Part Three

The next few weeks were hell. Never before had Sean Morris, Mr. Popularity, had to eat in the cafeteria alone, or had to hang out alone after school. He'd always thought he was above worrying about having friends, but he now realized how easy it was when you never had to worry about them. They'd always flocked to him before. Even his girlfriend, Meaghan, was suddenly too busy with school and extracurricular activities to go out when he called. Her voice was polite on the phone, but somehow impersonal.

The loneliness was unexpectedly painful. He tried to maintain his easygoing, nothing-bothers-me front in the face of his friends' hostility, but it began to wear him down. Even at baseball practice he was ignored, and a couple of times the coach took him aside and asked him if everything was going okay. "Yeah, sure," Morris replied, shaking off the coach's concern.

Worse, without his friends to distract him, it suddenly seemed that Simon was everywhere he looked, floating around on the periphery of Morris's life like some kind of silent specter. Each time he caught sight of Simon, Morris's heart leaped in his chest – from attraction? From fear? Could anyone tell that he was thinking about the crazy daydreams that he had each night just before he fell asleep? God, how he hated himself when he woke up and remembered what he had been thinking about the night before: the two of them alone together somewhere, talking and laughing, nobody else around to bother them. He'd look into Simon's blue eyes and see something in there that let him know it was safe, and he'd reach out, slowly taking him into his arms, and –  No. Stop right there. He wasn't going to think about that, not if he could help it.

Morris sat in his room one Friday evening, trying to put all of this out of his mind. He'd come home from baseball practice, gone straight into his room and played hours of Playstation, but even that was boring him. Lying on the bed, trying to come up with something he could do other than sit in his room and try not to think about Simon, he heard his parents knocking on his bedroom door.

"Can we talk to you?" his father asked through the door.

"I'm doing my homework," Morris lied, not particularly wanting to deal with them.

His father opened the door anyway. Both he and Morris's mother stood out in the hallway, still dressed in their work clothes, with worried expressions on their faces. Morris sat up and couldn't stop himself from glancing guiltily over at his desk, where his backpack filled with homework assignments sat, unopened.

Ignoring their son's lie about the homework, Morris's mother and father came into the room and stood looking down at him with concern. "Sean, we need to talk about school," his father said. "Your economics teacher called today and said that you've failed the last two quizzes and you're in danger of failing the class."

"That means you wouldn't graduate," his mother clarified.

Morris couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. Dimly he'd known that he was failing a lot of things, but he'd been so wrapped up in his personal problems that he hadn't realized how bad it was getting. It hadn't even occurred to him that his grade was dropping so steeply that they might call his parents. Plus, failing Econ meant he might be kicked off the baseball team. The school insisted that all athletes maintain a 2.0 GPA.

"I know that it's your senior year," Mr. Morris went on. "I remember how hard it was to concentrate on school when there's so many other things going on. But you know that your baseball scholarship at State depends on you keeping your grades up. If you don't graduate with your class, even if you make up the credit in summer school, you could lose that scholarship."

Morris felt awful. His parents had been so proud of his getting that scholarship, and now he'd gone and screwed it up.

"Is there something going on?" Morris's mother asked sadly. "Please, honey, if there's something bothering you so much that it's interfering with your studying, you've got to tell us."

"You know you can talk to us about anything," Morris's father added.

They'd always told him that, ever since preschool. They'd always been there for him. And if it had been anything else -- if he'd gotten a girl pregnant or was on drugs or wanted to drop out of school -- Morris might have told them. He knew that they would be very upset about any of those things, but they would have helped him any way they could and made things better. But tell them, "Well, Mom and Dad, I'm failing my economics class because I can't stop daydreaming about kissing the guy who sits across from me"? He couldn't do it.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," Morris said miserably. "I guess I've just been slacking off too much. But I promise I'll do better from now on."

"That's good to hear, son," his father said. "But your mother and I are worried. This is too important. It's your future we're talking about. So we've arranged for you to get some tutoring from another student in your class, a kid named Simon Camden. Mr. Dunwich said he knows the material backwards and forwards, and he's volunteered for the peer tutoring program."

Morris couldn't believe what he was hearing. "No!" he shouted. His parents looked shocked, and he lowered his voice. "I mean, I don't need that kind of thing. I just need to study more. I've been wasting my time, and I'll just work on managing my time better. I'm sure that's all I need." He was talking faster and faster.

His parents were looking at him curiously. "Of course, you'll have to do all that. But your mother and I have decided that it can't hurt for you to get a little extra help, and it might just motivate you. Mr. Dunwich has agreed to give you a little grace period to get your grades back up, as long as you're working with the tutor. All the arrangements have already been made."

"So I get no say in this at all?"

"I'm afraid not."

Morris slumped back on the bed. He was trapped. His scholarship and all the plans he had made for going to State next year depended on his passing Econ and staying on the baseball team. And both those things were dependent on him agreeing to be tutored by Simon Camden. If he made a big fuss about it or demanded a different tutor, they would just wonder why, and what explanation could he give them?

"Fine," he said flatly, refusing to look at his parents. He couldn't help feeling that they were persecuting him, even though he knew it was ridiculous – after all, how could they possibly know what they were doing? And at the same time, deep inside, he felt a tiny thrill at the thought of spending time with Simon. He tried to ignore it, but it was there. That made him feel more confused than ever.

******

The next day when he arrived at Econ class, Simon was already at his desk. As they had for the past few weeks, they ignored each other carefully. But as the other kids around him turned their attention to a kid out in the hallway telling a story about some moron who had eaten a frog gall bladder during Biology dissections, Morris mumbled, "I guess you're gonna be my tutor."

Simon glanced over at him quickly, obviously nervous but trying to cover it. "Yeah, my parents told me about it," he answered. "Mr. Dunwich called them."

"When are we supposed to—" Morris couldn't seem to think of the right thing to say. "Um, when do you –"

"There's another quiz tomorrow, so this afternoon, I guess. You have to come over to my house because I'm still on restriction for the party."

Oh, great – he'd get to see the Camdens again. Wonderful. "I have practice until four-thirty." Morris was half-hoping and half-dreading that Simon would say forget it.

"After that is fine." Simon spoke quietly and emotionlessly.

"Okay," Morris said just as the bell rung. As the other kids trooped to their desks, Morris opened his notebook and pretended to be engrossed in whatever he had written in class yesterday until he felt certain that his emotional state wouldn't show in his face.