"I think we need to set some ground rules before we start." Caroline said when they had found themselves alone in his study room.
"Okay." Tyler said laughing a little nervously. "Like what? Don't fall in love with you… or something?"
Caroline blushed deeply and cleared her throat quickly.
"Yes, obviously that too…because… (A) this is not my favourite movie 'A Walk To Remember' … and (B) Tyler, I'm dating… your best friend." She said barely able to string a complete sentence together, before fidgeting with her necklace from side to side.
Tyler smiled. He knew she only played with her necklace whenever she was extremely nervous or shy. Could it be a sign of her maybe liking him back?
"But I meant something more like, rule number one… no cellphones." She said snatching his phone out of his hands quickly.
"Hey! Give it back, Forbes!" he snapped.
"You can have it after we are finished with our tutoring session."
"But I was sexting Summer."
"Sexting?" she asked, scrunching up her face in disgust.
"Yes, it's when you-"
"I know what it is, Lockwood." She snapped angrily, rolling her eyes.
"Great! So you can give it back so I can reply to what she said."
"You can have it later. Who the hell is Summer, anyways?" she asked, trying her hardest to hide her apparent jealously.
"The chick in our English class. You know, she's got the really big-"
"Never mind. I don't care." She said cheerfully, trying to change the subject.
"Give me back my phone, Caroline. I'll just say bye to her and we can start. I don't want her to think that I'm ignoring her."
"I'm sure she will survive."
"I want my phone. Why won't you give it back?" he asked irritably.
"Because I'm here to tutor you… you ass! Not watch you send sexy messages to girls with fake… breasts!"
"How do you know that they are fake?"
"Ugh! I knew this was a bad idea." She said standing up and picking up her bag. "I'm going home."
"Wait! Care! I'm sorry." He said sighing heavily and tugging at her arm. "Please stay, you can keep my phone until we finish. I'll just reply to her after our tutoring session."
Caroline sighed and sat down again quickly.
"Rule number one…no cellphones." She continued rambling on. "Rule number two…no talking about girls." she said sneering a little.
Or Summer…she thought as jealousy started consume her slowly.
"Just for the record, is that because you think its distracting?…or because you are getting jealous?" Tyler teased.
"I'm not jealous." She said a little too loudly, for her liking.
"You so are."
"Look, Tyler." she said scoldingly, as her cheeks started to burn beet red again. "We have less than one week to get you up to date in all your classes before our exams. If you want to fail and repeat then that's fine, but I am not going to be wasting my time on you, if you are not serious about wanting help!"
Tyler rolled his eyes quickly. "Yes mom. Can we start now?"
"There's only one more rule." She said quickly. "No one, not Elena, not Bonnie, not Stefan, Jeremy or Damon, no one can know that I am helping you study, okay? Because if Matt finds out we are both screwed! I don't like lying or keeping things from my boyfriend but trust me, this is for the best. So don't tell anyone, okay? Got it?"
Tyler nodded quickly and bit down onto his bottom lip to supress the smile that was so desperately trying to take over his face.
This was somehow the proof that Caroline had strong feelings for him as well, somewhere deep down. She just didn't know it yet. But he planned on making her see it.
He knew it was wrong of him on so many levels to be attracted to his best friend's girl; but he couldn't help it.
What was that thing people said?...
You can't help who you fall in love with? He thought.
And he certainly had no control over that. It was never his intention to want Matt's girlfriend. He never in a million years would do anything to hurt his friend and yet now he felt like the biggest jerk on the planet for even entertaining the idea of desiring Caroline.
/
"So I thought we would start with English." Caroline said optimistically, pulling out her textbooks from her school bag. "The exam is basically going to be three essays... One on the related text, which is William Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew; One on the movie Ten Things I Hate About You, which is the kind of modern adaptation of our related text and; One on a text of your own choosing. So what text have you decided on?"
"I haven't chosen one yet."
"What do you mean, you haven't chosen one yet, Tyler?" she asked, mentally counting to ten in her head to stop her from snapping at him rudely. "We were meant to choose a text over a month ago! What did you submit as your first essay?"
"I don't want to talk about it. I failed anyways, so it doesn't matter now."
"How am I meant to help you if you won't tell me things?" she asked hissing loudly. "What did you choose, Tyler?"
"Transformers, okay? I wrote about the stupid movie and I failed badly. Don't laugh." He snapped angrily. "It's embarrassing."
Caroline bit down onto her lip to stop herself from erupting with laughter.
"You wrote about the Transformers' movie?" she asked, holding back the urge to laugh loudly in his face.
"Yes."
"Why, Ty?"
"Because I thought it was relevant to our theme."
"Our theme is about transformation…like the changes that people experience within themselves in order to make themselves a better person."
"Well I didn't know that."
"Clearly." She mumbled quietly.
