Study Break (Jalen)

[JD Paerson]

After his afternoon with Jalen, JD had come to a few conclusions.

1) Jalen was an intelligent girl who was probably already with someone else.
2) He only had one year left at Hammel and he probably didn't actually want to get tied to someone (or so he told himself).
3) He did promise to help her with her homework and he wouldn't go back on his word.

When he did make the study date, though, it was with some initial reluctance. While he'd really enjoyed talking to her before, he was incredibly pessimistic about meeting with her again. It would probably be awkward. They wouldn't have anything to say to one another. And she'd probably stalk out of the room in a huff when she realized that he wasn't a very good teacher. But at least he would try.

So he gathered up all of his notes and brought them to the library, setting up at one of the back tables which was still open. He wasn't sure exactly what stage of Calculus Jalen was at (he did finally know her full name now, thanks to the emails), so he'd brought everything to make sure he had the right notes. The stack of notebooks and papers was teetering in the middle of the table, threatening to fall over. It was mostly there for reference in case he needed extra clarification; hopefully he could do all this on his own.

He was a little early, so he waited at the table, bent over a book he was looking through. When he heard footsteps nearby, though, he looked up.

"Hey, Jalen," he said. "I hope this time is still good for you. I brought my notes, and if you show me what you need help with I'll look over it for you." He closed his book--Othello--and shoved it to one side before grabbing a notebook off the stack. "We probably won't even touch most of this stuff, it's just that I wasn't sure exactly what to bring. And hopefully I can help you enough that you do well on your next test or assignment or whatever."

Play it cool, don't try to pretend that this will go well. JD was not willing to invest himself entirely here, but at least he was here on time and would stick to what he'd promised.

[Jalen August]

Wow, had it really been over a month since Jalen decided to make a date with JD? The boy who had captured it with his originality and kind personality? The sighed as she carried her binder full of Calculus notes and her textbook, hoping the time spent with him wouldn't be too awkward. She had really liked him, but they hadn't really been in touch, and now she felt as though she were using him more than anything else. Was it too late to ask for help? Had the offer expired?

Still, although Jalen wasn't taken yet, she felt like she would be soon. Cody had truly captured her heart, and he seemed almost as obsessed with her as she was with him. The blonde smiled at the thought of him as she neared the library - hadn't she done the same in Cody's presence? Smiled at the though of JD? It wasn't like the wonderboy liked her in that way, but she couldn't help but think that he had by how their first interaction had gone. There was some chemistry there right?

Wrong subject...

It wasn't hard to spot the boy as she strolled into the library, even though he was hidden behind a pile of notes and books. A smile etched across her face as Jalen met JD's eyes, the familiar rush of feelings soaring through her veins. Or was that blood? Biology, again, wrong subject. "Hey Jonah," she said, saying his real name on purpose. "If it wasn't a good time I would've stood you up, don't you think?" She asked, pulling out the seat next to him and setting down her own pile of math before sitting down.

"How's the book?" She asked, eager to put off her Calculus skills for as long as possible, hoping that maybe she wouldn't look like too much of an idiot if she could talk about Othello for a while. She frowned at the oversight on her part, "I really should have given you more details on what I needed help with..." She asked, imagining the trouble he went through just for her. He really did keep his word.

"Okay, so here's the problem," Jalen said, her hair shielding her face as she flipped through her notebook. Her big loopy writing gave way to chicken scratch further down each page. "Every time I try to balance either side of these equations," the blonde went on, pointing dramatically to a particularily written and re-written on page, "it just doesn't work out and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong."

[JD Paerson]

She called him Jonah, which was strange. He hadn't heard that name since the beginning of the year when his teachers had first done roll-call. And even then some of the nicknames had already been established. What was most strange was to have it said by someone his own age. He decided not to comment on it and see if she'd switch back.

"Yeah, I guess so. Though I guess you might've come just to say you were leaving or something." He always tried to justify himself. He had to be right in everything he said, otherwise who could trust anything out of his mouth?

