Rags to Riches

I could barely look Callie in the eyes after that crap I pulled, lying to my friends about her. How could I? I made up such terrible things about her, just to keep up my cover. So in order to keep one lie intact, I just fabricated another huge lie – one that absolutely mortified me to think about Callie finding out about.

And now we’re meeting up every Wednesday so she can help me with my god awful math skills. I’m going to have to get over this soon. I can’t keep avoiding eye contact if Callie’s going to be all up on me while teaching me. Oh god, that was definitely the wrong way to say that. She’s not going to be “all up on me”. She just has a habit of sitting really close to me when she’s trying to show me something. Damn you, Brandon and Shaun. I wouldn’t be having this internal struggle right now if you two weren’t such giant jack-wagons. God dammit!

I really could use her help though. This math shit will be the death of me if I don’t get something figured out. And she is apparently crazy good at math. Actually, judging by her books, she’s just crazy smart, I guess. Fucking AP History and BC Calculus. What the hell does BC even mean? My school doesn’t even have AP options, let alone whatever the hell kind of shit classes BC are. And then she mentioned AB calc. It hurts my brain even trying to think of either of those classes. Callie has got to be some kind of genius. Or maybe I’m just an idiot. Just some stup-

“What’s gotten into you, Son?” Don’s voice pulled me out of my raging thoughts, back into that large office of his.

“Huh?”

“You look like you’re trying to develop heat-ray-eyes over there and burn up those papers in front of you. Are you doing alright, Kenny?” He looked genuinely concerned and it just made me feel worse.

’No, Donovan, I am not alright. I have said some ridiculous things about your daughter to cover my own ass and now I have to talk to you and pretend that I didn’t and I have to meet with her after this and she’s going to be all close to me and teaching me and I don’t know how to handle all of this shit. I am most definitely not alright.’

“Yeah, I’m fine Don. Just a lot on my mind today. I’ll be alright.”

“If you need to go on home, I’m alright with that. You’ve already done basically all I needed you to do today. What you’ve got in front of you right now was really just busy work. It doesn’t need to be done today.” He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair as he spoke. The gestures were obviously out of comfort but my paranoid mind flinched, imagining him taking up a defensive stance. ‘I’m going crazy.’ “I know trying to focus can be quite difficult when you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

“No, I’m fine Don. Really.”

“Kenneth,” he warned, tilting his head and looking down his nose at me, one eyebrow crooked. “You’re not yourself right now. And if you were any other intern here, I would still tell you to go home. So go home.” He stared me down, too. I’ve been in enough confrontations in my life and seen the kind of stares that make the toughest guys just straight up back down. Donovan’s stare could rival even some of those. He definitely knew intimidation tactics.

“Okay, okay, I’ll leave then. You win, Don.” I put my hands up in a show of surrender. “Do you want me to do anything before I go?”

“No, no, you are free to go. I wouldn’t have told you to leave if I still had things for you to do. Just make sure you file those papers away for tomorrow. They’re not too important now, but they might decide to be later on.” He chuckled and I realized that he was attempting to make a joke. One of his worst ones yet, but I felt obligated to smile and chuckled back.

I shook my head and finished doing what needed to be done fairly quickly. I’m not sure why though, seeing as I was going to meet with Callie as soon as I left TechNet. I didn’t know how to deal with the upcoming situation, honestly. I already made a commitment though, so there was nothing I could do but just find a way to get over myself.

Callie had sent me walking directions the day before on how to get from TechNet to the closest library, so I started immediately in that direction. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Callie’s phone number, not exactly expecting her to pick up after just the first ring. She must have been having a good day, I thought, because her cheery voice called out a greeting. It somehow made me relax and tense up at the same time. However much I wanted to smile at the fact that was in a good mood, it also really reminded me of what I told Brandon and Shaun about our relationship and made me want to sink into one of the potholes in the middle of the road. I mean, not that there’s a real relationship, just the fake one I told them about, but either way...I felt shitty, I guess.

“Are you done already? I thought you’d still have another hour with my Dad.”