"What's that meant to mean?" he asked angrily.
"Maybe if you listened in class, instead of perving on fake boobs you would have known it."
"Again with the jealousy?! Aren't you meant to be dating Matt?" he asked hotly.
Caroline blushed and quickly rolled her eyes.
"You can use my related text." She said quickly, avoiding his question. "It's Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen."
Tyler groaned loudly. "That's so girly, Care."
"Well too bad. Beggars can't be choosers."
"Don't you have something manlier that I can pass off as my own?"
"You could do Les Mis…"
"What?"
"… But that might be hard to explain to you since you haven't read the book." She said trailing off in her own little thoughts. "What about Dickens? Have you read any of his stories? Because A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations could also work…"
"Does it look like I even know who Dickens is?" Tyler asked rolling his eyes.
Caroline ignored him and began scribbling away on a piece of paper.
"What are you doing?"
"Brainstorming…shhh."
"What about?"
"About transformation texts, you idiot!"
"Emma, The Scarlet Letter, Gone With the Wind…" Tyler read out loud the list she had written on her piece of paper. "Hell no! Caroline, these are all chicks' books! Mr Rivers is never going to believe that I read one of these."
Caroline sighed heavily. "You're right. We are…"
"Come on Care, you can say it.. we are screwed." he said finishing off her sentence.
"Yeah." She said burying her head into her hands. "Tyler, what are we going to do?"
/
"So tell me everything that you remember in History Class." Caroline said opening up her history book.
They had given up on studying English for the day and moved onto another subject.
"I don't know, Care." He said sighing heavily. "There's this war that Mr Saltzman said killed like about 20 million people."
"Okay. So what war was that?"
"World War… two?"
Caroline sighed heavily and bit back the urge to ask him if he played attention in any of his classes.
"It's not the right war, is it?"
"No." she said softly. "But it's okay, because by the time I'm finished tutoring you, Tyler, you will know so much that you are going to blow Mr Saltzman's socks off."
"I'd need a miracle for that to happen, Care."
"No, you just need to learn your work. I know you're a smart guy and I have so much faith in you, Tyler. You just need the right teacher to help you remember your work and the rest is up to you." She said reaching out to squeeze his hand.
Tyler looked down at her hand on top of his and was about to respond by squeezing it back, but she had pulled it away quickly before he had gotten the chance. He watched as her face once again deepened into a deep red blush and saw how her fingers nervously fidgeted with her silver necklace.
"The way, uh, to remember the difference between the two world wars is by…" Caroline said a little flustered, before taking out a piece of butchers paper and drawing a line down the centre of it. "…remembering that World War Two was worse than any other war in History."
"But I thought World War One was called 'The War to end all wars'." He asked quickly.
"Tyler!" Caroline said softly, smiling at him. "That's so right! So you do listen in class after all!"
"I only remembered because you said it in your speech…remember?"
"You were listening?" she asked frowning a little. "But you were doodling in your book…I saw you."
Tyler couldn't tell her the real reason why he had chosen to avoid eye contact with her last week, when she presented her speech in front of their History class. He had chosen to draw in his book to seem uninterested and bored, because he feared that looking at her might show how much he actually wanted her. He didn't want his lingering gaze to freak her out or make her question their friendship.
"I was paying attention. I heard everything you said, Care." He said softly, before quickly changing the subject. "So why did World War Two happen then?"
Caroline frowned slightly. Tyler was acting really weird. She was so certain last week that he had been bored out of his brains during her speech and now he had admitted to listening to it all?
"There are a lot of reasons basically, but they all start with Adolf Hitler." Caroline said quickly, trying to push the thought of why Tyler was acting so weird out of her brain. "How about you tell me everything you know about Hitler?"
/
"Can you please stop snapping at me?" Tyler growled angrily.
"I wouldn't be snapping if you actually paid attention in class!" she snapped quickly. "This is the wrong answer, Tyler. Try again."
"I told you I don't like Mathematics."
"Too bad…You need to pass this test, just like all the rest of your exams to graduate. So solve this equation." She said pushing a piece of paper closer to him.
Tyler stared blankly at the equation in front of him. He had no idea what it meant; let alone how to even attempt to start it.
"Look, I clearly have no idea what to do. So can you please show me how to solve it?"
Caroline sighed heavily.
"2a + 6y + 4a + 10y + 3x + 4b + 7x equals." Caroline said reading out the equation loudly. "So it looks a lot harder than what it actually is. But it's basically about grouping, Tyler. What you need to do is group all the similar letters together and then add them. So how many 'a's do we have in this equation?"
"Two?"
"Right. So we add the 2a with the 4a and we get…?"
"Six?"
"Yes, kinda... the correct answer is 6a though. Don't forget that the letter is equally as important. So you do that for all the other letters, grouping them together and then we re-write out our equation. That's how you solve this kind of problem."
