Chapter 9

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a/n: So I'm back with 2,200 words of me calling myself out for never doing responsible student things like taking notes in classes or paying attention. I honestly would love to have an Elias in my life to force me to fix my studying habits, but alas, I will live vicariously through Kayden and in turn give everyone this, which is just the manifestation of me getting over past trauma having gone to an extremely elitist prep school for multiple years but also me trying to process my current problems and how to work them out so I can be successful in life. I hope you guys like this chapter for the organized mess that it is and I hope you have a good day or night whenever you're reading this. 


A week later, Kayden was back in the library with Elias at 5 pm, trying to focus on whatever he was saying. At the moment he was just kind of watching the blond's mouth move, he was talking about something, but Kayden wasn't entirely sure what, and every time he started to listen his thought train was onto something else a few minutes later. It'd been a long day and he was having a hard time keeping his mind where it should have been, but to be fair, he had just gotten out of his last class a couple of hours ago and wasn't prepared to have another voice droning on about a topic he had no interest in. 

"Are you even listening?" Elias asked with a raised brow and Kayden sighed quietly. 

"Kind of?"

"Kayden, this test is in three days."

"I know, and...I'm trying to listen but you're kind of boring." He said with a shrug and Elias sighed softly, running his fingers through his hair. 

"Do you want to try switching to flashcards then?" Elias asked and Kayden thought for a moment before shrugging again and the blond seemed to take this as a yes, pulling them out of his backpack and handing them to Kayden. 

Kayden looked over the three-by-five cards, all the letters written in beautiful black ink, he couldn't quite stop staring at them. He really did mean to complement Elias's handwriting, it was practically breath-taking, but what came out of his mouth was "Why do you write like a girl?" 

"I do not write like a girl, I took a course on penmanship a few years ago, it was that or study skills and I felt my skills in studying were good enough," Elias responded, less than impressed with Kayden's assessment of his handwriting.

Kayden snickered. "You took a penmanship class, my god, how elitist can this place possibly be?" 

"I think you're just jealous that your handwriting sucks," Elias said with a little smile. 

"My handwriting does not suck," Kayden said, though he wasn't all that offended by it.

"You wanna prove it?"

"What?"

"Pull out your notes, show me," Elias said with a little grin and Kayden hesitated. He was less embarrassed about his handwriting than his notes which were always halfway done before the sketches in the margins ended up taking any spare space on the paper due to getting bored and zoning out in class. Still, he took out his most recent English notes and handed them to Elias.

"I told you, my handwriting is fine," Kayden said, hoping to step around the obvious problem because he was sure Elias took beautiful, in-depth notes in every class and he couldn't even keep his attention on the content of the lesson for his favorite subjects.

"How do you study with this?" Elias asked, looking over it.


"I...I don't, I usually just go off of the book." Kayden admitted. 


"Well, that's your problem. You know you can always ask the teacher to keep things on the board longer if you're having trouble keeping up with writing things down."

"I don't have a problem keeping up," Kayden said somewhat defensively and Elias just handed the sheet back. 

"What is it then?"

"It's boring, I just...I don't know, I don't have the energy to take notes."

"Do you need more sleep?"

"No, it's not like that, I get plenty of sleep, it's just that I can't keep my brain there long enough, and taking notes is so painful. I just don't see the point of it."

"It'd help you to remember if you took better notes, writing things down is scientifically proven to make your brain process information better and increase the chances of it being stored in your memory." 

"Yeah, I know, but it's like...I don't know, taking notes isn't fun, I don't get anything out of it-"

"You do get something out of it, it makes studying possible," Elias interjected. 

"Well that's not enough, I don't care about studying." 

"So what, do you want me to put a sticker on your notes at the end of every week or something?" Elias asked with an amused little smile and Kayden rolled his eyes. 

"I'm not a child," Kayden said. 

"What if it's a very grown-up adult sticker?"

"Dear god, you're the one who asked why I can't take notes and I told you," Kayden said somewhat annoyed with a sigh.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. You're saying you need more of a reward for doing simple or boring tasks, right?" Elias asked and Kayden hesitated for a moment. 

"Yeah...yeah, I guess so."

"So what do you want? Candy? Pens? Money? Nothing big, I can't give you a car every time you get an A on a test or take adequate notes, but I'm sure we could put together a prize bin of some sort."

"A prize bin? Seriously?" Kayden asked skeptically. 

"I'm just trying to help you out here. If you don't learn to take notes and study then you'll fail at this school, there's no way around that. I want to make this as easy for you as I can, so if you need a new pen, or cool socks, or a sticker to know that you're doing something right, then I'll give it to you. Everyone has things they need to do to make life more manageable." 

"What about you?" Kayden asked curiously.

"Me?"

"What do you do to make life more manageable? You seem to keep up with everything. How do you do that?" He asked and Elias thought for a moment. 

"Well, bullet journaling mostly, but cleaning and writing too."

"Writing?" 

"Mhm, I write poetry and short stories and things in my free time, nothing major, it's just a hobby."

"Could I read one of your poems?" 

"No."

"Oh come on, why not?"

"They're personal and I'd rather not have you reading them to judge me," Elias said, flicking Kayden's forehead.

"If I take notes for every class will you let me read one?" Kayden asked and Elias thought about that for a moment.

"They'd have to be good notes, not half-assed little notes here and there, you'll need to have an actual system with the roman numeral, letter, bullet-point format, you don't need exactly those, just some way of identifying sub-categorical information."

"Deal," Kayden said with a smile. 

