From Tutoring, to Friendship, to More...

Chapter 4: Revelation

"Shit!" Delilah exclaimed, slamming a pen on the desk in her room.
They were around an hour into their tutoring session, Delilah was already showing frustration with the assignment given to her class. She kept muttering various obscenities as she kept scratching out words and rewriting.

     "Maybe I can take a look at your work now," Ion inquired.
     "No!" she exclaimed. "It's... it's not ready."
     "You've been writing for an hour," he pointed out. "I can't really help much if I don't see your work."
     "Ugh! Fuck! Fine," she gave in. "Take a look at the damn paper!"

     She frustratingly handed over her work, letting Ion examine it. He noticed a good few spelling errors, plus odd ways the letters were written. He noticed Delilah was fidgeting a lot in her chair, her expression giving off some anxiety and fear.

     "You're dyslexic," he finally spoke.
     "Huh," she replied.
     "You have dyslexia," he said, saying it as a fact, not a question.
    "How do you know that?" she asked defensively. "Did someone tell you!?"
     "No," he answered.
     "Then how... how did you figure it out?" she asked. "Nobody has ever figured it out, besides some doctors."
     "None of our teachers noticed?" he asked with clear concern.
     "They just look at me like I'm stupid," she said with a bit of shakiness in her voice. "That's how they've always looked at me."

     "Ok, this explains some things," Ion thought. "But, how could nobody at school notice this?"
     "You never answered my question," said Delilah, interrupting his thoughts. "How did you know? Do you have it?"
     "No, my dad does," he answered. "It's why my name is spelled so... uniquely."
     "What do you mean?" she asked.
     "My first name. It's spelled I-O-N," he explained. "Which is how you would spell the word ion."
     "An atom or molecule with a net electrical charge," she interjected, showing off her aptitude for science.
"Right," he continued. "But it's pronounced like the typical way you spell the name Ian. I-A-N."
     "Oh yeah," she said. "I guess I never gave it much thought.

     "My last name probably distracts that," he chuckled a bit. "When I was born, my dad wrote my name on my birth certificate. Writing in cursive, he miswrote the A as an O. He was never great at cursive, I'm not really either. He thought my mom would be pissed, but she thought it was cute. She didn't see it as a mistake like he did, more like a happy accident."
     "That's actually pretty sweet," Delilah thought, smiling slightly.
     "He was diagnosed sometime as a kid," Ion continued. "He's done better over time with various techniques, but still occasionally slips up. I've never seen him mess up the spelling of our last name though. He's probably practiced writing it a hundreds, if not thousands of times."

     There was a couple minutes of awkward silence between the two.
     "Why didn't you tell the teachers your dyslexic?" he finally asked, breaking the silence.
     "I was scared to," she admitted. "I'd been made fun of it before in the past."
     "Holy shit, really?" he asked with legitimate surprise. She just nodded.
     "Mostly kids," she explained more. "But... one teacher... when I was 12 called me stupid in front of the whole class..."
     "Oh god," he said.
     "But I was... I was too scared to say anything to my parents," she admitted, getting a bit misty eyed. "I just didn't want them to worry. Things got a bit better once I got to middle school. Not long after freshman year, Chaz asked me out and we started dating not long after that."
     "I can't believe she's been with that idiot over two years," he thought. "Maybe he's nicer when it's just the two of them."

     "Y-you won't tell anyone? Will you?" she asked with genuine concern.
     "Why would I do that?" he asked, again with legitimate surprise.
     "I've seen other kids blackmail each other with gossip," she answered. "Sure, this isn't exactly an eating disorder, or hooking up with dozens of guys. But, it's still so... personal. Besides the doctors that diagnosed me, only my parents and my best friend, Bowen Chang know about it. You're the first person to just figure it out, and over an hour ago I slammed my front door in your face."
     "Plus called me a giant nerd," he chuckled. "One of the biggest in school."
"Oh shit," she groaned with a facepalm. "You heard that?"
"You weren't exactly whispering it," he pointed out. "You can relax. I don't give a shit. Besides, you're right. I am a giant nerd. Nobody would even believe me if I said Delilah Gellar, one of the most popular and beautiful girls in school has dyslexia."
"You think I'm beautiful?" she asked, blushing slightly.
"I assume everyone does," he shrugged. "I highly doubt I'm the first person to call you that."
"Yeah, I guess not," she said quietly.

"Although I mostly get called hot or sexy," she thought. "It's actually not very often I get straight up called beautiful. Not even Chaz has ever called me beautiful... Beaker... or I mean Bleaker is actually... kinda sweet? Who would've thought? I mean, sure, I've never heard of him doing anything all that strange. More that he just seems to do as he pleases without concern for his image."

"Everything ok?" Ion asked.
"Oh Shit! How long was I thinking for?" Delilah asked herself. "Yeah! Everything is fine. Just thinking things over in my head."
"I know that experience all too well," he smirked. "How badly does your dyslexia effect your reading?"
"I can read fine most of the time," she answered. "It's just that... when I have to write down my thoughts on something I read for school, things get all jumbled. If that makes sense."
"Yeah, I get it," he said. "I'll look into some ways to help you out with this.
"Really?" she asked.
"Of course," he answered. "I'm your tutor. My job is to help you improve your grades. Although I do have order kids to teach throughout the week. But you can talk to me about it at school too, if you're cool with that."
"I guess that wouldn't be so bad," she said. "Are we still gonna meet on Saturdays?"
"My Saturday hours till 6PM are pretty flexible," he replied. "After that I have stuff I do with my friends." Delilah gave him a look. "Surprised to hear I have a social life?"
"I guess not," she chuckled. "I have seen you hanging around some people at school."
    "See? I'm not completely pathetic," he joked.
     "I never said that!" she exclaimed.
     "Relax, Gellar," he snickered. "I was just having some fun with you."
     "You asshole," she cracked up.

     Once they were done with the tutoring session, Delian and Ion exchanged contact information, just in case they needed to change plans.
     "Same time next week then," Ion smiled. "Have a good one, Delilah."
     "You too, Ion," Delilah said back.
     "What? Not gonna call me Beaker?" he smirked.
     "Oh fuck off," she chuckled, flipping him off as she shut the front door.
     Delilah went to the kitchen, where her mom was preparing dinner.
     "I take it things went well?" Liza asked.
     "Way better than I expected, I'll admit," Delilah answered.
"I knew you'd get along," said Liza. "Had a good feeling about him the day your teacher introduced me to him."
"You can stop bragging, mom," Delilah sighed.
She knew she'd have to tell Bowan all about it soon.

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Notes: So there's a bit more words for you! I looked up some basic info on dyslexia, so I hope I was fairly accurate. I thought it would make for a decent plot point for this kind of story.

Thanks for reading! ^__^