"It's pretty good. I'm reading it for class. Shakespeare again, though at least this time we got to pick which play we wanted to do. This one's got a lot of deceit and intrigue in it. I like it better than Macbeth, anyway." Being in as many advanced classes as he was in should have exhausted him, but he still managed to find time to get his homework done, even if it wasn't necessarily done very well.

"I wouldn't expect you to be able to explain it very well if you're not even sure how it works or anything. Don't worry about it. Let me just take a look and I can probably figure this out."

He looked over at the notebook but it was hard to see through her hair. He felt awkward about brushing it away, though, so he waited until she had flipped to a certain page and then reached over. "May I?" he asked, then slid the notebook closer to him so it was between them. "Okay, yeah..." he said, looking it over. "Yeah, I see what you're working on here. Just a moment."

He looked at his pile of notebooks and cleared away the top half, setting it to the side. Then he grabbed a notebook, flipped through it, and set it aside. Repeating this a few times, he finally found the one he was looking for. "Got it," he said, pulling it out and flicking it open. His hasty scribbling filled every other page of the composition notebook, following a style one of his old math teachers had given to him. He went through notebooks quickly, but it made it much easier to read.

"Okay, so it looks like you're having problems here." He pointed to a particular part of the equation. "Specifically with your foiling techniques before entering it into the function. Do you have your calculator with you?"

Once he got into the math, it was so much easier to lose himself. He felt more comfortable around equations than he did around people. At least with math there was generally a right answer, whereas when he was trying to communicate there were too many possibilities to be sure he was on the right track.

For example, should he extend his offer for her to come by and play video games again, or not? Was it appropriate to sit closer and attempt to show her exactly what was going on, or should he try to work it out on his own sheet of paper and then just give that to her? For the time being, he settled on taking her notebook and writing a few notes, then handing it back to her.

"Does that make more sense, or would you like a demonstration or something? The theories here get a little difficult, but as soon as you have those established then it's easier to work everything else out."

[Jalen August]

Jalen frowned. Was it just her, or was JD acting strangely distant. There was a wall that went up almost immediately when she asked about the book – or maybe it was her who had put it there. That, or she was overanalyzing things again.

Handing over her notes to him, Jay watched contentedly as JD looked through his own notes for help. The blonde took her calculator out from her purse and put it on the table. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure why she even took math at all. Probably just to get into university, it would be easier to be accepted if they thought she knew something about calculus.

Looking over his notes, Jalen tried to figure out the problem on her own to no avail. JD was asking if she needed a demonstration and she laughed. “Maybe, hang on a second,” she said, her pen scribbling over her problems as her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Solving a problem in front of a cute boy when he knew she struggled with the work already was a lot of pressure.

Theories. She hated those. It was bad enough to memorize certain ways to do the problems, never mind trying to find the sense behind it. For Jalen, there wasn’t any. Scribbling out her second attempt, the blonde sighed. “There’s a reason why math includes ‘problems’,” she said, trying to hide her frustration with humour.

Jalen’s fingers found one another and she twirled them around – a nervous habit she had to replace cracking her knuckles. Determined, the blonde rewrote the problem and followed the steps, and something clicked. She saw where she had gone wrong before. Her fractions were off. She never did understand fractions, probably something she should look at again before trying to grasp Calculus.

Smiling happily, she glanced at JD and grabbed his arm excitedly. “I got it!” She said a little too loudly, causing angry glares to be shot her way. Jalen let go of the boy and grinned sheepishly, pushing her hair behind her ears, glancing down at the page. “Okay, I think that made sense...” She said, her eyes still twinkling. “But then there’s the triangles and the tangents, and...” she glanced at the boy, grinning still, “maybe I should be paying you for this.” Jalen laughed quietly and sighed.

Flipping to the next problem that had to do with triangles, like Jalen said, the girl pointed to the problem and showed JD her work, the shading in the totally wrong area. “I don’t think I did this right”. Jay had many more problems to work through, but this would be the last one she asked for help to solve. JD didn’t need to do this math crap more than he had to.

