Not Doing

Chapter 2: Absolutely Not

By 3:15 on Wednesday, I had claimed the table in the back corner of the library, under the broken clock, where the radiator hissed and no one ever bothered us.

By 3:25, I had laid out my supplies. Three colors of highlighters. Index cards. A ten-page chemistry review packet with a study schedule stapled to the front. A copy of Macbeth, because Leo's last essay grade was a 41.

I hadn't laminated anything. I want that on the record.

By 3:41, the library door banged open, and every head turned.

Leo strolled in with his backpack on one shoulder and his hair damp from the locker room, looking like he'd walked into the wrong building and decided to make the best of it. The librarian, Mr. Okafor, opened his mouth. Leo lifted one hand in a lazy salute, and Mr. Okafor closed it again.

No one ever told him no.

"You're twenty-six minutes late," I said.

"Wow. You're keeping count." He dropped into the chair across from me and tipped it back on two legs. He eyed my highlighters. "Is that a rainbow?"

"It's a system."

"It's a lot."

"It works."

"For you." His eyes swept the packet, the cards, everything I'd prepared, and his expression went a little flat. "Okay. Let's get this over with."

I pushed the packet across. "We start with a diagnostic. Ten questions. I just need to see where you're at."

He didn't pick it up. "Absolutely not."

"It's ten questions."

"I'm not a kindergartner, Hart. I'll save you the trouble. I'm failing. Bottom of the class. Congratulations, you've got the raw material."

"Now we fix it, and to fix it I need to—"

"Fix it." He tasted the words. "Right. Because I'm broken."

"That's not what I meant."

"Isn't it?"

The radiator hissed. I pulled the packet back. "Fine. English. Why does Macbeth kill Duncan?"

He rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "Because the witches told him he'd be king."

"That's the plot. I asked why. The witches don't tell him to do anything."

"Because his wife told him to."

"She only convinces him. He already wanted to."

"So he's ambitious. Write it down. There, I've been tutored."

I set down my pen. "You're not even trying."

"I told you I wouldn't."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because Mrs. A said if I didn't, she'd call my coach and my mother, in that order. Honestly? I don't know which is scarier."

There was something too casual in the way he said my mother. I noticed, and filed it away, because he was already leaning forward, gray eyes bright with a challenge that had nothing to do with grades.

"You explain it slowly. I nod. You feel like you've done something good for the school's resident disaster. Everyone gets a gold star."

"That's not—"

"Then what is it?" He said it quietly. "I'm a problem, and you're the person who's supposed to solve it. You don't want to know me. You want to fix me so you can feel good about it."

"That is not fair!" It came out louder than I intended. A girl two tables over looked up. I lowered my voice but not the heat. "I gave up three afternoons a week for someone who shows up twenty-six minutes late and refuses to write a single word because he's decided I'm the enemy!"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. I think you're making it impossible for anyone to help you."

The words landed harder than I'd meant. Leo's chair came down slowly, all four legs on the floor.

"Yeah," he said. He wasn't smirking. His voice was tight and level. "That's what they all say. Everyone in this school has an opinion about me before I say a word. You walked in Monday and looked at me like a case file. Bad kid. Fixable, maybe. Probably not."

"That's not what I thought."

"Then what?"

"That you were lazy," I said, honestly. "That everyone hands you second chances because you're good at hockey, and you'd never had to work for anything."

He sat very still. "And now?"

I opened my mouth. I didn't have an answer. That was the problem. I'd been so certain on Monday, and he'd caught the way I'd said fix the way you catch a word you've heard before, out loud, in other people's voices.

"Now I think I don't know you at all."

He blinked. Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't that. A small crease formed between his eyebrows, like someone whose last step on the staircase wasn't where they thought it would be.

"Yeah, well," he muttered. "Join the club." He grabbed Macbeth and flipped it open, avoiding my eyes. "You wanted a thesis. Give me five minutes."

So I gave him five minutes, pretending to read my own packet while I watched him. He didn't highlight anything, which made me want to scream. Then he took a pen from my stack and started scribbling in the margin of my handout.

"That's my sheet."

"Then look." He pushed it across.

The handwriting was slanted and impatient.

Macbeth doesn't kill Duncan because of the witches. He kills him because for the first time, someone told him out loud what he already was, and he was too scared to find out if they were wrong.

I read it once. I read it again.

It was better than the sample thesis I'd typed at the top of the page. It was better than anything I'd have written myself.

"It's a start," I said. "It's a little dramatic. Mr. Hale will want evidence."

"So find the evidence. That's what tutors are for." But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the sheet, and something flickered across his face again, longer this time. Almost exposed.

Then he stood and shrugged his jacket back on. "I have practice."

"We've only been here forty minutes."

"Forty-five. Keep counting." The smirk was back, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Same time Friday?"

"You'll be late."

"Probably."

"Then I'll bring more highlighters."

He laughed, short and startled, and seemed almost annoyed about it. "You're weird, Hart."

"You're impossible."

"Guess we've got that in common."

The door swung shut behind him. Mr. Okafor turned a page of his newspaper without looking up.

I sat under the broken clock and didn't look at the sheet for almost a full minute.

Then I looked. Someone told him out loud what he already was.

"He's not smart," I whispered to nobody. "He's a lucky guesser."

Nobody believed me. Not even the radiator.

Beneath his handwriting, in my careful, neat script, I added: Needs evidence. See Act 1, Scene 7. Then I folded the page into my notebook like a secret and told myself I hadn't done it on purpose.

Absolutely not, I thought. There was no way I was letting Leo Moretti get to me.

I'd give it one more session before I admitted I was wrong.