Comment dites-vous "I should have taken Spanish"? (Colton)

[Marnie Sullivan]

dated July 29th

Oh, how the tables had turned, Marnie mused as she waited, chin resting in her palm, French textbook and notes spread in front of her. The last time she'd signed up for tutoring, it was to do the tutoring. Now here she was, waiting for another student to show up and walk her through the pluperfect tense or whatever they were working on in class.

It wasn't as though Marnie was failing. Classes had only just started back up again. But it felt like everything she'd learned in the previous semester had leaked out her ears over summer vacation. And even then, her grades hadn't been the best. Sure, a lot of kids would be perfectly happy with a B-, but without all that extra credit it would have been a C and the idea of her GPA slipping with less than a year to graduation was frankly terrifying.

Okay, that was kind of extreme. But what was senior year without a little panic?

[Colton Bryan]

As Colton walked down to the classroom he had been told to go to where the student he would be tutoring today, he wondered what they would be like, if they would be someone who tried to get out of the work, or would they just be someone who was only struggling in their class.

When he reached the classroom he had opened the door and looked at the girl who was sitting at one of the desks, (who looked bored to him with how she was sitting) she also seemed to be older than he was, possibly 17 maybe 18. "Hello there, I'm assuming you're the student I'm supposed to tutor." He said to her with a smile while he walked over to the desk, and took a seat across from her.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie smiled when the other student greeted her, but felt a twinge of embarrassment; how old was he? He looked at least a couple of grades younger than her, and here she was asking him for help-

Stop. Maybe he just speaks French. Don't be a jerk.

"Yeah, hi, I'm Marnie," she replied, keeping her tone light to compensate for her petty thoughts a moment ago. After he sat down, she extended a hand to shake. "It's Colton, right?" When she'd signed up and been assigned a tutor, Marnie had been given his name. The same had happened when she'd tutored Brooke in math.

[Colton Bryan]

"It's nice to meet you Marnie." Colton said while extending his hand to shake hers. "Yes I'm Colton." Well at least she seems nice he thought to himself. "So what exactly do you need help with?" He asked kindly, unfortunately while he spoke he had slipped into speaking in Italian.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie blinked, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. She recognized the language - or at least the accent - as the same as the Victore twins', Italian. But unlike French, she hadn't studied that language at all.

"Sorry... What?" she asked after a moment. "I don speak Italian." Was he just showing off? That'd be kind of rude...

[Colton Bryan]

Colton frowned, and sighed as he realized that he had spoken in another language again in a apologetic tone he said, "Sorry about that. Sometimes when I talk I start speaking in another language." After he said that he repeated the question he had asked, this time he made sure he had said it in English.

[Marnie Sullivan]

"Oh, no big," Marnie replied, waving off his apology, even though it rankled a little. Still, he sounded sincere, rather than smug. Maybe he was one of those kids who lived with parents who spoke like eight languages at home? She'd had a classmate like that back in middle school who slipped in and out of German sometimes.

"So basically," she began, turning her textbook around so he could read the portion she was pointing to, "we're working on a new tense that's giving me trouble. Pluperfect? Pluparfait?" In class, Marnie's professor referred to it as both, which wasn't helping.

[Colton Bryan]

"Yeah it's kind of the reason I'm at this school." He said while he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

Colton raised his eyebrow slightly as she mentioned what she was having trouble with before he said, "You mean the past perfect tense? Well, this should be a relatively quick session." He said in a slightly perky voice, not fully realizing that his tone could be taken as insulting.

[Marnie Sullivan]

"The reason you're..." Well that didn't make sense. Nobody got sent to Mutant Academy jut for knowing an extra language. Unless - "Oh! Are you one of those metas who can like read a book and automatically absorb the information permanently?"

Marnie was pretty sure metas like that existed, at least that's what she'd heard. That would explain why Colton sounded so confident that they'd be finished quickly. Not for the first time, Marnie found herself wishing she had a more useful power, one that made school - or anything, really - easier.

[Colton Bryan]

"Uhm.. Actually it's more like I can read, understand, and speak in any language in existence, as far as I know." Colton said while still rubbing the back of his head. All this talking of powers had made begin to wonder what Marnie could do and he decided to voice it, "So what can you do, as in what's your ability? If you don't mind me asking that is." He added that last part quickly not wanting to make her uncomfortable if she didn't want to answer.

[Marnie Sullivan]

"Really? Even, like, fictional languages like Klingon?" Marnie asked with interest. To be fair, Marnie only knew of Klingon because of how thoroughly its source material managed to pervade pop culture. If Colton took the opportunity to speak convincing gibberish, she wouldn't know the difference.

"Oh! No, it's fine asking - we're all here for one reason or another, right?" Marnie held out her left arm and rolled up her sleeve. With a little concentration and some skin-tingling, her arm faded to white, with lines of black squiggles that were honestly a far cry from the text of the page beneath it. "I mean, it doesn't help with homework but it's all right, I s'pose."

[Colton Bryan]

Colton laughed as she mentioned Klingon and said, "Well, I don't know about fictional languages but maybe I can."

Colton watched with interest as Marnie showed him her arm changing into something similar to the page underneath it, though he couldn't make out what any of it said. "So you can change your skin to match things? That's really cool."he said. After she mentioned homework, though he realized that they were going off topic from their session together and said, "Right, homework we should get back to that. Now when the past perfect tense is rather simple, as it's just showing action that happened before another action."

[Marnie Sullivan]

Oh, duh. Of course they needed to get back to work - this was tutoring, after all. Well, fingers crossed Colton was right about them finishing quickly.

"Okay, I'm pretty sure I get that part," Marnie said, with only a hint of uncertainty. Explained in English, the role the tense played in a sentence made sense. "The problem I'm having is conjugating, like I keep forgetting the rules for the suffixes. Are there any good tricks for that?"

If there was anything Marnie had the most trouble with, it was conjugating the more complicated tenses. Vocabulary? No big deal; nothing flash cards couldn't help with. Present tense? A cake walk. But pluparfait threw a wrench into her thought process and got her all mixed up.

[Colton Bryan]

"It's quite simple actually all you need to know to properly conjugate the pluperfect tense is to understand two things, first how to conjugate a verb in the perfect tense, and second how to conjugate avoir and être in the imperfect tense." Colton said to her, at least he believed it should be easy, since there was no reason for her to be learning about this tense without knowing how to do those two things, and if she didn't then this might take longer than he originally thought.