Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 (11 page)

“Yup. But a prep school assumes that all of its students are going to college. It’s short for university preparatory school. Most are pretty high end.” His professor’s voice was offhand, like “no big deal that you don’t know this”. His face flamed and his hand grew damp as he considered asking more questions. She didn’t make him work up the nerve, though. “Some are day schools like regular high schools, but Choate is a boarding school. Most of the students live there.”

“Boarding school? For real? I thought that was something they only did in, like, England.” That was some weird-ass shit. No way would his sisters have let him move out during high school and live at some school without any family around. White people were crazy.

“It’s a rich-people thing, although there are a lot of scholarship students too,” Professor Egan said matter-of-factly, confirming Rafi’s suspicions. “And this is why you need to come see me, and take advantage of all the help the writing center and the other study groups can give you. There are kids here whose parents spent fifty grand a year to send them to excellent high schools. They’ve had private tutors, summer programs, whatever. The competition field is not level, Mr. Castro. You haven’t had the same breaks. Don’t let your pride keep you from taking advantage of the help you’re afforded at Carlisle, understand?”

“You can call me Rafi,” he said, and then wondered if that was rude to say. “I just mean, it’s weird to hear ‘Mr. Castro’. I keep looking around for the grownup you’re talking to.”

“I find it sometimes helps to remind my students that they’re adults now, if I call them by their surnames. But you’re right. You probably don’t need any reminding.” She smiled and hitched her messenger bag higher on her shoulder, holding out a hand toward him. “One of the things I like best about older students is that they’re usually the first to take advantage of my office hours. I hope to see you soon.”

“You will.” And he meant it.

“Good.” She let go of his hand and patted his arm. “I know you can do this. I read your application essay, and that was some excellent writing.”

Rafi opened his mouth and was struck dumb. Nothing came out.

Professor Egan raised one thin eyebrow. “Unless that wasn’t your own work?”

He closed his mouth sharply and flushed. “No, I wrote that.”

But he sure hadn’t done it like he’d written his paper for her class. He’d passed that essay to Coach, who had read it and then given it to his friends to read too. By the time his Word file came back to him, there were comments in the margins from Tom, Reese, Steph and even Denny. Encouraging words and silly jokes, some of it, but also places they flagged stuff that was confusing or where they thought he should give more detail. They’d marked his typos and punctuation errors. He’d fixed as much as he could and then sent it back out to all of them, more than once, until he had an essay that fucking shone.

“Well, fuck me,” he muttered to himself, and then grimaced. “Sorry. I just realized I’ve been pretty stupid, which someone else was already trying to tell me.”

She nodded at him, dark hair flopping around her head. A pencil slid farther out of her bun thing, and she reached up without seeming to notice what she did, pushing it back in with a fingertip on the eraser end. “I do that every day.”

He said goodbye with a lighter heart as she walked off across the green. Turning toward the campus center, he decided to bite the bullet. The website for the writing center had recommended calling ahead for an appointment with a tutor, but had also said drop-ins were welcome. His afternoon practice was an “optional” strength training session, which didn’t actually mean that it was optional at all. But he could fit it in later.

Rafi squinted across the quad. The writing center was located in the upper floor of offices in the campus center. About a hundred yards from where he stood.

He took a deep breath and let it steady his nerves. No time like the present.

Chapter Six

On his way to ask for help—his least favorite thing ever—Rafi decided to be smart about it and book time with someone who could help him drag his mood out of the gutter if the tutor said he was a lost cause. He texted Denny.

On my way to writing center. Meet at the library after in case I want to kill myself instead of start new paper?

He hit Send and then immediately shot off another line.
Just kidding!

His phone beeped a few seconds later.
You got this. See you in an hour. :)

That smiley face steadied his nerves, and Rafi shook his head at how quickly he’d come to count on Denny again.

Inside the campus center, Rafi headed for the stairs to the second floor, his head down. He felt self-conscious and wondered if people would know where he was going just by looking at him, but his feet kept moving him inexorably down the long hallway, scanning the signs next to each office door. He passed the campus newspaper, placards for a string of political parties ranging from Republican to Socialist, with stops at Libertarians and Democrats and Progressives, and then the environmentalists and the debaters. A sign at the end of the hall pointed around the corner to the right for the writing center.

Rafi slowed as he neared the sign, taking a deep breath and telling himself not to be intimidated.

The sounds of a door opening and closing, followed by two people talking, reached him from around the corner. He stopped in his tracks.

“Finally. I thought you were supposed to be done with the retards a half hour ago.”

He recognized that voice.

“Boomer! You’re not supposed to say that. Jesus.” A girl’s voice, scolding, but in that teasing kind of way that said she wasn’t really mad.

“Oh, whatever. You know what I mean. Why are they here if they can’t even write a damn paper?”

“I didn’t hear you complaining when I proofread your poli sci essay.” A little snappish now, like the girl was hoping Boomer would shut up before he talked her out of banging the hot rower.

The voices were getting closer and Rafi’s heart started to pound. They were going to turn the corner and see him standing there. Even an idiot like his teammate would be able to figure out where Rafi was headed.