[JD Paerson]

JD watched carefully as Jalen worked through the problem again. He wasn't watching her face so much as concentrating all his efforts on the page. He refused to let his gaze wander. Still, though, he almost missed the slight error. "Here," he said, reaching over and pointing to the number, "This one is wrong. You needed to go through some of this before entering it into the equation."

He smiled briefly as she tried to joke about the work. "Yep, calc can be a real pain in the ass. But while it has problems, it also has solutions. At least most of this lower level stuff does." JD had glanced at some of the higher-end math equations where the solutions were completely theoretical. He didn't fully understand it, and furthermore he couldn't see how it would help him in life, so he had abandoned that field of work almost immediately.

When Jalen finally worked out the problem on her own, JD could tell the actual moment as her scribblings went faster and she quickly wrote down the last of the problem and the solution. He was surprised, though, when she caught his arm. A slight blush crept up the back of his neck and he let himself smile briefly. "Good job. Though I think you mostly figured that one out on your own."

He wasn't exactly sure that he was doing much good here, but since she still seemed to want his help, he was willing to keep going. "Don't be dumb. You're doing all the work here. And as far as the money goes, if I ever really need something I'll just swipe one of LaRou--er, my companion's credit cards." He'd almost mentioned Zac's name, which made him nervous. Jalen probably knew Zac already, and JD didn't like the idea of being associated with the playboy.

"Anyway, triangles." He shook his head and looked down at Jay's work again, glancing through to see the error. "Okay, I see what you did here. You just misread this sign here and put it into the wrong area. Then this line got transposed a few places. But it's because of the negative here--by multiplying the two negatives on this side you create a positive, which means that the line actually goes over here, and then your shading will end at this point." Instead of pulling the notebook over to him completely this time he left it in between the two of them and pointed out the mistakes. Then he grabbed a notebook from his own stack and flipped through it until he found the right section. "Yeah, here we go. Triangles. And if you want to borrow this to look through you can, though I'm sure it's no better than your textbook."

Hopefully she would have been able to understand that flood of information. If it needed to be worked out again, slower, he'd be willing to help. "Did you still want help with tangents, like you said?" he asked her after a moment.

[Jalen August]

“The solutions don’t come easily for me,” Jalen said, catching JD’s eye, “in case you hadn’t noticed.” The blonde was wondering how this topic could come so easily to anyone. “Who invented this stuff anyways...” she said to herself more than to the boy next to her. She didn’t want to offend him – maybe he wanted to be an astronaut when he got out of Hammel, she wasn’t a mind reader.

Jalen offered a warm smile, “You did help, sometimes I just need extra encouragement to try again.” It was true. Sometimes it was better to emotionally cope with problems than actually solve them. For example, she was content to know that she would never grasp every concept when it came to math – she wouldn’t ever want to use it again beyond highschool. She was good with that.

Ears perking up slightly, Jalen frowned briefly at the Asian’s name. “So is that the annoying friend you mentioned on our, er, date? Or do you have more than one extremely annoying friend?” She asked. Date could mean any number of things, it didn’t have to necessarily be romantic. The thought of Zac made Jay cringe, but again, she tried to brush it off with humour. “I hope he hasn’t told you the little nickname he made up for me,” she said with a grin. She supposed it was funny now, but to let LaRousse know that would be giving him permission to use it – not something Jay was cool with.

Transposed, shading, positives and negatives – JD was using the terms like they were his own brand of poetry. Jalen glanced at her work once more and tried to make sense of the boy’s explanation and quick hand gestures. “Uh,” she said, her eyebrows furrowing together. Then she caught why the shading was on the wrong side. “Oh! It’s so simple,” she said, snatching her work back from JD. “I totally forgot that when you have two negatives they make a positive...” She said, looking at the boy’s steel grey eyes, “Right?” She asked, needing clarification.

