So, believe me, I KNOW this is awful. No content, no story, and I'm sorry. I have been really busy with school, and other personal troubles. But here it is- 2nd chapter. Before I start, let me just say that it's HELL posting a second chapter. Once again, love the site, don't kick me out, but it took me forever to figure it out. Reviews have somehow become my life fuel, so please tell me what you think, if I should continue it or what. :)

When they got there, the first thing Mandy did was ask him what he needed help on. When he replied simply, "Everything," she snorted and pulled her backpack to the top of the counter. "Here. I've got… Two hours before I have to be home for dinner. Let's just try and get through math. Algebra, right?"

Ben nodded, already feeling a bit out of his depth. It was weird enough that Mandy was seated at his kitchen table, her black-and-purple backpack open to reveal somewhere near three thick binders full of color-coded notes. But this girl wasn't playing around.

"So, I just don't get the way that the negatives and positives go together. Look…" He pointed to the problem in question, the third one. It had confused him to no end, but he looked at Mandy and she seemed to have instantly figured it out.

Ben looked out the window to see his younger brother Curt making kissy faces through the window. Very, very obviously. Little devil- he was in eighth grade and despised Ben's girlfriend Elizabeth. Whenever Ben brought Kourtney or Alice over to hang out, Curt would pretend to be Ben's wingman and say "He would love you." The athletic boy seated at the table shot his brother a terrifying stare, drew a finger over his throat and mouthed Shut up.

Mandy saw him. He apologized with a slight incline of his head, and she rolled round brown eyes.

And that's when the talking began.

Mandy Bailey could talk. Not even an annoying amount- just fast, an endless torrent of information. Ben learned more from here in half an hour than he did on most school days. In light of her maniacal knowledge, he leaned over the table and murmured, "Wow."

She snorted. "I pay attention. I pay really good attention." To emphasize her point, she slammed down three pages of meticulous Cornell notes (that were riddled with doodles of human organs).

"I can tell."

What little conversation that was sprinkled in between the tutoring was rigid, forced. Ben found himself listening intently enough that when he looked up, the sky had faded to a hopeful gray. Mandy was shocked to see his mostly-full notebook page, and when he checked with her for confirmation, she had this little half-smile on her face. The popular boy seated opposite her felt his face flush when she leaned over to look at his paper. "Hey, looks like you've almost got it."

He nodded, embarrassed. His chest felt weird when he saw her smile, like a heart attack or whatever. Maybe it was because he'd never seen it before- just the surprise of it. Instead of voicing all of this internal monologue, he simply replied, "Yeah. You're pretty good at this."

A plush pink spilled over her freckled cheeks and her lip jutted out in embarrassment. "Shut up."

Ben frowned. Wasn't he being nice? Was it different in nerd world? Although he thought he had given her a compliment, the mini-surgeon gave him this dry glare and when he dared to check, her smile had evaporated. Ben was kind of sad to see it go. What?

He looked away and caught the red glint of the stove clock. They had no other clocks in the house, and Ben knew it would have been rude to take out his new phone. But he wished he had when he saw the time.

"Oh, shit. It's already six-thirty." He said, standing up so fast that his binder fell of his lap. Mandy gaped at him, clearly showcasing why he called her trouty-mouth, and glanced over at the stove. "What? Oh my God, my mom's gonna kill me." Her lilting voice was miffed at most, but the way her eyes flashed beneath the kitchen lights showed something dangerous.

"Sorry for keeping you…" The cocoa-skinned teenager ushered her off her stool, and she sprung away from the kitchen island like it had burned her. She was too short for her legs to even touch the ground, so when she leapt to the tiled floor, her small hand clasped onto his wrist for support. He shuddered. Her skin was warm and soft.

"Sorry!" She murmured. This was more the Mandy he was used to- lowered gaze, demure blinking pattern, gathering up her books like a cautious gazelle that could be attacked at any moment.

Ben nodded, speechless. It felt like she'd been here two minutes. He convinced himself that it was because the subject matter was kind of interesting.

The door clamped shut behind her just as soon as Curt came in. His football was still outside in the grass- Mom would yell at him for not putting it in the shed. The tiny-tot eighth grader had wet hair from tossing it around with his friend Mark, and he looped a towel around his neck as he draped himself over the counter. "Who was thaaat?" He singsonged.

Ben growled playfully. "Mom made me get a tutor. That's… Uh, that was Mandy."

Going for the obvious cliché, Curt grinned and cocked his eyebrow. "Is she helping you with... Chemistry?"

"Well, uh, actually yeah, but no! We're not even friends. She's the biggest nerd on the planet, Curt. Now, why would I want to hit that?" He felt a little bad now, saying these things. That was new. He had flayed this geek alive in front of her, and now his whole chest tingled when he tried. Two hours alone with actual helpful analogies would do that to you, he told himself.

The pest raised and dropped his brows while pouring some leftover chicken soup into a bowl. By the time it was in the microwave, he had graduated to full on pelvic thrusts, prancing around the kitchen and humming, "Ben and Man- Mandy? Sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-"

"Shut up!" Ben groaned, accepting the proffered bowl of broth. "Nope." Curt smirked.

