The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(64)

“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.

Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Lance said fuck the past. Lance said the present was the place to be and the future a place you made up as you went along.

“Come on,” Jenny said now. She pushed Damon into the isolation room. Her small, warm hand on his shoulder. She was little but strong. He wondered what she looked like out of that hoodie and jeans but couldn’t really picture it. She didn’t touch him again, just pointed at the chair and closed the door behind them. It was a stupid setup because him and Ryan were still facing each other through the wall of glass, but he didn’t say anything. He thought, She’s, like, a professional tutor, she should know better by now.

“Okay,” Jenny said, taking a breath. “Let’s find out which problems you’re supposed to do. Where’s your planner?”

“I don’t know.”

“You lost it?”

He shrugged.

“Damon. We talked about this. How are you going to do your homework if you don’t write down the assignment?”

It was starting to feel like the old days. He could feel the slide back, like when he was a kid and his big brother, Max, pushed him down the plastic tube at the playground—he was sliding and sliding and tryna stop himself by holding on to the staticky plastic but there weren’t any edges to grab.

To stop the sliding feeling, Damon opened his backpack and pulled out a piece of binder paper. Unfolded it and pressed the wrinkles out on the table. On the paper he’d written the numbers of all the problems Mr. Decker said to do that day in class and the first couple that he tried to do by himself during tutorial. Which meant one actual answer and then a lot of shit he’d penciled in and crossed out.

“I wrote it here.”

Jenny was shocked. “Damon, you did this?”

“At tutorial.”

“You did work during tutorial?”

“So?”

“That’s amazing, Damon. I mean it. Really great.” She looked like she might be in love with him. Just for a second. She wasn’t that much older.

“I guess.”

“Right on. Okay. Let’s do this.” Then she did this crazy thing. Usually, she stayed across the table from him and they kinda stared each other down until he gave in and did some work or she got pissed enough to leave. This time, no. This time she got up and pulled her chair around next to his and reached across him to slide the algebra book between them and she smelled like grass after the rain. “You ready?”

He nodded.

Then she helped him. For every problem, she had him write down the numbers that mattered and then they worked it out together. It was boring as fuck and most of the time he had no clue what she was talking about, but there was something different when she was sitting there next to him and smiling and tucking her hair behind her ear and talking to him like she liked him and there was the jingle of her silver bangles when she wrote and a little whiff of coffee on her breath.

Out the glass wall, there was Ryan tipping back in his chair, throwing a Koosh ball straight up in the air and catching it, and when he saw Damon looking he stopped the ball and made like to throw it Damon’s way, jumping his eyebrows and sticking out his tongue. It was hilarious how his tutor didn’t notice and kept right on typing Ryan’s homework, and the old Damon would have seen it as an opportunity. He would’ve jumped up and run out to catch the ball, or even just raised his hands and hollered, “Blast that motherfucker!” through the glass, even knowing those little kids were doing their ABC’s two tables over. Every inch of his body was itching to get out of that hard plastic chair.

Lance said stop and feel what he was feeling. Breathe his way through it. Wait. So Damon watched the imaginary smoke move in and out of his body. Red and blue, hot and cool. The plastic clock ticked on the wall. Then Ryan’s tutor woke up and took the Koosh away, and the moment was over.

By the end of the hour, Damon still didn’t give a fuck about any kind of algebra and had tried to visualize six or seven times what Jenny’d look like naked sucking dick. But the homework was done.

“Awesome! Damon, you did it!” Jenny said. He thought if Mill Valley had cheerleaders she’d be one.

“Cool,” he told her, and stuck the paper in the front of his math book and shoved the book in his backpack. Thinking about Cool Ranch Doritos and gummy worms and how many zombos he was gonna kill when he got home.

“Cool. So what else do you have to do tonight? Let’s make a list.”

Fuck. What else? The clock on the wall said 5:45. Jenny started looking through his backpack and writing down a list of all the other homework he already forgot. Read two chapters for English. Write a three-page paper for U.S. history. Do the study guide for the quiz tomorrow in physio. Then there was the late work he could maybe still get credit for. And the electives. Spanish. Art. Motherfuckin’ PE. He stopped looking. It just went on and on. Lance would have said it was his choice to do it or not. It was his choice but there was consequences either way.