Chapter 3

All these years, I had always paid for everything myself. I bought practice books one at a time, worked through problem after problem to organize the material, then paid out of pocket to have everything printed into study packets.

After two years, I had never asked a single person in the class for a cent.

I slowly scrolled back through the chat history. It held two years' worth of conversations between my classmates and me about schoolwork.

Math was Cole Clarkson's biggest weakness. I created a tailored study plan for him, broke down the key concepts, put together a customized set of practice problems, and watched his scores climb little by little.

Melissa Ludley's grades were poor, and her family saw school as a waste of money and pressured her to drop out. I tutored her privately time and again, helped raise her scores, and kept her chance of staying in school alive.

Whenever Wendy Walters ran into a type of problem she could not solve or a concept she could not untangle, I patiently broke it down step by step and helped her overcome the hurdle.

…

I remembered every one of my classmates' weak points, gaps in their foundations, and struggles that held back their scores better than they did themselves.

But now, all of it amounted to nothing more than me getting sentimental over my own sacrifices.

I did not wallow in self-pity. Instead, I opened my chat with a close friend who had been a year ahead of me in middle school.

After graduating from college, she had opened her own in-person tutoring center, and she had wanted to buy my full set of notes and problem sets for quite some time.

I sent her a message.

[Hey, you mentioned before that you wanted to buy the notes I put together. I just finished organizing a new set. Do you still want it?]

She replied almost instantly.

[Yes, yes, yes! We'll take it! We'll pay top dollar!]

I smiled faintly. I remembered that quite a few students from the class next door studied at her tutoring center. I could not wait to see what happened.

At the next mock exam, my class would be compared against the class next door.

…

My class had spent all that time chasing the shortcuts Selene preached.

The other class had spent it grinding through problems and building solid fundamentals.

I expected the gap between them to be impossible to ignore.

For the rest of that stretch, Selene's speeches swallowed up nearly every free period.

"Honestly, everyone's been fooled by this so-called local-style education. Burying your head in books doesn't even work for students today. What we need is a balance between work and rest!

"I'm speaking from experience. At Enasteri High School, I never had to grind through concepts. I just memorized the conclusions, and the time I saved was completely worth it.

"Isn't it better to spend that extra time having fun? Young people should live a little. Don't let studying tie you down!"

At first, everyone was thrilled to be free of my tutoring. They no longer had to stay up late grinding through problems. Of course they were happy.

But after a solid month of that, quite a few of them started to feel uneasy. Without coordinating with one another, they began coming to me one by one to vent.

Wendy was the first. "Summer, you have no idea. Selene dragged us all out to karaoke last night. We didn't leave until midnight.

"Today, the teacher called on me to answer a question, and my voice was so hoarse I couldn't get a word out. I got scolded for it."

Then Melissa came to me. "I was planning to finish my homework at home this weekend, then help my mom at her food truck.

"But Selene insisted I was being a killjoy and dragged me to the arcade instead. She said if I didn't come, she wouldn't let me keep studying with her, so I didn't have a choice."

Every time, I just listened quietly. I never said a word or offered an opinion.

…

The mock exam kept drawing closer, but Selene continued dragging them out to have fun. She even dared to skip the study halls the school had scheduled.

Denise finally could not take it anymore. She grabbed my hand, urgency filling her voice. "Summer, what are we supposed to do? If we keep messing around with Selene like this, can we really still get into college? I look at my textbooks now, and they feel like strangers."

I yanked my hand free and said flatly, "Maybe. Hasn't Selene always gotten good grades?"

I was not deliberately being sarcastic. I still firmly believed that effort led to results, which stood in direct opposition to Selene's talk of shortcuts.

But ever since she had arrived, her scores had remained near the top on every single quiz. Once, she had even come within five points of beating me.