School the next day was terrible. Chemistry was his first period, which meant fighting sleep and trying to comprehend useless information at the same time. He had to try harder than usual, as his father's threat hung above his head. Comparing his worksheet to the answers on the board, he knew that he was dead meat. Everything was wrong. He tried to figure out what he did wrong by staring at Katya Braginskaya's paper, but she protected her answers fiercely. If the answers are on the board, then why the hell are you blocking them? I just want to see your work, damn it! She couldn't have gotten everything wrong, because chemistry was her best subject. An idea formed in his head. Could he ask Katya to tutor him? He stared at the short-haired blonde, trying to see potential. She was very smart, but Alfred barely knew her. Asking her to tutor him would be just plain creepy.

He rested his head on his desk, exhausted. The teacher began to start the lesson, but it wasn't like he could understand it in the first place. His mind drifted off to sleep, away from the world of chemistry . . .

Get up, you git! Arthur's voice echoed in his sleeping mind. How hard is it to even try to understand? It's not hard to try, but Arthur knows it's not enough. A is for Alfred, he used to tell him, before he stopped trying to encourage him and began yelling all the time. He forced himself awake and tuned into some nonsense about a guy named Boyle's law. Who wastes his time thinking of crap like this? He asked that question every day, yet the world continued to conspire against him by creating a new formula or principle for him to cram into his useless mind.

When the bell rang, he was relieved. He was sick and tired of the stupid practice problems they worked on, none of which Alfred could answer properly. He walked through the crowd and to his locker. Luckily, he was competent enough to know how to open it. He put away his chemistry materials and prepared for English and Geometry, his next two classes. Studying a language he already knew how to speak never made sense to Alfred, but at least he was passing the class with a solid C plus.

By lunch, Alfred had encountered every reason he despised school—chemistry class in general, smart kids who knew the answer to every question, while he was still trying to figure out what to do with the numbers, low self-esteem pertaining directly to test scores, and teachers discussing how important a role education played in their lives.

"Who gives a shit?" he asked aloud. Arthur did, but he didn't care. He was worse than all of the teachers here.

He made his way through the lunch line and met his friends at their usual table. His best friend, Matthew, was already twirling spaghetti with his fork. Everyone else was probably still in line.

"Hey, Matt." Matthew waved as Alfred sat down and opened his can of weird, school-brand, supposedly healthy carbonated drink. Dumb health laws prevented the school from serving Coke and stuff, so they were stuck with some gross sparkling juice. Alfred drank it every day anyways, though it tasted like piss.

"Hi, Alfred. What's up?" Alfred shrugged, shoving a meatball into his mouth.

"I hate school, I hate my dad, and I hate this goddamn soda imposter." He took a sip of it anyways. The pineapple-mango flavor was definitely the worst.

"Sounds like everything's normal." Just then, their friend Gilbert sat down loudly, along with his girlfriend Elizaveta. Most of the time, Alfred and Matthew wondered if she even liked him, as she spent most of her time threatening him. Somehow, she sat with them anyways, though she probably would be enjoying herself a lot more with her civilized, intelligent, nice friends.

"I fucking hate Roderich Edelstein," he began, offering no introduction. "Today, he said I wasn't 'musically inclined' enough for band class. I play the triangle! I don't need to be 'musically inclined', because I was shoved into that class, having not signed up for anything else, and my dumb counselor won't let me quit! I play for about two measures per song, and all I have to do is bang the goddamn triangle! I don't need 'special talent' or 'Austrian protiginess' to play an instrument that does nothing but make a goddamn dinging noise!" He stopped his ranting for about two seconds to begin eating. "He thinks he's the greatest thing on the goddamn planet, you know? 'Look at me, I'm first chair'. Big whoop! It's a stupid chair; all you do is sit! That snobbish pansy is such a—"

"Well, he's more talented than you, Gilbert. Personally, his violin-playing beats your defense ability any day. Nobody cares about defense. Or soccer," Elizaveta insisted.

"EVERYONE CARES ABOUT SOCCER!" the three boys yelled, drawing the attention of a couple students. Alfred cared about soccer more than anything. It was the only thing he had to prove he wasn't a waste of space.

"Don't you dare defend other boys, Elizaveta! Especially not assholes like—"

"Oh please, you're way more of an asshole than—"

"Oh, so you're taking Roddy's side? WHY DON'T YOU JUST FUCKING ASK HIM TO MARRY YOU, THEN?" Their arguments were heated and frustrating, but Alfred found them effective to clear his mind.

"This, my friend, is what a bad marriage looks like," Matthew whispered. Alfred nodded. Matthew's parents divorced, which led him to move to Connecticut from Vancouver, but he often joked about it. Alfred understood very well that joking about life was a lot easier than living it.

"Why the hell are they even still together? Does she even see anything in him?"

"RODERICH EDELSTEIN IS A PANSY CUNT!"

"YOU ARE THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE I'VE EVER MET!"

"YOU TAKE THAT BACK!"

"TAKE THAT BACK? YOU SHOULD JUST STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE!"

