Tutoring my Rival Boy novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Flashlight

Chris did not sleep that night.

He lay in the loft with the pencil case on his chest and listened to the lake.

Why would Leander Ashgrove keep a stranger's pencil case for six months?

Why would he give it back now, without a speech, without a joke, without asking for anything?

It made no sense, and it made Chris angrier the longer he thought about it.

He was supposed to hate Leander.

Hating Leander was simple, and he had relied on it all fall.

At seven he was up, shaking the cold from his arms.

He climbed down the ladder, locked the shed, and walked back to Fenn House to shower before anyone woke.

The rest of the week went the same way.

Classes, dish line with Finley, a fast dinner, nine o'clock with Leander, then the Field House, then the lake.

Leander's quizzes crept upward, sixty-one, sixty-four, fifty-nine.

He still threw pencils, and he still called Chris "Scholarship" every time.

But he asked more questions now, and sometimes they were good ones.

Chris answered all of them, and tried not to notice that he looked forward to the next.

On Friday he had asked the question straight.

"Why did you keep my pencil case?"

"It was lying in the rain," Leander said.

"You went back for it in April and didn't find it, because it was in my room."

"You knew I was looking?"

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