Mutual Benefits Ch. 03 – First Time – by BashfulScribe..,

The test was pretty simple. Not only did I know the subject matter pretty well, I had hours of practice teaching someone else about it, so it wasn’t a shock to see the “100%” on my page. Mrs. Li gave me a congratulatory smile as she gave me the test, and it was clear from the quiet groans that my score wasn’t exactly common in the class.

That said, I was still nervous. As Li walked around the room handing out tests, I stared straight at Taylor as Li made her way over to her. I couldn’t see Li’s face as she dropped off the test, nor could I see any markings on the page. It wasn’t my neck on the line, but, even without what happened last night, I didn’t want to let Taylor down.

The lesson went ahead and class was over before I knew it. I was gathering my things and almost hoping Taylor wouldn’t approach me – I was very aware of my social awkwardness at this point, and was fully aware I was in completely uncharted territory.

“Hi, Quinn,” Taylor’s voice greeted me.

She was standing in front of me. My head bolted up to face her. “Hi. Hi, Taylor. Taylor, hi,” I blurted out quickly and nervously.

To my relief, she broke out in a pitying smile instead of anything else. “Do you, like, have a sec?”

“I mean, uh, yeah,” I mumbled as I instinctively sat back down. “How, uh… h-how did you do?”

She smiled and held up the test. “It wasn’t perfect, but I got a 72!”

I did my best to smile back. “That sounds good, congratulations!”

She gave me a sarcastic smile. “Yeah, okay. You probably got, like, a hundred.”

I chuckled nervously but said nothing.

“Anyway, I was, uh… wondering, would it be okay to like, keep going? I don’t want this momentum to stop, you know? Especially if things might get harder from here.”

They certainly were. “Um, yeah,” I mumbled.

“Do you have a shift next Thursday?”

I brought up my phone, fumbling with it a bit, and looked up my work schedule. “Th-thursday is fine for me!”

She smiled triumphantly. “Great, see you then!” And with that, she walked away, leaving me alone in the class with Mrs. Li.

Mrs. Li looked at me approvingly. “I’m so glad to see she wants to keep going with it. Good job, Quinn! I knew you’d be the perfect tutor for her.”

I didn’t know about ‘perfect,’ but it sure was interesting.

***

When Morgan first got in the car with us, I didn’t think much of it – Taylor would usually drive her home before going to the library to study with me – but this time was different. Taylor stopped as we got to the library, instead of going past it to Morgan’s house. With me being who I was, I didn’t say anything, although I thought perhaps she just forgot to go to Morgan’s house first, until Morgan hopped out of the car with her.

Morgan went into the library with us, and sat down with us, pulling out her phone and ignoring us. Taylor practically acted like she wasn’t there from that point onward, and encouraged me to get on with the lesson.

For the entire lesson, I was somewhat distracted. Why was Morgan there? It didn’t make any sense. She was never here before. She wasn’t taking the class. She wasn’t even paying attention, she was just on her phone the whole time. Did Taylor suddenly not trust me or something? She didn’t seem to give off that impression.

Taylor and I continued with the lesson. It went well, seeing as instead of cramming for a test, we were just recapping the lesson Mrs. Li just gave us, at our own pace. At some point Morgan stretched and got up.

“I’m gonna get McDonald’s,” Morgan lazily announced. She turned to us. “Want anything?”

She stared at me until I realized I was supposed to answer. “Oh. Uh, I don’t really, uh, have the money for that.”

She continued staring at me, and gave me a confused shrug. “So?”

Taylor rolled her eyes at me. “Get him a junior chicken burger. I’ll get the usual nuggets.”

“Cool,” Morgan replied disinterestedly, and walked out of the library. My confused face turned to Taylor, who just had a slight smile on her face. “So, the lesson…?” she asked, nudging me.

I had no clue what was going on. I shook my head. “Um, yeah. So, uh, an event is written as A in probability. Its complement is written as A apostrophe. So, if an event has a one in four chance of happening, its complement has a three in-”

“I think she likes you.”

I raised my head from my book. “Huh?”

“Morgan. I think she appreciates you. She doesn’t do that to, like, a lot of people, you know,” Taylor continued, as if this was the conversation we were having all along.

Oh,” was all I could think to say.

“She normally hates anybody new I hang out with, even if it’s for something like this.”

“Your group seems to deal with people that disrespect you a lot, so I guess the bar isn’t high there,” I commented.

“Huh?”

“Well, like that Mitchell guy you guys were talking about. And you seem to have a lot of in-fighting.”

“What’s that?” she asked, leaning into the conversation.

“As in, your group disagrees and bickers more than other groups I’ve seen,” I clarified.

“Do you think we don’t get along?” she challenged me.

“No, it’s just that it’s different from what I’m used to. Maybe she likes me because I’m new.” I gave Taylor a shy smile.

She returned it with a slight head shake. “I guess,” she added with a light chuckle. “I think you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Credit for what? This is new to me.”

“Talking is new to you?” she challenged me again.

I chuckled in frustration. “Yes,” I agreed. “Talking to anyone that isn’t a family member isn’t something I do often.”

“Well, Morgan thinks you do a good job,” Taylor replied with a shrug.

“Does she do your thinking for you? What you think should be more important to you than what she thinks.”

Taylor laughed and shook her head. “Oh, Quinn. Quinn? I’m a fucking idiot.”

“Huh?” That wasn’t the response I was expecting.

“I’m not good at figuring out who to trust, Quinn. I’ve dated some absolute scumbags before.”

“Yeah, I could guess that,” I admitted. “No offense.”

“Even friends, it took me a long time to figure out, like, who I could even trust. Or who I could get along with,” she continued. “Morgan is like the ultimate… knower of these things. She just has a gift for it.”

“She seems like a very moral person,” I said diplomatically. Of course, were I talking to someone else I may have used a different word, like judgmental, but hey.

We continued with our lesson until Morgan got back with a greasy bag of fast food and a tray of drinks. She tossed the bag on the table. “Is Coke okay, Quinn?” she asked me, putting a drink down in front of Taylor.

“Uh, yeah, but…” I looked up at the library’s rules. “I hate to be a party pooper, but doesn’t the library have a rule against food?”

Both of the girls looked at me weirdly, as if no person would ever bring that up. Taylor’s look, though, soon turned into a cheeky grin. “I guess we’ll have to go somewhere else. How does my place sound?”

I got hard immediately. I hated my mind sometimes. “Uh, I guess if we have food, we don’t have much of a choice.”

Morgan gave me a tired smile. “Okay,” was all she said. She was a lot harder to read than Taylor. With that, we were soon in her car, on the way to Taylor’s place. As usual, I sat in the back, and the convertible was open this time, so I couldn’t even hear what Taylor and Morgan were talking about in the front seats, although I occasionally heard giggling.