Page 15 of Most Valuable Player
Mason snickers, apparently documenting this exchange as a win, and pulls out his precalc textbook. I guess that’s what we’re starting with.
And thus commences the most agonizing few hours of my life.
—
Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad.
Precalc sucks, but the thing about math—at least, high school math—is that it’s mostly straightforward. There’s no hidden themes or subtle meanings to search for, like in English. So, with Mason walking me through these questions slowly, taking it step-by-step until we both have the answer, we get it done relatively quickly.
Next comes health science. He took the class as a junior, so he has knowledge in it. Next, world history. Basically, he reiterates everything I failed to pay attention to in class, but in simpler words and shorter sentences.
English is torturous. I swear we spend two hours going through summary notes ofThe Great Gatsbybecause I can’t remember anything about it, even though I just watched the Leonardo da Vinci version a few days ago.
“The teachers are asking these questions, so you should be prepared to answer them,” Mason says when I ask why I should give a shit. “Whining won’t make a difference.”
Now I’m a whiner. Even though I gave him my coffee out of the sheer kindness of my heart, he’s still insulting me.
“You hated it, and it was free,” he points out.
Whatever.
As time passes, more students come to occupy the seats until the place is bustling. I recognize some people from lower grades, but nobody I can confidently call my friend and request to save me from this madness. Still, there’s something undeniably cozy about it all. The soft lighting, the warmth of the café, the sound of the coffee death machine whirring, the muted chatter. There are worse places Mason could’ve chosen.
The last class is independent reading, which is where we read books through the fifty-minute session and then take ten minutes at the end to write about what we just consumed. “What book have you been reading this semester?” Mason asks, eyeing my backpack.
“Uh. None?”
He offers a weak, frustrated smile. “What do you do during class?”
I give him a thumbs-up. “Sleep.”
“Mm. I thought you were too busy running on willpower and natural strength to fall asleep in school,” Mason says, thrumming his fingers along the brim of his empty coffee cup. There’s this smug calmness about him that makes the muscles tighten in my neck.
“I could stay awake if I wanted to, coffee boy,” I snap. “But I don’t have anything interesting to read, and I took it as a blow off, so—”
“Yet you’re failing.” Mason is nearly unblinking, his level expression unflinching. “ ‘Read book’ is the bare minimum you have to do to pass the ‘read book’ class. Are you purposefully trying to fail senior year, Cameron Morelli, or are you just genuinely that incompetent?”
Oh myGod? I open my mouth to protest his audacity, but my voice doesn’t come to me for several seconds. “Fuck you,” I squeak out.
“Hmm.” He pokes my thigh with the toes of his marshmallow socks, then fumbles through his backpack and fishes out a slender novel with an illustrated cover, which he tosses into my lap. I scrunchmy face at the image, which depicts two people pointing accusatorily at each other. “Read it. Enough that you can do a daily report at the end of class and turn it in. Start it now and I’ll let you know when a half hour is up.”
I’m ready to crack my skull open on the mahogany bookshelves. “Can’t I read it at home?” I ask pleadingly.
“No, because you won’t.” Mason furrows his thin brows at me and says, “That’s why you need a tutor, right? Someone to hold you accountable?”
“You can’t keep me here,” I snip.
“No, but I can snitch to Barnett.”
My lips peel back into a scowl. I’ve been inwardly deliberating the question for a while, so I might as well pose it. “Why do you care?” I demand.
He tilts his head sideways, though his expression doesn’t flinch. “About what?”
“Me.”I gesture violently to myself. “My tutoring. My football career. What’s in it for you?”
Mason gives me a lingering look that’s probably meant to look empty. But I notice his gaze flick away, like I’ve reminded him about something. His jaw flexes—a fracture in his composed expression. “Didn’t I mention there’s a world that exists outside of you?” he asks coldly. “Why do you think it’s your business to know?”
He actually looks miffed that I asked. I’m not sure why the realization makes my heart stutter. Now that I’m thinking about it, though, I’ve never seen Mason expressactualemotions. He’s always perfectly poised, unruffled. Seeing this tiny break in character is strangely exhilarating.