“Oh, yeah, there wasn’t much for me to do today, so he let me go early today,” I explained, not necessarily lying. Just…not exactly telling the truth either, I suppose. “So I’m on my way to the library now. I’m just passing the corner of High Street and Vine now, so that’s what – another ten or fifteen minutes to go?”

“Oh yeah. You’ll probably get there before I will, actually. I’m still across town, and traffic is probably going to be pretty bad. Ooh, wait!” she exclaimed, surprising me by her sudden change in tone of voice. “There’s this really nice little café around the corner from where you’re at that’ll probably be less boring to wait at if you wanted to go there instead. We could actually stay there. It’s a pretty laid back place. Good for studying and such.”

“Oh alright. That works for me then. What’s the place called?”

“Wired for Sound. They do open mic nights every Friday and sometimes book bands to play. It’s a really neat little place. Good coffee too.”

“Sweet. I could use some good coffee right about now.” I was still walking down the street the whole time we were talking, so I looked around to see what I was near then. “So I’m standing in front of a pizza shop on High Street. How far is the café?”

“Are you in front of Big Gino’s or some other pizza place?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Alright, then you’re just like one street away. Keep going until you see King Street, then take a right. Wired should be about four or five store fronts down that side of the street. Ooh, sorry Kenny. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you in a little bit. Bye!”

“Oh, uh, yeah bye Callie,” I said, thrown off slightly by her urgency. I don’t even think she heard me say anything past ‘oh’ before she hung up, so something must have really grabbed her attention. I tucked my phone back into my pocket and turned the corner, looking down my side of the street for the coffee shop. It was about six doors down, so Callie wasn’t that far off, and as soon as I walked into the place I felt calmer. I mentally thanked Callie for changing our study venue to this place as I walked up to the counter.

The prices were a little higher than I’d have liked, but if there was something I was likely to splurge on, it would be a good cup of coffee. I ended up getting a toffee macchiato – two of my guilty pleasures combined into one drink – and picked a table in one corner with a couch instead of chairs, getting out all of the things Callie told me we’d need. She said to bring my book, my notes, and any tests or homework that I had from my Algebra class, particularly ones that I had struggled on. I brought almost all of them.

I plugged a pair of headphones into my phone and pulled up the little bit of music I had saved on it. It must have just been my day for guilty pleasures because I didn’t have much music on my phone that was from my more normal musical tastes. While Callie had her little obsession with boy bands, mine was with 80’s dance music. Madonna, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Prince, all those kinds of artists. And my favorite of them all? Dead or Alive. God, I’m such a dork when it comes to that kind of music. And the rest of my musical tastes are so opposite that it’s almost laughable. I can go from Prince to Green Day to The Devil Wears Prada in a period of ten minutes. It’s kind of ridiculous.

”What I really need to do is find myself a brand new lover; somebody with eyes for me who doesn’t notice all the others. What I really need to do is find a brand new lover…” I had my eyes closed as I lip-sang along to one of my favorite Dead or Alive songs, since I had nothing better to do while waiting for Callie to show up. I was trying not to look too overly dorky in my little corner of the café, but I also wasn’t paying any attention to my surroundings because I was getting too into the music. I did however feel a presence really close to my face at one point and opened my eyes to see wavy brown hair dangling over my phone’s screen.

“Fucking shit, Calliope!” I squealed embarrassingly, flinching rather harshly as well. I yanked the ear-buds out of my ears and threw them on the table next to my phone, nearly knocking them into the cup of coffee that she had sat down near mine. “Are you trying to literally scare the piss out of me here?”

She was laughing much harder than I thought she would be and took a second before she was able to talk again, though she was still laughing slightly. “Kenny, what in the world are you listening to right now?”

“I, uh – nothing! Er, I mean, Avenged Sevenfold,” I stuttered, trying to save my ass. It didn’t work.

“Yeah right. I’m pretty sure no band like that has a song with ‘Lover’ in the title.” She sat down next to me and nudged me with her elbow. “Come on…that’s all I saw, so now you’ve got to tell me what you were over here dancing to.”

“I was not dancing,” I said somewhat too defensively.

“You were dancing in your seat while lip-singing. Now just tell me!” She was giggling at that point, damn her. She was genuinely amused by this.

