Tutoring my Rival Boy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Room Nine

The first session goes badly; Leander writes a right answer and crosses it out. Chris leaves for a secret night job.

Ashgrove Hall was the only dorm with a fireplace in the lobby.

Chris walked past it at 8:58 with his calculus book under his arm and his heart beating harder than it should have.

Room nine was at the end of the second floor.

It was a corner suite, with a desk the size of a car and a couch.

Leander opened the door in a gray sweater and sock feet.

"You're early," he said.

"I'm on time."

"You're early, and you're breathing like you ran."

"I climbed stairs."

"Fine."

Leander stepped back to let him in.

Chris looked around once, quickly, and felt something sour settle in his chest.

The room was bigger than the apartment where his mother lived.

A silver lacrosse trophy sat on the shelf beside three framed photos of the same woman.

She had Leander's green eyes.

Chris looked away before Leander could catch him looking.

"Sit," Leander said, and hopped up on his own desk.

"You sit," Chris said.

"The chair is for the student."

"I'm paying for this."

"Your father is paying, and he is paying me."

Leander blinked, and for half a second something moved behind his face.

Then he slid off the desk and dropped into the chair with a dramatic sigh.

Chris opened the calculus book to chapter four.

"Derivatives," he said.

"You know what they are?"

"Vaguely."

"Say what one is."

"A thing that makes my head hurt."

Chris waited.

Leander waited back, chin in his hand, with a look of great patience.

"It's the slope of a curve at one point," Chris said at last, and slid a pencil across.

"Do number one."

Leander took the pencil and spun it between his fingers.

Then he threw it across the room.

It bounced off the fireplace tools, and the clatter rang for a full second.

"Oops," Leander said.

Chris stood, walked over, and picked up the pencil.

He came back and set it on the page, point first, a little harder than he needed to.

"Do number one."

"Or what?"

"Or I take the envelope Friday for an hour of watching you sulk, and I tell the dean."

"You wouldn't."

"I'd enjoy it."

Leander looked at him for a long moment.

Then he laughed, short and surprised, and bent over the page.

He wrote slowly, with his tongue pressed to his teeth.

Chris leaned in to read upside down.

The answer was correct.

It was neat, correct, and even simplified.

Chris opened his mouth.

Leander dragged a line through it and wrote a different number, which was wrong.

"There," he said.

"Told you."

Chris looked at the crossed-out line.

He told himself he had imagined it.

A person who could not do derivatives did not write one perfectly and then cross it out.

But Leander had his chin up and his green eyes wide, daring him to say something.

So Chris said, "That's wrong," and started from the beginning.

For an hour Leander got everything wrong.

He got it wrong in different and creative ways.

He confused the power rule with the product rule, called a variable "the squiggly one," and asked whether math could be done in pen.

Chris answered every question in the same flat voice.

The sixth time, he kept his teeth together.

At 9:48, Leander yawned, and Chris glanced at the clock.

He closed his book too fast.

"We're done."

"We have twelve minutes."

"The hour counts. Do pages forty to forty-two by Thursday."

"Why are you in such a hurry?"

"I have somewhere to be."

"Where?"

"None of your business, Ashgrove."

Leander tilted his head.

"You never have anywhere to be."

"You've been keeping track?"

"You're in the library every night until close," Leander said, too quickly.

"Everybody knows that."

Chris shoved his book in his bag and went to the door.

"Thursday," he said.

"At nine," Leander said behind him.

"Don't be late."

Chris went down the stairs two at a time and out into the cold.

October air bit through his blazer.

The grounds crew expected him at the Field House at ten, and the Field House was a ten-minute walk.

He cut across the lawn toward the lake path.

At the edge of the grass he looked back once.

The corner window of room nine was still lit.

A tall shape stood at the glass, holding the curtain aside.

Chris turned and walked on, down the dark path to the water.

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