He paced toward me quickly and stared down on me when he spoke. “You know? For once in your life, don’t make everything about you, Sam! This is my problem, so forgive me for trying to protect you!” His words stung as they pierced my heart.
“Really? I make everything about me? So, it was all about me when I stuck it out at your house on Christmas despite how your father openly disrespected me? It was all about me when I stood up to my father on your behalf? Well, thanks for setting me straight. Are you done now?”
He glared at me, shaking his head as he brushed against my arm on his way out of my room, slamming the door behind him. As badly as I’d wanted to see him, I was so angry that my feet wouldn’t let me follow after him. He paced angrily down the hall and I stood there listening until I couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore. I was absolutely outdone that after everything we’d been through together, he’d actually thought of me as selfish. Unbelievable.
By 5:00 when Terrell arrived to study, I figured that AJ was halfway home. Terrell brought two pizzas and a two liter of pop.
I looked at him questioningly. “You expecting some other people?” I asked.
“No, what you talking about?”
“You do know that I can’t eat an entire pizza by myself, right?”
He ignored me and sat the boxes down and had a slice in his hand before I could even shut the door.
“Eat first , study later,” he stated. I rolled my eyes and sat on my bed while I waited for him to finish his food. I looked at the first problem of my calculus homework and instantly got a headache.
“Just wait ‘til I get done; I’ll help you. You’re gonna give yourself a stroke over there. Leave it alone,” Terrell insisted, laughing as he stuffed his mouth again.
I sat back and stared at the wall thinking of my fight with AJ. He’d driven all this way and all we did was argue. It sucked. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about it now.
“Pass me the book,” Terrell said, interrupting my train of thought. He wrote down the first problem and started solving it without much thought. He stood up from the chair and sat on the floor right below me.
“Ok, I’ll let you look over how I solved it so you can pinpoint where it is that you get stuck.”
I stared at the paper for a few seconds. “It all looks like hieroglyphics to me. What the heck is this?”
Terrell laughed at my reaction. “Alright, pay attention.” He rewrote the problem and walked me through each step to solve it. He broke it down even better than Mr. Patel did.
“Does that make sense now?” He asked.
“Aside from the fact that your handwriting looks like you write with your toes, I think I’m starting to get it a little.”
“Whatever. Try this one by yourself.” I sighed and took the notebook from his hands. I only got stuck a few times and had to ask for his help. He wrote out the next problem and watched me work.
“See? You’re not as dumb as you look,” Terrell smiled. I slapped him on the back of his head and it didn’t even seem to hurt him at all. I glanced over in his direction, acknowledging that I was starting to accept him in his self-appointed role as my big brother. He went from being a nuisance that I couldn’t get rid of, to something like a friend in an overbearing warden kind of way.
We finished up at around 7:30. “Let’s go out to eat in the morning. My treat,” Terrell offered.
“Oh, it was gonna be your treat whether you liked it or not. I’m broke right about now.”
He laughed as he got up from the floor. “I’ll be here at 10:00 to get you.”