I crossed my arms and sank lower into the couch we were on. “Fine, I’ll tell you. But you can’t tell anyone else, okay?”

“Come on Kenny. Who am I going to tell that would know you? My dad? Liseph? Your secret will be safe with me.”

“Alright. Dead or Alive.” That’s all I was going to say and I hoped she would leave it at that.

Of course she didn’t.

“Wait, you mean Dead or Alive, the ‘You Spin Me Right Round’ band from the 80s?”

“Uh, well…yeah. I was listening to ‘Brand New Lover’ though.”

“Do you listen to them often?” Callie asked, nudging my shoulder again suggestively, a massive smirk on her face.

“Would you even believe me if I said no?”

“Hah, no. Not a bit. Dead or Alive is your NSync, isn’t it?”

I threw my head down into my hands on the table. “Ugh, fine. You’ve caught my terrible secret musical taste. Feel free to make fun of me for eternity now.”

“Kenneth, I am not going to make fun of you for this,” Callie chuckled, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Or at least, not that much.”

“Oh har-har. Thanks for that,” I said sarcastically, picking my head back up to give her a sassy look.

“Now!” she exclaimed suddenly, clapping her hands together. “Let’s dive into this Algebra.”

“I don’t know how much good you’ll be able to do though. I’m pretty far behind already.”

“Okay, well do you have a test or anything coming up soon that you need the most help on? That would be a pretty good place to start, at least for today.”

“Uh, well, I think I have a quiz on…” I stalled a bit, shuffling through my papers to find the paper that has the due dates for my classes’ assignments and tests on it. “Next Tuesday, it looks like. Over factoring and expanding? Ugh.”

“Alright. Do you have any homework or practice problems on either of these things that we can work on?”

“Well both I guess. The homework is practice problems from the book. She gives us a paper at the beginning of each chapter with all the homework and due dates on it.” I pulled my book closer to me and looked at the assignment sheet to get the page numbers for the first set of problems.

“That’s nice I bet. That way you can get ahead and not be doing all your homework last minute if things come up.”

“Theoretically, yes. But you’re forgetting the part where I don’t know how to do any of this crap and where no one in my class has any kind of time management skills whatsoever. If she doesn’t remind us the day before something’s due, only a few people will actually turn anything in.”

“Oh,” she said shortly, frowning over the cup of coffee that was paused in front of her lips. “Well, we can change one of those things at least. Now what’s the first question on your homework?” Callie set her coffee down and scooted a little closer so that she could look at the paper with the problem numbers on it, then turning her attention to the book. “Alright, so first off is factoring. Hmm, I feel like you just have a bad teacher for this class.”

I quirked my eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”

“Well factoring is kind of similar to completing the square – maybe even a little simpler – and you seemed to understand that once I explained it, so this probably won’t be too hard for you either once it gets explained better.”

“That’s probably actually true. I’m not the only one having a hard time in this class. I think the class average is a D+ right now. I mean, she said she might put a curve on the grade if things don’t get any better, but that’s still really not good. I had a lot of the same people in my math class last year and the average was a B. So you’re probably right about her.”

“Good. Maybe you won’t actually have that hard of a time picking this up after all.”

And I actually didn’t, much to my own surprise. I don’t really get how a seventeen year old girl can explain factoring and expanding - or any algebraic anything, for that matter - so much better than a teacher who has been teaching high schoolers algebra for more years than her students have even been alive, but I guess I’m not really complaining about it either. Maybe, with Callie’s help, I can actually get my grade in this class turned around.

“I owe you something fierce here, Callie,” I told her as we both packed up our things over an hour later.

“Oh no you don’t, Kenny. Remember, this is merely a friend helping out a friend because he needs it and she could use a bit of resume fillers. Plus, Friday should be plenty of payback for me on it’s own.”

“Wait. Friday, as in the tux fitting day?” I asked, squinting suspiciously at her from across the table.

She laughed lightly, albeit somewhat mischievously, and swung her small bag over her shoulder. “Of course. Friday, I get to dress up my own little Ken doll in tuxedos.” I tried really hard not to scowl at her as she walked towards the door, waving. “See you then!”