Beaumont Academy

Chapter 5: Offer Help when Help is Needed

        My first few weeks at Beaumont Academy came and went, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I was happy about that. My life was kind of lacking in the social department, which was surprising seeing as I was the social butterfly at my old school. I guess part of it was my fault, and part of it wasn’t. I’d purposely skipped Jenna’s mock trial meeting because after going home and thinking about it, I decided that I wasn’t ready to compromise a higher position on the school’s social hierarchy just to do some boring court case stuff. Naturally I didn’t tell Jenna that because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but it seemed like she took the hint pretty well. I told her I still wanted to be friends though, so she suggested that we study together sometimes after school. So we studied together in the school library while I waited for my chauffeur (aka David) to finish his work and drive me home. The studying actually helped—after all I still had to learn the material, even if I wasn’t exactly doing all of the homework on my own.

Cyrus kept on using my locker for his homework services, but he also kept his end of the bargain. Surprisingly, his business ran a lot smoother than I thought it would (or ever could). I’d see kids passing him papers and packets at all hours of the day, typically in the hallway, simply saying the due date as the homework exchanged hands. Cyrus wasn’t stupid though—he made everyone pay up front, probably so that they couldn’t argue about the quality of the work after they got it back. I wasn’t sure what anyone could complain about though—as far as I could tell from the homework of mine he’d done, Cyrus was smart, really smart, and always produced A-quality work (or B-plus-quality if he was swamped and didn’t know the subject matter firsthand).

How he managed to do it as a one-man business, I would never know. Although I guess it helped that the majority of kids that used his services ended up having the exact same homework due for the same exact class.

“Wow, that was fast,” I said as Cyrus handed me back the algebra packet I’d given him yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t due for another few days, which gave me plenty of time to copy his work down so that it was in my own handwriting.

“I know,” Cyrus said. “I figured you all would want them back relatively early since there’s a lot of work to copy down.”

“You all?” I looked at him confused. “How many of these did you have to do?”

“About a dozen.”

“Wow, that’s more than half my math class.”

Cyrus shrugged. “I like when the homework is for the same teacher, because it means I can just do the problems once and photocopy multiple copies of it.”

“Well, thanks for this,” I said before putting the packet in my backpack.

“A deal’s a deal.”

“It sure is.”

“Colton,” a distant yet familiar voice shouted from down the hall. Colton? Who was Colton?

I looked up from zipping my backpack to see that it was none other than the tall, dark, and handsome Max walking towards us.

Max hesitated for a second when he recognized it was me standing next to Cyrus. “Oh … hey Maddy.” It was kind of awkward since we hadn’t really said one word to each other since the uncomfortable lunch I’d had with him and his friends the first day.

“Oh, so now you want to talk to me?” I asked.

“What?” Max asked. “What do you mean?”

“Well you seemed awfully clammy the first day of school when your friend insulted me.”

“I’m sorry about that. I just didn’t know what to do, like I didn’t know if you were upset or—”

“Max, when a girl gets called a ‘bitch,’ ninety-nine percent of the time they’re upset about it.”