Chapter Seven

SEVEN

"What?"

I never expected it, he’d been such a quiet kid so far, asking very few questions, and now all of a sudden he was asking me that?!

Martin blinked at me, tilted his head in confusion, then he repeated himself again like he'd been perfectly clear the first time.

"I asked you a question. I said are you my brother's girlfriend?"

"No," I said. "Absolutely not."

He considered it for a while, biting his lip and thinking hard. "Are you sure?"

"Very."

"Because there's always different girls here and he tells me they're his girlfriends." A pause. "You could be one and not know."

"I think I'd know."

"He has a lot."

"I'm sure he does." I didn't bother hiding my disgust at those words.

There's no way I’d ever go out with a guy like that, he’d cured me of my crush completely. Sure I was plain and on the bigger side and I wasn’t exactly his type, and everyone would probably say I would be lucky to be with a boy as great and handsome and popular as him…

"But I'm not one of them. I'm here to tutor you. Both of you, actually.”

As soon as he heard the word tutor, his face changed into a panicked, fearful expression. 

All of a sudden he pushed his chair back, gripped the train against his chest, and looked at me as if I was a wild animal about to bite his head off. 

What a strange reaction to have, I thought, I wonder what could’ve happened to cause him to be so afraid of tutors?

Come to think of it, his older brother didn’t seem too fond of tutors either, he talked about them like they were dangerous or something.

"My mom called you?"

"Yes, Martin, that is correct. She did." I kept still, kept my voice even. "She said you were having some trouble at school and asked if I'd come help."

"I'm not a retard," he said.

My heart broke at hearing him say that, how could anyone say such a thing about a boy so precious?

“Of course not, I bet you’re the smartest kid in the world.”

"Yeah well… the last one said I was on his phone. He didn't know I heard him, and after I told my brother… I never saw him in our house again."

Something pulled so tight in my chest. I thought about what kind of person could ever do that? Why take a job caring for a child and then stand in their house talking about them like they're an inconvenience? "Then he was terrible at his job," I said. "And he deserved to get fired."

He looked at me, his eyes still cautious while he worked out his thoughts.

"The one before her used to skip through different parts," he said. "She thought I wouldn't notice."

"Did you notice?"

"Well yeah… every time."

"And did you say anything?"

He gave me a look that said that was a funny question. "She didn't listen."

"I'll listen," I said. "That's kind of the whole point of why I'm here. To listen to you and guide you, so if you need any help, you can just ask me and I’ll help you anytime.”

The look on his face told me it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been given that promise, and that he’d been failed before.

He’d just started to respond when I heard footsteps approaching us from the hallway.

"Oh, you two are in here!" Mrs Dawson swept in warm and bright, went straight to Martin, cupped his face in both hands, and kissed his forehead. Then she pulled back and saw the train on the table. 

"It broke, but the new tutor fixed it," Martin announced.

She turned to me with a smile that could have lit up a small city. "That's wonderful. I'm so glad you two are getting on." She glanced at the ceiling, in the direction of a certain door upstairs. "I couldn't help overhearing Jace talking to you earlier. It sounded like you were both getting along?"

I thought about the wall against my back, his strong hand over my mouth and his breath brushing my hair while he threatened me.

Delivering his three commandments in that low dangerous voice while I stood there with my heart beating a mile a minute and wishing I knew self-defence.

"I guess you could call it that," I said. It was my first day at the job. It would be better not to make trouble between the family members on my first day, so I didn’t tell the truth.

It was barely even evening yet and I’d already told three lies today.

She nodded slowly, obviously, she knew that was not the full story but she ultimately chose to accept it for now. "I think maybe I should go to his room and try talking to him again," she murmured, already moving toward the door. "He just needs a little—"

Then she was gone.

Martin and I stared at the empty doorway.

"She does that a lot, my mom," he said.

"What? You mean leave mid-sentence?" I asked, smiling.

"She thinks if she talks to him enough he'll change." He came back to the table and sat down, setting the train carefully beside him. "She's been thinking that for a long time."

"Well, what do you think, Matt? Has it ever worked?"

He looked at me like that was another funny question.

"My big brother doesn’t like talking very much," he said simply. "So no."

Typical.

I kept the assessment casual so I wouldn’t freak him out or scare him off. I only brought a few pages for that evening, and I slid them across the table with caution.

His reading wasn’t so bad. Sometimes, he would rush through all the words at once instead of stopping to pace himself. I made a note to work on that later.

As for comprehension questions, he took his time with them, but even though it stretched on for about an hour, I didn't rush him. 

And little by little, the tension and distrust in his shoulder started to ease a bit as he grew more and more comfortable with the lesson.

Immediately we got started on math, and something changed. He sat forward, now completely invested in it. 

It was a thing of wonder, watching him engage so quickly with little help from me as his fingers flew fast across the page, answering questions faster than I could ask them.

It was clearly what he preferred to do, and he was quick and thorough and completely sure of himself in a way that he hadn’t been when it came to the words.

We kept working. He stopped second-guessing himself before answering and started correcting the examples I’d intentionally written wrong long before I finished writing them. 

"Whoa. You're fast at these, even faster than I am and that’s saying something," I said.

"I like math, it’s my favourite subject." He straightened the paper with both hands. "Sometimes English is a little confusing because the meanings of words keep changing, but numbers don't do that."

"That's actually a really smart way to put it. I’ve never thought of it that way before.”

He was stacking his papers into a very precise pile, edges aligned, when he said without looking up:

"That’s what Rosie said too!”

I kept my voice completely neutral. "Yeah? Who’s Rosie?"

"She’s a girl in my class" He rushed through the words super fast, the tips of his ears went immediately pink. "She lets me sit next to her at lunch because she says I'm quiet and she likes quiet while she talks to me about stuff."

"Rosie sounds like she has excellent taste."

Please let Rosie be a genuinely lovely kid. I thought to myself. Please, for the love of everything, let at least one person in this situation have a normal healthy crush on a normal healthy person. Not like me.

"She knows about trains," he said, with an impressed tone of someone listing a person's most important qualities. "Not as much as me. But more than most people."

"Martin."

"What?"

"Is Sophie your best friend?” I asked, winking and wiggling my eyebrows at him while his face turned very red with shy embarrassment.

"Yeah. Sometimes I let her hold my train," he whispered.

"Does she know that you have a cru…"

The temperature in the room dropped by a million degrees and I felt a cold, frightening feeling as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

I felt his presence before I heard anything, that dark shift in the air, the overbearing weight of a presence in the doorway that caused the back of my neck to prickle.

Whoever it was came close to me and closer till they were only inches away from me, but I didn't turn around.

I didn't need to, because I already knew exactly who it was.