"I THINK YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!"

"YOU'VE RUN OUT OF GOOD COMEBACKS!"

"Hey, Matt, are there any good movies playing this weekend?"

Alfred had as much of a chance of seeing a movie with Matt as he did of hooking up Gilbert with Roderich Edelstein. When the end of the day came, he had three worksheets due for chemistry that he had no idea how to do. Sighing in frustration, he headed to the school library, though the last thing he wanted to do was stay at school. But Arthur had threatened to drop him out of soccer, and when Arthur made a threat, it was serious. He walked into the library, chose the most secluded table he could find, and opened his chemistry binder.

The numbers melted together in his brain. Helplessness overcame him; he reread the directions over and over again, but he hadn't the faintest idea what to do. Worst of all, the teacher didn't provide an answer key, so he couldn't even check. Usually, he would make up answers, but being as his grade was so abysmal, and as Arthur demanded that he raise his grade, he actually had to try this time.

"Is anyone sitting here?" Alfred looked up to find a tall, smiling boy with blonde hair, purple eyes, and the weirdest voice he's ever heard. He sounded high, and his voice was heavily accented. Why the hell is everyone in this town a foreigner? It made him feel out of place as an American-born citizen, though he lived in his native country.

The last thing Alfred wanted was for this Russian kid to see how dumb he was, but only a jerk turned people away from seats at the library. "Sure, go ahead," he replied, his voice flat. He's so massive . . . he's probably killed twenty people with a body like that. He tried to focus on his chemistry work, but it was as if he was staring at a brick wall. Nothing particularly good would come out of it.

"Isn't chemistry the most pointless subject?" the boy commented, staring at Alfred's work. Alfred glared at him, annoyed for invading his privacy. At least he hadn't written any dumb answers. "Let me see . . . oh, gas laws. We did these last semester—"

"Give me my damn paper back!" he snatched it from the boy, who had seized it without Alfred's permission. "It's none of your business what I'm working on!"

"But you clearly don't know what you're doing! You're just staring at it angrily. Maybe if you tried—"

"I don't need complete strangers to tell me I'm stupid!" Alfred yelled. The librarian hushed him furiously as the entire library stared. "The fuck are you all looking at?"

"Sir, please refrain from shouting and/or using profanities in the library," the librarian scolded. Alfred mumbled a heartless apology and returned to his paper as she walked away.

"You'd be best to start by recognizing what formula to use. What does the problem give you?" Alfred read the directions to the first problem.

"22.3—"

"Not the numbers, things like pressure and temperature and stuff!" he stared again.

"Uh . . . pressure . . . and volume."

"And what formula uses pressure and volume?" The boy looked at him expectantly. Alfred glared in return.

"The hell should I know?"

"Boyle's law. Initial pressure times initial volume equals final pressure times final volume . . ." he grumbled as he followed the verbal instructions, feeling like the idiot he was. This kid probably thought he was the dumbest person alive. Nevertheless, with his help, he actually found that his answer could make sense.

The boy smiled at him. "It's not that hard, is it?"

"It's one problem. How the hell do I do the rest?"

"I'll show you, just follow my instructions . . ."

With the aid of the towering teenager, Alfred managed to complete an assignment that would have taken three hours alone only forty-five minutes. Best of all, the material started to make a little sense after a while. Now grinning, he put away his chemistry binder and slung his backpack over his shoulders.

"You are a savior, dude. I would've been dead if I didn't do this right." The taller boy shrugged.

"You are welcome. I'm here every day, from three-thirty to five. If you need help, just come, yes?" He smiled again, handing Alfred a square of line paper with a name scrawled on it, first in English, then in Russian: Ivan Braginski. A cell phone number was written below it, as well as the aforementioned library hours. Alfred nodded in appreciation, pocketing the slip of paper.

"Cool. My name's Alfred F. Jones, midfielder on the school soccer team. Yes, I'm that cool."

"I do not know what that is," he replied. "But it can't be anything too important, because I've never heard of it." Alfred became suddenly angry.

"What the fuck did you just say about soccer?" he asked. Ivan laughed softly; clearly, he didn't actually care for Alfred—he was probably tutoring him out of boredom. Maybe Ivan will use his stupidity against him, now that he was aware of how brain-dead he was. "Forget it—I'm going home, before my dad kills me."

"Oh? Okay then, I will see you tomorrow, Alfred F. Jones. What does the F stand for, anyways?"

"Failure," he replied, storming off before the librarians could yell at him again for swearing and talking at an audible tone. Any good feelings about this session evaporated. Who the hell does he think he his, acting all nice just to . . . just to act like Arthur? He didn't want to go home, to where he would just be ridiculed by his own father, but it was better than arriving home late, and listening to his lectures. And even though Ivan turned out to be a huge jerk, at least he got his homework done. Maybe he could just seclude himself in his bedroom and play video games. The plan didn't seem too bad, and he could always do his other homework at two in the morning. He smiled to himself, knowing that he couldn't possibly be scolded when he had taken a step towards success.

Maybe things could start to look up . . .