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"Nolan!" I said when I reached him.

Our second period was math today, and I desperately needed his help with some problems I couldn't solve even with Cody's help.

Nolan, who was sitting at his usual spot beside my desk, stirred.

"Yeah?"

I stifled a laugh that almost escaped from my throat when he raised his head to look at me. He was frowning, and his eyes were squinting at me. He looked so grouchy, but the sleepiness in his voice was enough to offset the crankiness on his face. I didn't know why that somehow seemed almost adorable to me.

It helped that he didn't snap at me anymore whenever I tried to wake him up, which I was assuming was a nice by-product of our growing friendship, especially since I still had to do it in Mr. Jameson's class.

"Please help me!" I presented my worksheet to him as I plopped myself down on my chair. "I can't solve this. I was actually having trouble understanding Mr. McMillan in class the other day, too."

"Then why didn't you ask him?"

"I thought Cody could help me," I said, groaning. "I don't really like the way Mr. McMillan teaches us. When he tries explaining things, I just get more confused."

Nolan straightened up a little more. "Cody? Why him?"

"We study together, remember?"

"Oh," he said, reaching for his pencil.

"Yeah, he often helps Ashley and me when we get stuck with math and chemistry questions. His chemistry is better than his math, though. Sometimes I feel bad that he helps us so much," I said, grinning.

"I could help you, too," he muttered, pulling the worksheet towards himself.

"What?" I said, wondering if I'd heard him wrongly.

Did he really just say that?

"Nothing," he said, tracing along my working with the eraser end of his pencil.

"Could've sworn I heard you say you could help me," I mumbled.

"What if I did?"

I looked at him, not bothering to disguise the hopefulness on my face. "Then ... why don't you study with us? I could really do with your help! You're so good at all the subjects."

After all, our exams were coming up. If Nolan joined us on our study group sessions, he would also be getting more revising in.

He looked up from my worksheet at me. "You want me to?"

"Of course!"

Part of me wanted him to come so that I could interact with him more outside of classes, especially now that our weekly forest night outings were on hold. He still had lunch with us a few times a week, which was admittedly quite a lot, but we pretty much never hung out apart from that.

Although he was starting to get along somewhat nicely with my best friends, I wouldn't say that the distance between them had been bridged so much that I could justify asking him to join us in our every group activity. Besides, Nolan still chose to sleep whenever possible during the day.

His reply came after a few seconds of pause. "Okay."

My mouth fell open slightly. I couldn't believe he actually agreed, considering how difficult it had been at the start to get him to join us for lunch.

"Yes!" I beamed at him. "We're going to study together after school tomorrow. Are you free then?"

"Yeah, I'll come."

As he tapped at the second step of my working and explained to me what I'd done wrong, I beat away the urge to continue smiling. Today was already shaping up to be a great day.

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"Hey."

My head rose, almost involuntarily, at the sound of Nolan's voice.

He was carrying books and binders in his arms as he looked down at us. His eyes were half-lidded, and he was as expressionless as always—albeit with a hint of sleepiness on his face.

"Nolan! Sit down!" I patted on the seat of the chair that was adjacent to mine.

Settling down on the chair, he placed his stuff on the table.

Ashley, who was sitting on my right, waved at him with her highlighter still in hand. "Hi, Nolan."

"Hey." Cody nodded at him.

"Hi, Ashley. Cody," he said, respectively nodding at each of them.

Ashley looked pleasantly surprised, despite the confusion that crossed her face. I couldn't blame her, since we all knew that he barely remembered his classmates' faces.

Even I was still slowly getting used to hearing my friends' names leave his lips whenever he referred to them in our conversations. Every time that I mentioned them to him, I kept half-expecting him to ask me who they were.

When I told her last night that Nolan would be studying with us today, she had been really shocked at first. The idea of Nolan joining us not just to study, but also because he'd offered to give help, was something that took her some time to wrap her brain around.

As he opened his chemistry textbook, I found my eyes fixed on it. It seemed like every page that he turned, there were post-it notes and page tabs stuck to it. Many lines were highlighted in different colors, too.

No wonder his grades were so good.

I couldn't help but feel impressed at the effort he was clearly putting in.

"Why are you staring at my book?" he said suddenly, causing me to jolt.

"I ... Nothing," I said sheepishly, looking back at my own worksheet. "It looks well-used. You really weren't lying about studying outside of class time."

He snorted. "Of course I wasn't."

"Wow." Ashley's brown eyes were wide as she stared at his textbook. "You must spend a lot of time studying."

That's unexpected went unspoken, but from the way she glanced at me after, I knew that was what she was thinking.

Resting his forearm on the table, Nolan gave a half-shrug. "Kind of. It's not like I have anything else to do in my spare time."

Her eyebrows rose just a little, but she said nothing.

Nolan got out a box of apple mints from a side pocket of his bag. He popped a mint into his mouth and then offered the box to me.

"Want some?" he said.

"Sure," I said, placing my upturned palm under it so he could shake one onto it. "Thanks."