Lemme guess. It’s the writing center, an LGBTQ group, and Campus Knitters or something at the end of the hall. Screwed all around.

He knew he was being shitty and defensive, because there was nothing wrong with going to the writing center or belonging to a queer club. There were probably some badass knitters who’d stick one of those pointy sticks up his nose for being snarky about their group too.

But he turned his back to the hall and dug his phone out of his pocket, pressing it to his ear and mumbling the kind of
yeah, okay, I don’t know, what do you think?
stuff that was supposed to convince bypassers he was engaged in a meaningful conversation. He hated himself for the pretense and wished the shame would stop him. It didn’t.

As the couple passed him, Rafi snuck a peek over his shoulder at the big rower, whose arm was slung around the shoulders of a tall, dark-haired, white girl. His teammate turned his head and caught Rafi staring, eyes narrowing as Rafi ducked Boomer’s gaze.

“I guess some people need extra help because they got in for reasons other than good grades.” He knew he wasn’t imagining that the words were said loudly enough to make sure Rafi heard them.

He ground his teeth. Might as well just start bitching about quotas and affirmative action.
And if that guy got in because he’s a genius, I’ll eat my workout shorts.
Which was about the nastiest things he could imagine, and enough of a gag-me visual to shake off his anxiety and get him moving again. Putting Boomer out of his mind was both smart and the right thing to do.

The writing center had a whole set of rooms behind its door, both an open space with tables of students working on laptops by themselves or in pairs, and a bunch of what looked like tiny private offices lining the back wall. An unmanned desk at the front of the room had a phone, a computer and a sign-up sheet on a clipboard.

A door to one of the private rooms opened and a girl emerged, looking pretty cheerful, or at least not like she’d been ground into humiliated submission by her tutoring experience. Rafi told himself to buck up and put his name on the list.

“Who’s up?” A tiny blond woman strode toward the front of the room after the exiting student and clapped her hands together. All heads turned, including Rafi’s, who felt spotlit by being the only student standing in front of the desk. When no one else made a move, he raised a hand, flashing back to kindergarten.

“Me. I guess.” He did a double take. “Hey, it’s you.”

Bree from his Spanish class, which was awkward. “And it’s you. Didn’t know you were coming by.”

“I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Told you I was a tutor.”

“Yeah, but I thought you meant, like, high school kids or something. I didn’t know you meant you worked here.” He couldn’t figure out if knowing Bree made this easier or harder. He was gonna be pretty fucking embarrassed to look like an idiot in front of her. On the other hand, he’d heard her drawl in Spanish, and he figured that made them equals in the Embarrassment Olympics.

“Well, this is me. You ready to get started?” She tilted her head toward the open door of the room she’d exited.

He rolled his shoulders, trying to shake out some of the tension. “I guess.”

“Don’t guess. Own it, baby. Let’s go. What are we doing?” Flinging one of her two long braids back over a rounded shoulder, she beckoned him to follow her and then closed the door behind them.

“I, uh, don’t really know how this works.” He kept his head down as he rummaged through his backpack until he found his notebook. Plenty of students took notes on their laptops, but Rafi was still a pen and paper kind of guy, never having had a laptop at his disposal before now. He clutched the notebook, wondering if it too marked him out as an impostor. The spiral wire dug into his fingers until the pain settled his nerves. Bree grabbed a chair and straddled it on the other side of a rectangular table of fake wood laminate, gesturing at him to sit down. He did.

“How deep in crisis mode are we?” she asked. At his blank look, Bree elaborated, short, bare fingernails drumming on the tabletop. He felt like he should talk faster. Or apologize for slowing her down. “Are you freaking out because it’s due tomorrow and you haven’t started yet, or are you giving me time to work?”

“Time.” Her sharp nod was like a stamp of approval. Rafi was pretty sure he’d taken a big jump up in her estimation. Excellent. He’d done something right. “I’ve got a couple weeks.”

“Hot damn. You’re my new favorite. Give it here.” He passed her his phone, where he’d pulled up the assignment on the professor’s Web page. “Okay. Let’s get to work. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He’d been worried that he hadn’t actually been thinking about anything. Performance anxiety had seized his brain all through lunch as he’d huddled at a far table, his back to the room of chattering students, trying to come up with an idea. Well, preferably more than one, especially after his talk with Denny had reminded him that not all ideas for papers were equal. And he was pretty sure that a five-page paper was supposed to be no big deal for Carlisle students, but he’d only once written anything longer than that, and it had been in high school. Coming up with five pages’ worth of shit to say was definitely a challenge. It had occurred to him over lunch that maybe he should think about changing his major to math. Or PE. Or anything where he wouldn’t have to write this many papers.

Then he remembered he didn’t have the faintest fucking clue what his major was going to be anyway, and he’d wanted to faceplant in his bowl of chocolate pudding.

Eating the pudding hadn’t even cheered him up, and that was supposed to be his reward for making it through Spanish class without punching that TA in the mouth.