"Wait a minute. So we don't add it all together?" he asked frowning a little.
"No, because they are different groups of letters. You only add numbers with the same letters, Tyler."
"So is the answer… 6a + 16y + 10x + 4b ?"
"YES!" Caroline shrieked excitedly. "Tyler! You got it!"
/
"So for Science I thought we should just go through my revision book. I've been making this for a while, it's pretty much everything that we have learnt in the last four years."
Tyler groaned loudly.
"Don't you groan at me, Lockwood." Caroline snapped hotly. "You wanted me to tutor you, so you asked for it."
"But four years' worth of Science, Care?" he asked grimacing. "Do you really need to start that far back?"
"We do, if you want to understand what we are going to be writing about in our exam, Tyler. Mrs Roberts said that the exam will test all our Science knowledge, even down to the bare basics."
"So how many pages of that book have you filled anyways?" he asked taking it out of her hands and skimming through the exercise book.
"All of it." she said smugly, before snatching it out of his hands quickly. "And just so you know, there are two more just like it."
Tyler groaned loudly. "Did I miss the class where we were meant to go home and write revision books for Science, or something?"
"Nope. I just decided to do it myself."
"You're telling me that you decided to do it without anyone telling you to do this?"
"Yep."
"You did this, as well as your homework?" he asked as he eyes widened in shock.
"Uh huh. I've done this to all my subjects, Tyler."
"Caroline Forbes, you are such a DORK!" he said laughing loudly at her.
"I am not." she snapped hotly, feeling a little embarrassed as her cheeks burned red.
"Uh, yeah you are." he said picking up her exercise book. "Classic example!"
Caroline counted to ten to calm herself before she spoke again.
"We are wasting time." she said in her best coolly collected voice that she could manage. "So let's start with atoms."
Tyler sighed and pulled down at his face with his two hands.
"Would you rather go back to studying maths?"
"No."
"So pay attention." She snapped, moving closer to him to share her exercise book. "Atoms are made of extremely small particles called Protons, Neutrons and Electrons. Protons and Neutrons are found in the centre of the atom, making up the Nucleus and Electrons surround the Nucleus. Are you following?"
Tyler shook his head.
"Okay I'll have to draw it out for you, so you understand."
"When are we going to have a break, Care?" he asked running his hand through his hair quickly. "We have been going at this for hours."
"Soon." She said drawing a circle on a piece of paper and labelling it as an atom. "So here's our atom…here's the Nucleus… These are the Protons and Neutrons that make up our Nucleus…here are the Electrons surrounding our Nucleus…" she said pointing to her diagram. "So protons have a positive charge. Electrons have a negative charge and neutrons have no charge at all."
"Caroline…" he begged.
"What, Tyler?" she huffed, placing down her pencil to look at him.
"I'm exhausted. We have been studying for over four hours can we please call it a night?"
Caroline sighed heavily.
"Fine." She hissed, gathering her books quickly. "But we have a lot of work to cover…in all your subjects Tyler, not just in science and we only have a week to do it."
"I know, Care." He said honestly. "But I'm drained. It's been a long day…Coach went hard on us at practice and I'm dead tired. All I want to do is eat and forget about school."
Caroline nodded in agreement. He was right. There was no use bombarding him with information if he was too tired to really understand it properly.
"Here's your phone back." She said reaching into her jean's pocket before handing it over to him. "You should probably reply to her, your phone was vibrating every ten seconds, it was gross."
Tyler smirked playfully. He loved it whenever she was jealous.
Caroline threw her bag over her shoulder and picked up her folder.
"I hope I taught you some valuable things today. If you remember them, I'm sure you will be fine in our exams." She said, squeezing his shoulder gently, before heading for the door. "Same time tomorrow?"
Tyler nodded quickly and smiled.
"Hey Care, wait." Tyler said quickly.
"Yeah?" she asked, stopping in the doorway abruptly and turning around to face him again.
"Do you want to stay for dinner?"
Caroline laughed nervously. "Shouldn't you ask your parents if it's okay first?"
"You're joking right?" he asked rolling his eyes. "I don't even eat dinner with them. I was going to order some food. "
"Oh." She said frowning a little. "It's pretty late, I should get going."
"We could make watch a movie afterwards?"
"I shouldn't."
"Come on, Caroline. We just spent four hours studying together! Stay and eat something with me. We can watch whatever you like." He said hopefully.
Caroline sighed heavily. "Fine! But I'm choosing the movie." She said winking playfully at him.
-x-
Author's Note:
I really hope this chapter was not too boring.
Sorry if you felt like you were at school being taught again or whatever.
But it was needed to show that Caroline has been tutoring Tyler for later on in the story.
Please leave me a review?
Thanks.
Paris xxx