This was going to go great.

"Marcus King. Please come up and fix the sentence on the whiteboard…" Mr. Marle droned, his monotone fading away into Ben's subconscious. He hated Spanish more than any other class. All the stupid questions, and people uh-ing and um-ing their way across problems that no one understood. As if to prove his point, Marcus added a comma and an upside-down question mark and called it a day.

As the nervous jock returned to his seat, trading high fives with friends, Mr. Marle sighed in disgust. "Mr…" The balding teacher glanced to his charts. It was nearing the last quarter, and he still had yet to learn any of their names. "Warren!" Cold brown eyes peered over wire-rimmed glasses. "What else is wrong with the sentence."

Ben rolled his eyes carefully so the teacher wouldn't see, and stood up from his cramped little desk. Maybe he would just add another punctuation mark- he had no idea. Ben was used to winging in class.

But when he got up there, something strange happened. He looked at the sentence (¿O ti, Que te gosta hacér? So far) and his brain clicked. Marks mean that the emphasis goes on that letter. Oh, come on, spell it right. Mandy's voice.

Barely looking behind him, he cocked his head towards Mr. Marle and started scrawling in his messy handwriting. That's an A, accent mark right there, that's almost too easy, that shouldn't be there, emphasis on this letter, spell that right, done. The marker stilled on the board. He looked up.

The sentence now read, ¿A tí, qué te gusta hacer? Ben turned to the class finally, popping the cap back on the marker, and to his amazed teacher, who promptly said "Wow, Mr. Warren… You've definitely improved!"

Oh no. The troublesome football player looked over to his friends, especially Marcus. They weren't happy, although a few seemed gleeful at the blood about to be shed. Ben lowered his shaved head and slunk back to his seat, catching Mandy smiling slightly in the back row.

"What the hell was that?" Ben whipped around in his seat to feel the jab of Mitch's pencil in his shoulder. "Are you some kind of genius, huh?" The red-haired boy sneered. Ben raised his eyebrows- They had been friends literally yesterday.

"Oh, uh, no. Just remembered something the old guy droned about last class," Ben parried, shoving his notebook back into his backpack. "Must've gotten lucky."

People settled down, with an apologetic shrug from Mitch. "Just making sure, man."

Sigh of relief. It seemed to pour out of Ben's spine into his hands as he struggled through the worksheet that had just been handed out. As usual, Preston Burke's (teacher's pet of the year) hand had shot up to pass them around, is only to earn a smile from the teacher.

He had totally crushed that sentence. Any other day, he would have uh-ed and um-ed his way through like any other, until he was asked to leave and handed that little pink slip of doom. Not today though. Thanks to Mandy. Which was weird- he must have retained some of her information through her tactics. Certainly not her teaching. Was she that good?

The bell rang. The gatekeeper of freedom.

However, when Ben saw Elizabeth Miller flouncing towards him from the end of the hallway, his small smile evaporated. Liz. A prissy, stuck-up brunette, she was twice as mean as the guys and pretty airheaded to top it off. She was also his aforementioned girlfriend.

Before he could dodge, she was on him like a bloodhound. Wrapping her thin arms around his neck and pressing a small kiss to his cheekbone, Liz giggled into his neck. "Guess what?"

Ben forced his mouth into a pained smile. "Uh, what?"

Of course, instantly her face got all pinched up like she had swallowed a lemon. "I said guess, idiot. I'm not going to give you all the answers."

He sighed, resisting the urge to push her off. She was referring to that one time in eighth grade when he had asked her the answers to her homework. "Okay, fine. Uhhh, your mom bought an elephant, and it's living in your room."

"Nope."

Ben really hated this game. "You finally got that 'special yellow dress' you were raving about." She booped his nose. "No."

"Gary put a stink bomb full of spiders in your locker," Ben teased, getting kind of into it now, "and so now all your textbooks are covered in fuzzy, crawling, sticky-footed insects that are slowly laying egg sacs all over-"

"Ben! You know I'm afraid of spiders!" With a brief slap to his chest, she fake-gagged (or maybe it was real) over his shoulder. "And on that note, I think you're out of guesses."

The square-shouldered boy rolled his eyes in frustration. Sometimes, this whole girlfriend thing just wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "Okay, now will you tell me or not? Time's a-wasting, Liz"

"Fine. I asked my mom, got her alone, you know, and she said that as long as I did all my community service hours and never cheated again, I could go to prom!" Following this statement was a squeal so long and awfully pitchy that everyone within a five-foot radius resisted covering their ears.

On any other day, this would have made Ben happy. But today, he just felt off. The bell was still ringing, somehow.

"Cool," he replied casually, slinging his backpack back onto his shoulder again. Liz was disappointed, but didn't voice it when Ben tossed a kiss onto her forehead haphazardly and headed off to math. "Send me a pic of your tie?" She shouted questioningly, receiving but a nod.