But it turned out that he did have thoughts. And it turned out that writing tutor Bree—as opposed to Bree from Spanish class—had some kind of psychic connection to his brain. She sucked ideas he didn’t even know he had right out of him and made him write them down while they were talking so he wouldn’t forget. By the time they’d spent thirty minutes hashing things out, he had a basic outline, although she’d warned him that he should be prepared to tweak it after he finished his research. When he realized how many books she expected him to look up before getting down to the writing, his panic returned.

“I don’t have time to read all those books,” he whispered fiercely, because if he didn’t keep his voice down, he was going to end up shouting. “I’ve got practice. And I’ve got to get another job.” His sisters kept asking him during his Sunday night calls home if he needed money, but no way was he saying yes.

She nodded. “True. Okay. But you know you don’t have to read everything cover to cover, right?”

Sort of?
Feeling stupid was not a house he wanted to live in, so it sucked that he seemed to have made a permanent move. “I don’t?”

Her face fell into worn lines that made Bree look older than what he assumed was barely legal drinking age. “Shit. Why don’t they teach this stuff in high school?” She shook her head. “I’m gonna save you about a hundred hours a semester, man.” She looked up at the ceiling as if doing math in her head and reconsidered. “Well, you’re still gonna read a lot, but only stuff that helps you.”

By the time he burst out of the campus center and headed to the library, Rafi was practically vibrating with eagerness to try out the shit he’d learned.

Waiting for Denny on the stone steps of the library, he called home and got Lola on the phone. He had something good to tell her for once, so he was still talking when he spotted the shiny blond head poking out from behind a group of girls strolling up the path.

“Tengo que irme, hermanita,” he said, and made his littlest big sister laugh as he said he had to go.

“Okay, big brother.” He’d made her start calling him that when he turned twelve and realized he was taller than her. “Hasta luego. No dejes que los gringos te muerden en el culo.”

The only gringo he wanted to let bite him on the ass was standing right in front of him.

“Cállete.” He told his sister to shut up and ended the call. He’d be hearing about that next time, no doubt.

“Hey.” Denny loped up the bottom steps to the library, and Rafi could’ve sworn he had a fucking halo. Not for angelic behavior, just that shining light that lit him up like a sparkler in a fog when Rafi spotted him walking through a crowd.

“Hey.” Because
hey
was safe.
Hey
kept the
I want to kiss you until the sun comes up tomorrow
from spilling out of his mouth. “Ready to work?”

Denny eyed him from his lower step, which put his face way too close to level with Rafi’s dick. “Unless you’d rather go dancing…”

The crotch of Rafi’s jeans was suddenly too tight.

Dancing with Denny.
Yes. But…
That was dangerous.

Safer to study. Plus, for once he was actually excited to do it.

He grabbed his backpack and headed into the library, knowing Denny was two steps behind him. Staring at his ass.

You know he is because you’d be doing the exact same thing.
He had way too many opportunities to stare at Denny’s body. He had a hard time keeping his eyes to himself through an entire practice, especially on the days when Denny wore nothing but Lycra. In the racing shell, Coach Lawson usually slotted him right behind Denny, which meant staring at his back and ass for hours every week, so close to Denny that he could smell him. It had gotten to the point that Rafi was busting his ass to get first seat in the boat, not because he wanted to be more competitive than anyone else on the team, but because if he landed that spot, the only person he’d be staring at was the cox.

Rafi was pretty sure he could keep his dick under control with Austin in his face, at least. The guy was cute, no question. If you wanted to toss a little guy around, he had a feeling Austin would…well, shit. Now that he thought about it, the dictatorial cox seemed way more likely to want to top than give his ass up. Fucker had probably been born with a bullhorn in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. There was no way Austin didn’t give the orders in the sack.

Rafi shook his head. Jesus, where was his head? Damn. He needed to get laid. If he was starting to speculate about what it would be like to fuck Austin, things had gone seriously awry.

“I’ve gotta get some books.” And thanks to Bree, he had a whole strategy for finding entire sections where he could browse for books that might be helpful, instead of hunting down one or two particular titles and hoping they had what he needed. Sounded simple, but it was so different from how he’d looked at the library before.

“I’ll find us somewhere to sit and text you,” Denny said, and headed to the stacks while Rafi hit the computerized catalog. He spent fifteen minutes searching keywords until it was clear the books he wanted to look at were mostly located in three sections.

His phone buzzed with a text before he even left the computer to go hunt down his books.

Got two carrels on the fourth floor. Go left from the elevator, halfway down the wall on the front of the building.

When he showed up, arms piled so high with books he’d wedged the top of the pile under his chin, Denny’s face was cartoonish with its surprise.

“Did you leave any on the shelves?”

He’d meant to start going through some of the books in the stacks, but it had taken him so long to find the call numbers he’d started to feel self-conscious about leaving Denny alone.

Even if they weren’t really studying together as much as they were studying
near
each other. Still, Rafi was pretty sure he was going to need an hour to scan the tables of contents and indexes of these books for what he needed, and it felt weird to spend that hour two floors away from where Denny had snagged them study space.