We focused on our own work separately for the next twenty minutes in relative silence, and then Ashley came across a question she couldn't work out.

"Cody, can you help me with this?" she said, shifting her notebook towards him.

He sent her a ready smile and moved his own aside. "Of course."

I registered their little adorable interaction in my head, but I was too engrossed in my own work to bother smiling. Chemistry was the literal worst subject to revise for.

"This is so hard," I said, setting my pen down.

There was something about difficult questions that just made me want to pull my hair out. Logically, I knew it wasn't a big deal if I couldn't solve or answer something—that was the point of learning, after all. However, a part of my brain insisted on being frustrated that I wasn't capable enough to figure out the solution on my own. It led to me sulking inwardly on occasion, unable to accept the fact that I couldn't handle it by myself.

"Need help?"

Nolan was already looking at me when I raised my head, planning to ask him. My stomach did a funny little flip at how quickly he'd reacted to me. Was I just being too self-conscious?

"Yes, please," I said, sighing.

A faint smile crossed his face when I handed my worksheet over to him.

My mouth abruptly went dry, and I had to reach for my bottle on the table.

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"Alright, I'm done."

The fork that Derek had just thrown down clattered noisily against his plate. He took a long sip from his juice box, and then pushed his chair backwards.

Ashley, Melissa, and I all stared down at the empty plates on his tray.

"That was fast," Ashley said.

"Really fast," Melissa said.

"Faster than me," I said, waving my half-eaten raspberry cheesecake cookie in his direction. "I haven't even finished my dinner yet!"

"I was hungry," he said, shrugging as he got to his feet. "And I have a lot of homework I haven't finished yet. I'll get going first. See you guys tomorrow!"

We gaped at him as he picked up his tray and left.

"He left quick," I said. "That was weird."

Ashley was still facing where Derek had just been sitting across from her. "Definitely weird. Since when does Derek care about getting his homework done in time?"

"You want to know what else is weird?" Melissa said, slicing her chicken cutlet. "He's been avoiding me lately."

Ashley and I spoke at the same time.

"What?"

"Really?"

Frowning, Melissa placed the small piece of chicken into her mouth. "I know. I mean, I know we stopped playing soccer after school because everyone wants to study for the exams, but he's also just stopped wanting to hang out. I thought we could at least study together yesterday, but then he said that he focuses better when he studies alone."

I turned to Ashley. The expression on her face was as baffled as mine.

In the previous years, Derek and Melissa always revised together before the finals. Sometimes we all got together as a group to do it, but because the two of them got restless easily, Ashley and I often ended up nagging them to study seriously. To avoid our chidings, they usually just studied together. He'd never once attempted to study on his own, either, claiming that it was too boring.

"I haven't noticed anything strange about him, though," I said slowly.

Derek had seemed perfectly normal to me for the past few days, apart from what had just happened earlier.

"Me neither." Ashley spooned out some of her flan. "Did anything happen recently?"

"I don't remember anything significant happening," Melissa said, looking increasingly grouchy. "He just got like that on his own. What is wrong with him?"

Her eyebrows were brought so closely together that there was a furrow forming between them.

"Maybe we should try asking him," I said.

Waving her hand dismissively at me, Melissa said, "Nah, don't bother. I already asked him. All he did was act like he didn't know what I was talking about. I tried talking to him in class yesterday, and he told me to pay attention to what Mrs. Henderson was saying! Can you believe it?"

My jaw dropped. "No!"

"There must really be something bothering him," Ashley said. "Maybe he's beginning to realize how important our exams are."

I kind of doubted that. From the look on Ashley's face, it didn't appear like she was very convinced by her own theory, either.

Melissa stared at her with obvious skepticism. "But then why couldn't he just tell me?"

"No offense, Mel, but I can't remember the last time you actually studied hard," she said apologetically. "Maybe he doesn't feel like he can talk to you about it?"

"We'll ask him for you," I said, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry!"

"I'm not worrying," she said, scowling as she pierced through several fries with her fork.

To her credit, Melissa did look more annoyed than worried.

I wanted to think that it had to do with Derek's feelings for Melissa, but then him avoiding her wouldn't make sense in this context.

I whispered that to Ashley when Melissa was focused on inhaling her milkshake, and Ashley nodded in agreement. We would just have to ask him in person to find out exactly what his problem was.

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AN: alright, i'm gonna be speeding things up in a bit~ timeskips yeah~ thank you so much for reading, and have a great week ahead, everyone!! i love you all ( •ॢ◡-ॢ)-♡ i'll be a bit more free in the coming week so hopefully i get more writing done! my goal is to update on thursday this week LOL

i'm dedicating this part to JayTruth44! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT ('∩。• ᵕ •。∩') ♡ thank you for becoming a patron, and i want to let you know that i appreciate you so much! you've really encouraged me to keep writing!! I LOVE YOU ❤︎⁄⁄꒰* ॢꈍ◡ꈍ ॢ꒱.*˚‧

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