“When you got cranky, I used to buckle you into your car seat and drive you around and around. We’d listen to the Mill Valley theme song, remember? You used to bounce along to the chorus and kick your little chubby legs.”
“Whatever,” he said, skimming through texts on his phone, but there was a glimmer of memory there. That song that sounded like carnival music, something they played while you zipped around in circles, then hurled your corn dog off the side.
“Well, you loved it,” his mom said.
He didn’t fight her. Just got in the car and let her drive him to school. It was weird to be back, but good. It was where he belonged. In first-period English the whole class was pumped up to see him, and his teacher Miss Nicoll—who always used to eye him like she had one finger cocked on her pepper spray—came up and gave him this bigass hug in front of everyone. It was weird as shit, but in a way he didn’t hate it.
After sixth period, he went to the tutoring place down the street. The tutors there hated him. They hated him because the old Damon would mess with them at every session. For instance, when a tutor tried to talk to him, he’d tip his chair back on two legs, wave to his friends across the office and yell, “Yo, Jonas, where the function at tonight?” or “Hey, Ry, you jerking off in here again?” Or he’d throw pencils at the back of some dork’s head who was pushing his face right up to the computer screen to type. Sometimes he’d just sit there munching Cheetos loud as possible, lick the dust off his fingers and wipe them on the sides of the chairs. If he was tired, he’d act like a retard until the tutor gave up and just told him the answers. And the last time he’d had the cute-ass college chick, Jenny, as his tutor, he’d huddled over his paper and scribbled real careful until she asked to see his work—then he showed her his sketch, which was just of some bitch naked, and cracked up when her cheeks got all red and she jumped up and huffed out of the room. He’d watched her leave, tipped back in his chair, and grinned real big ’cause no one was gonna make him do shit he didn’t feel like doing.
This time it was gonna be different.
The front-desk lady saw him and sighed. “Jenny?” she called over her shoulder.
Jenny appeared from a back room. She was about five feet tall and had these glittery earrings on and a bright purple hoodie and green Converse. At first she did the glance thing, like Really, you’re doing this to me again? but when she realized Damon could see her, she smiled. She had dimples when she smiled and it almost made him forget how she’d looked when she thought he couldn’t see her. He knew it was her job to be nice to everyone, but still.
“Hey, Damon. Did you bring your stuff with you?”
“Yeah.” He unzipped his backpack and held it out so she could see it was actually full of books: U.S. history, physiology, English, intermediate algebra.
Jenny just stood there looking shocked, so he said, “So? And?” Then stopped himself because Lance would say that was the attitude he used to push away people who were tryna help him and he didn’t have to do that anymore.
Jenny cocked her eyebrow like Is this some kind of trick? Then she said, “Okay. Well, good. What are you working on today?”
“I got math. I tried to look at it already, but it’s fuckin’ bullshit—”
Someone cleared their throat. It turned out to be a mom standing behind him with her hands on the shoulders of two little kids. The kids’ eyes were saucers and the mom was glaring.
Damon turned back around. “I mean,” he said, “could you, like, help me.”
“Come on back,” Jenny said. She led him through the office toward the little isolation room they always made him go in, the one with the glass wall that looked out into the main room where everybody else got to be. In the main room was a circle of computers with kids and tutors sitting all around.
“Yo, Flint! My nig!”
“Hey! Language,” Jenny snapped.
It was Ryan. Sprawled back in a cushy office chair sucking on a Big Gulp while his tutor was asking him questions and typing. Damon thought, This was exactly what his life was like. He got put in the isolation room with Jenny who expected him to work, while Ryan got to chill at the computers with a tutor who acted like his secretary.
“Ryan. Hey, man. We’ve talked about that word,” Ryan’s tutor said, all earnest. This fuckin’ weirdo. Pale and bony with a ponytail drooping down his back and a neck so skinny his Adam’s apple looked like an elbow jerking up and down.
“Yo,” Damon said. “You do the Decker homework?”
“Naw, I’m in advanced, remember?”
“Yeah. Sucks to be you.” He always forgot Ryan was in advanced algebra, not intermediate like him. Ryan wasn’t smarter or anything. But the day that Nick was gonna help them cheat on the placement test, Damon had forgot and dipped math class. When he came back, he had to take the test legit. It didn’t go too well.