It's Monday, and Johnny's about to be stuck at tutoring again. The remainder of his last lesson was a long, humiliating assessment of every concept he was behind in in Algebra. Apparently, he has about four months of learning to make up, and random pieces of knowledge missing from previous years he needs to "revisit." He doesn't want to show up. But he doesn't have much of a choice. That's not different from the rest of his life. At least he has an excuse for avoiding the gang. He's really not interested in facing Dally any time soon. Or Ponyboy for that matter.

Before Johnny enters the library, he remembers Darry's opaque warning, and he looks around inside to make sure he won't be left alone with Randy if the help lady walks out of the room. There's a least three other people, and they're on school property, so Johnny's safe for now, at least in theory, it's the first lesson he'll be staying the whole two hours. That is, if he lasts.

Johnny walks through the door and takes his seat across from Randy at the desk, who's shifting through hand-scribbled pages in his notebook.

"So, you know your times tables," Randy opens. Except, Randy sort of phrases it as a question.

"Oh course I know them! I'm not an idiot." Johnny's face is flushed. He's dumb, but times tables are elementary school stuff.

Randy holds up his hands. "Okay, okay. Let me finish. What I was going to say, before I was rudely interrupted," Randy says, raising an eyebrow. Johnny hates that. The stupid Soc thinks he's funny when he's not. "What I was going to say is," Randy continues, "multiplication is like a fast way of adding, if you think about it. It's like the adding shortcut."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is. Stop being ornery. It's like adding a number to itself, over and over, so you don't have to take the time to write it out. Three times six, stated differently, is the same thing as three plus three plus three plus three plus-"

"Got it." Johnny rolls his eyes. "So what? What does this have to do with roots? And don't call me ornery. I'm not a horse."

"Forget roots. We're talking about exponents first."

"The little numbers?" Johnny mumbles. He hates asking questions. It means he's too dumb to know what he's supposed to know. It's easy to sit in the back of the classroom and pretend to follow along when there's twenty other students in the class. But one-on-one is different. He has to ask or it's gonna be obvious real quick that he doesn't get it.

Randy suppresses a smirk. "The little numbers," he agrees. "So, if multiplication is the adding shortcut, exponents are the multiplication shortcut. Do you get it?"

Johnny rubs his hands on his legs. He doesn't look at Randy.

"Let's say we have three to the sixth power, that's a big three and little six in the upper right, understand?"

Johnny nods.

"That's the same thing as three times threes times three times-"

"I get it." And Johnny doesn't roll his eyes this time. Because those little numbers…when he first looked at them in class, he gave up before he even tried. They looked they were gonna be hard, and he got nervous.

"So if three times one is three, three to the first power is...?"

"Three?"

Randy smiles. It's a genuine smile, a real smile. A smile that doesn't belong on a Soc, especially this one. "Good. What is three to the third power?"

Johnny takes a minute to think. If three times three is nine, what is nine times three? Twenty-six? He counts it out in his head. "Twenty-seven."

"Excellent," Randy says. "I want you to memorize this table." He rips out a piece of notebook paper.

Johnny looks down at the careful, miniature script. The columns are labeled as bases, the rows, exponents. The lines were drawn crisply with a ruler, faint evidence of erased pencil marks wherever the lines had accidentally been sketched too far. Both the columns and the rows stretch twelve places in each direction. Johnny checks the remaining exponents for 3: 3, 9, 27, 81, 343, 729... He covers the paper with his hand and looks up.

"How long did this take you?"

"Not long," Randy lies. His eyes shift sideways-he's bad at it. "It's not a big deal," Randy says quickly, knowing he's been caught. Caught being kind, which, considering their positions in life, considering their destiny as sworn enemies because the clothes they wear and the way they style their hair and money, always money-even if Randy hadn't jumped him in the past-kindness is the worst possible crime.

"I'm going to show you how to chart this on a graph. Visually it will make more sense."