"Alright, I suppose. But you're also not allowed to judge anything I write, seriously, I won't show you again if you make fun of it." He said and Kayden nodded. "Then by this time next week if you have notes for every class written concisely, I'll let you read one," Elias said before looking to his wristwatch. "I think we have time to run through the flashcards a few times before this ends. Do you want to take them with you to study tonight and tomorrow? I'm pretty much ready for the test anyway."

"Yeah, if you don't mind," Kayden said and Elias nodded, looking at the first card. 

"Alright, what started the Peloponnesian war?" 

"That was the one between Athens and Sparta, right?" Kayden asked.

"Yes."

"They didn't like each other." 

"Well...I guess, but why didn't they?"

"Because Athens was a dick." He said and Elias chuckled. 

"Something like that. Athens had a lot of power, particularly they had control of the Delian League, the naval alliance that dominated the Mediterranean Sea." 

"Yeah, that," Kayden said with a small smile and Elias sighed softly, though he was smiling too. 

"Do you remember who won?"

"S...parta?"

"Good. When?" 

"Dates are unimportant and stupid." 

"Not to Roberts, they're not. 404 B.C.E."

"Like the error code?" Kayden asked and Elias looked a bit confused. 

"The what?"

"404, it's the page not found error code." 

"I mean if that helps you to remember then sure, go for it," Elias said with a shrug, flipping to the next card. 

---

Kayden sat down next to Theo in the coffee shop, pulling his laptop out of his bag to look on the school website and find out what was due Monday. 

"Where did you disappear to?" Grant asked curiously and Kayden glanced at him over the top of his laptop before shrugging. 

"Just...hanging out in my room." He wasn't sure why he didn't want to tell his friends that he needed a tutor, especially that Elias was the one tutoring him, but he just didn't. Theo gave him an odd look, but Grant seemed to accept it, nodding a bit. 

"Oh Ez, are you joining debate club this year?" Grant asked. 

"Yeah, probably. I was thinking about joining the chess club too." Ezra said, jotting down a note from his textbook on the same piece of paper that Grant was doodling on. 

"What other clubs are there?" Kayden asked. 

"Well, there's newspaper, yearbook, art, music, golf, equestrian, creative writing, theatre, photography, home ec, mathletes, robotics, college prep, and pottery I believe, though they might have added some new ones. The signup sheets will be up on the bulletin in the cafeteria tomorrow morning if you want to join something." Ezra said and Kayden nodded. 

"That's a lot of options," Kayden said, trying to remember all of them to decide what he wanted to join. 

"Yeah, there's a lot of options everywhere here. It can be a little overwhelming, but you'll get used to it," Theo said with a small smile and Kayden returned it.

"So what have you guys been up to?" Kayden asked. 

"Mostly homework, but Ezra and I went out to the forest for a bit. Did you know there's a lake at the far end of the woods? We could go swimming or something if there's a warm day." Grant suggested.

"Walker would kill us if he found out," Ezra said, glancing up from his textbook to give Grant a pointed look.

"Walker doesn't have to find out," Grant said with a small smile. 

"We'd be in deep shit if he did though, going for a walk in the woods is a lot different than going swimming. We could explain away going a bit off campus for a walk if we said we wanted some fresh air and just got lost, but if he found out we'd gone swimming it would most definitely be seen as an act of rebellion and disrespect, we could all be suspended." Brooks pointed out. 

"I guess that's true," Grant said with a sigh. "god, I'm so sick of this place though, I feel like I'm going crazy cooped up here."

"Next year is our last and then we'll be free," Ezra said, his eyes back on his book. 

"Free to go off to a college of our parents' choosing and be trapped there for another dozen years," Grant murmured. 

"Are they really still set on you being a doctor?" Ezra asked and Grant nodded. 

"Have you thought about doing freelance art? You're pretty good at sketching." Kayden said and Grant shook his head. 

"I'd love to, but that's just not an option. They think I need to be someone, not a starving artist, and if I were to go into art I'd be throwing all their hard work out the window because anyone can be an artist, you need to be better than that, Grant. But it's fine, I'll just do art as a hobby and maybe I can go into something cool, like neuroscience." He said with a small smile. 

"I wanna go into psychology," Kayden said. "It's the only thing I like learning about besides English, and I wanna be a therapist or psychologist or something, y'know, help people."

"I bet you'll make a great therapist," Grant said, nudging Kayden's arm with a smile. 

"Well, I hope so, cause if I don't I'm gonna fuck a lot of people up," Kayden snickered. 

---

When they were walking back up to their dorm for the night, Theo glanced over at Kayden. "Why did you tell Grant you were in the dorm all afternoon?" He asked, giving a look as if he'd been wondering about this for a while but was waiting for a chance to ask it.

"What?" Kayden looked at him, having been lost in thought for most of the walk. 

"You told them all you were in our dorm, but you weren't, because I was and you weren't there," Theo said and Kayden's cheeks tinted pink, realizing he'd been caught in a lie. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly with a quiet sigh.

"I was...I was in tutoring." 

"So? You don't have to lie about that, it's not a big deal." Theo said. 

"But I just started making friends here...I just don't want them all to think I'm dumb or something." Kayden said softly. 

"Kayden, nobody cares about your grades. Sure, maybe the teachers will get on you about it, but Grant, Ezra, and Brooks are cool people, and they wouldn't see you differently for needing extra help." Theo said, fiddling with the lock, shifting the key three times before he opened the door. 

"I know they wouldn't, I don't even know why I said it, I just felt weird about it I guess," Kayden said, flopping down on his bed. 

"Are you going to tell them?" Theo asked softly. 

"Eventually," Kayden said, staring up at the ceiling. "But thanks for being cool about it."

"Yeah, no problem." 


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