The Loner Girl

Part 41

I made my way back to the library once more, and sure enough, Sequoia was in there, studying harder than she did before the midterms. Her shoulder strap on her left arm once more dangled next to her bicep as she concentrated on her homework. I didn't want to break her concentration from her studying. But she was already looking up from her homework, and pushed her hair back when she saw me looking at her. I make my way to her table, then I quickly grab a seat next to her, and dig out my homework from my bag.

"You look...different. Did you get a haircut?" She finally saw how I look now, then she turned her attention back to the problem at hand. She looked through my homework papers and my notes.

"Limits? Come on." she says, giving me a flirt-like push on my arm, and pushed her hair back once more. All in that same flirtatious manner as she's looking at me, before looking back at my homework.

"Limits are a bit hard, but I can show you the easy way I learned back when I was in LA. At least it's better than learning the Chain Rule, but it integrates easily, along with antiderivatives, and derivatives. You got to learn all those as you're learning about limits." she says, going through the textbook she had, that she took out of her bag.

Is that what she carries all this time? It's really big for her...

"I actually took this from my old school. This one's a new edition." She says, flipping the cover so I could see, and it clearly was one made more for college students than for high school students. And it indeed was a new edition, compared to our books we used in the classroom. 

"If you learned Algebra, this should be a piece of cake." she says again, while flipping through the pages of that thick textbook. With the library's airy design, I thought I could hear a student tapping one key every 10-20 seconds, as if there was a chicken pecking at the keyboard. Even Sequoia had to stop flipping the large textbook to see where the noise was coming from. A vein popped in her neck as she strained to see where the noise was coming from.

And I thought I was the only one who heard it at first...

"Is Omega still in his room? Maybe we should study in there." She was clearly distracted from the distant typing the kid made at the computers, and it too, was starting to bug me. My mind soon went back to her of typing on the computer...

"No, no. In here's fine. Besides, I think he went home." Sequoia shook her head, disagreeing with what I was saying.

"He stays pretty late, even though the school closes after 6:30. I saw him staying past 8 one day, grading papers and tests. And once I had to stay and help him that late, as I'm also a teacher's aide. Let's go on over to his room. He does need the company once in a while." She was already gathering all her stuff, closing the big textbook, then slipping it inside her bag. She hoisted her bag over her right shoulder, and her shirt began to slip down once more; luckily, she placed her binder over her chest, so I wouldn't have to see what happened next. We left the library, and soon, we walked, side by side, so that, from a distance, we looked like a couple.

Even though we aren't, but still, she was really close next to me as we walked to the classroom...

Like, really close, and I felt her left hand sneak to grab onto mines, while still holding onto her books in front of her chest...

I was tall before, but now, I'm one head taller than her, and out of nowhere, she wrapped her arm around my waist, like we were truly a couple, as we're making our way down the dark hallway to the math hall...

We made our way back to the math hall, and sure enough, Luca was still in his classroom, hunched over his paperwork on a neatly organized desk. Kind of rare since by this time, all the teacher's desk are a full of clutter of papers, computers, and grading pencils strewn about on their desks. But not Luca's.

Especially considering he's the head of this department, and his desk should be all messy. But his desk was nearly neat and tidy for a teacher. And his iPad lay in the corner of his desk, near the window, charging for the next class day, and his Mac laptop stood open, and he was inputting all our grades into it, ready to be sent to the office. He does have a desktop, but it sat on the corner of his desk, collecting dust, like it hasn't been used in a while.

"Welcome back." He says, looking up as we walked into his room, his hair was still a disheveled mess from our earlier meeting, and it hung over his left eye. Even his hoodie still lay on that same desk, as if nothing had changed from our earlier meeting. But I could see his tight shirt was slightly raised as he hunched over his papers once more, revealing his chiseled back, even I could see behind his desk. Sequoia quickly found a seat next to the whiteboard, and smiled at me, waiting for me to take my seat like she was waiting for a little kindergartner to take his seat.

"We just came because I thought it's quieter here." Sequoia says, gently putting her books down in the next seat next to where I was supposed to be sitting. We sat at the very front of the room, close to the whiteboard, so that she could write down some of the problems I was having trouble in, and it made it easier, all at the same time since she was also using paper and pencil to do her notes.

"Please, no trouble at all. Help yourselves here." Luca says, returning back to his grading rubrik. He's the smartest teacher this school had ever employed, and he's one of the rarest teachers here to not look up for the answers, since he's the one teaching. 

Sequoia fixed her shirt, pushed her hair back once more, and wrote out stuff on the whiteboard, all the while talking about what problems go where, the steps needed, and what to look out for, in a problem with limits. Easier said than done, and she said that before I leave the school tonight, she might drill me again, to make sure I was understanding the material, since Luca has even said people have failed his class because almost no one paid attention, and it's really easy to get lost. Especially in a class like calculus. My mind began to wander, and it reminded me of the math scene from Mean Girls, and how "the limit does not exist" line. Only this one was different, and limits seemed to pop out of nowhere.

Too bad, Cady Heron. There's too many limits here...

It may be 2017, but we still have kids to this day that look like those from the movie, and it was made way back in 2004, and we even have some boys that look like that 'Aaron' kid.

And yes, this school has a 'mathlete' competition, only in geometry, trigonometry and higher. Which I've heard may have started out as a joke from kids back in 2008 or 2009, but since have taken off from there.

I looked up at the board once more, trying to comprehend what was written, looking back at my notes once more, and at my homework.

"Relax. You're overthinking stuff. Try to look at it like this..." she takes my pencil, and starts making random lines, that for some reason, began to all add up. At least in theory... as she continued to make the lines, on some graphing paper. Which I then compared to my notes from our earlier class period. And then, just as I turned, her shoulder shirt strap, which had rested on the ball of her shoulder, slipped down her bicep again, and got caught in the crook of her elbow as she continued to write over my mistakes. She pushed her hair back once more,, not caring about her shirt strap, and finally, she told me to solve out another problem, one that she pulled out of her textbook.

It took a long time, but I've finally finished both my homework and the little quizlet she gave me, and just in time for Omega to leave his classroom for the evening. I looked up at the time, and it was almost 6:30. Sequoia looked proud, then she got up from her seat, as I began putting my stuff away as well.

"You can hang onto it until tomorrow, and turn it in before the start of class," Luca says, putting on his hoodie over his head, and finally, fixed his hair for the evening. Sequoia had already left the classroom by that point, and only ones left were Luca and I, in that classroom. She didn't even tell me she was leaving for the evening, but I guess that didn't matter. After all, she's my tutor, nothing more...

"See you tomorrow." I tell him, and I grab my bag.

"See you." He also followed me out, and to lock his door for the day. The sun is now out later, so I decided to just walk home, even if that meant there were clouds later on that evening.