding me still, moving the cards away. “Yeah. It’s fine. I just… They want me to come in to work this afternoon.”
“Work?” I repeated, like I didn’t know the word at all. “What do you mean? You have a job? Like a job-job? Where? Doing what?”
People had jobs, it shouldn’t be so surprising or disappointing, but it was.
“Yeah, just a couple days a week usually. At the Scholastic Center. In Elderbrook.”
I went poking through my brain, trying to place why that sounded familiar, and then remembered the yellow fliers that used to go out every quarter stuck inside report card envelopes like a hint. Or maybe teachers just got a commission, who knows. “Are you talking about that homework place?”
“Yeah. I’m an education aide.”
I stared at him, blinking as I jiggled the words around in my head. “You mean a tutor?”
“Not a tutor, really. I just help with homework. And college applications sometimes. And study skills. Time management and gamification, stuff like that. I make a lot of sticker charts.”
I slowly took in this information, imagining him playing teacher to a bunch of third graders and viscerally hating it so many ways at once it sent shock waves through me. I wasnotjealous of him spending time with a bunch of dumb kids. Except I guess I probably was. Yeah, I was a quality person.
“All the stuff you teach me…” I said slowly. “With the flashcards and the stupid games. You’re using kids’ tricks on me. Because I’m an idiot.”
His nostrils flared and he scowled, seriously Beast-like, and I knew he didn’t like when I said things like that, but I didn’t like being scammed with baby toys, so maybe we were even.
“No, you’re not,” he told me. “School trains people to think they have to learn in the most boring, serious, straightforward way possible and if you can’t there’s something wrong with you. That’s not true. Nothing makes those methods for kids. I teach you differently, but it’s just another way to learn.”
“You teach grade school kids with flashcards, yes or no?”
He pressed his lips together. “Yes. And high school kids. And I use them on myself.”
“Magnets?”
He nodded. “We use them for spelling. And math sometimes. It helps.”
“It helpskids.” The stupid thing was, I kept repeating that, but I didn’t even care about that part. I liked the card games and the magnets and Periodical Pirates. And they fucking worked. But I liked them beingmineandspecial,not something everyone did.
“It helpspeople,” he corrected me. “It’s not about age or IQ or anything else, it’s just about how different brains work different ways. Some of them need a different kind of stimulation to lock in. It’s not a big deal, people just don’t want to take the time to teach outside-the-box methods. But—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Whatever. Save it for your term paper. So when do you get… home?”
That word just sort of slid out, natural off my tongue even though it sounded so loud and weird once it hit the air. It was like I was already used to saying it, like I hadn’t been mocking him for thinking we were living together like two days ago or some shit.
“Around six-thirty…” He paused, something else obviously on his mind. “It’s not that far away. Couple of bus stops. Do you want to come meet me when you’re done with practice? You could do some of your homework there and then we could go home together?”
I snorted. “Do I want to drag my tired ass across town after practice so you can babysit me for half an hour? Hard pass. I don’t even know if practice will be over by then. Ollie Prep this week, remember? Could go late.”
That was true, and it’s not like I really cared what he did after school, except I guess I’d been thinking he’d show up at my practice again, that we’d go home and fool around and he’d… make me a snack and ask about my day and helpmewith my homework, and that was just straight up ridiculous when I admitted it to myself, but that was what I wanted. Not him across town helping somebody else. Some stupid kid who didn’t have a scholarship riding on learning to spell cat.
And if I couldn’t have that, I wanted him tomakeme come and sit with him at his stupid job. But instead, he was totally reasonable.
“Okay. Then I want you to go home, get something to eat, and make sure you hydrate after practice. And start on your homework. When I get home I’ll make dinner and we’ll have all night to work on chemistry.”
I wasn’t too sure how I felt about him telling me what to do instead of being there to do it with me. I liked being bossed around by him. To a point. But this was edging into something else maybe, because my stomach felt weird.
“What if I don’t really feel like doing any of that? Homework and hydrating.”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the table, being annoyingly patient, actually curious when I was just being an asshole because… who knows. Because I was an asshole. “Why wouldn’t you want to?” he asked me.
“Maybe I don’t like being told what to do.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. You don’t have to like it. But these are basic things you should be doing anyway. Eat, drink, homework. And you already know that. So I’m not telling you. I’m just reminding you.”