Glancing at JD’s notes, Jalen gave a smirk and sighed. “I would borrow those if I could, but I don’t want to lose them – my room is a mess,” she admitted, a sorry smile on her face. “But I think I’m good with the math for now,” she said closing her notebook which held many more unanswered questions. She just didn’t feel like doing it anymore.

“So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?” She asked JD, a hopeful smile on her face. He didn’t want to do any more math, right?

[JD Paerson]

"Lots of people invented it over time. It was in India that they first developed more complex math, introducing the concept of 'zero' which was then carried over into Arabia through the Islam community and later adapted into the Christian culture of Europe. That allowed more complex understandings of math and led to the development of--" Only at this moment did JD realize that the question had probably been rhetorical and he blushed. "Um. Yeah. Anyway. It's been around for a while, and new things are coming up all the time. But we actually get it pretty easy, since we just have to learn it instead of inventing it all ourselves."

He rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. "Glad I could help, then." He understood about extra encouragement. Though in his case it usually came more in the form of (un)friendly rivalry.

Sighing, he admitted his friendship with Zac. "Yeah. That's the guy. Unfortunately I do have more than one annoying friend, but he's the most annoying." He completely missed the use of the word "date," since he was too focused on his embarrassment in being tied up with Zac. "No, he never mentioned a nickname. In fact, he hasn't really mentioned you at all. I apologize in advance, though, for anything he said to you. I tried not to mention you to him so he wouldn't go prying. I should've known he'd just find out all on his own." And with a frown he shook his head before returning to work.

When Jalen jumped in again he handed back her notebook and watched as she put everything back together, nodding and smiling. "Yup, you got it. And I don't even know that you forgot about the negatives when you were putting it in. It was probably just a simple mistake. The negatives and positives tend to get confused, and it's really easy to just misplace a negative. I've done it plenty of times." Which was why he probably should check over his work more than he did. But that took extra time, which he was never willing to put in.

"You can borrow them anyway, if you want. Like my room is clean. I have a giant milk crate I keep them all in, and even then I end up losing stuff. I'm sure you'll be able to keep track of a few notebooks. Even if you do lose 'em, at least I am done with them now."

He was a little surprised when she packed away the work, since he thought he'd be needing to do a lot more. But he wasn't necessarily upset. If she didn't need any more help, then she was probably understanding it already. That was good--she'd likely do well on the test now, if she was understanding everything so well.

"Me?" he asked stupidly, gazing at her wide-eyed. "Um. Mostly just hanging around. I have the rest of today off, so I was probably going to run some laps or just go back to my room..." This was the opportunity, and it seemed like it might work out, so he decided to just go for it and ask. "Hey, you wanna come back to my room and play video games? I still haven't kicked your butt at Mario yet." And if she didn't have time, that was okay. And he'd know not to bother asking again.

[Jalen August]

Jalen cringed at the explanation. Now there was no denying that she was an idiot – when it came to match anyways. But she smiled still, impressed with JD’s nerdy qualities. “It’s hard enough to learn all of this,” she gestured towards the pile of books and notebooks before them, “never mind inventing it. I can’t imagine the brilliant minds that make use out of it.” At least she was being honest. It was better to be honest than pretend to know something about something and then get caught when asked for further information.

“He should win an award for that,” Jalen remarked. Imagining Zac winning some kind of gaudy medallion to wear around his neck made the blonde grin – at least then people would have some warning. “He is quite the handful, and apparently he has spies all over the campus,” she went on to say, not really thinking of it as a big deal anymore. It had been a big deal at one point. Their little rendezvous was now viewed as something fun they did together – like friends.

Thinking JD was only being pleasant in saying he screwed up in math all the time, Jalen laughed lightly, “You? Make mistakes?” A playful grin was on her face. “I seriously doubt you make as many as some people.” Someone who made a lot of mistakes wouldn’t be helping somebody else with their homework, right? “Unless you’re pretending to be good at math...” A mock serious expression masked her face. “If I get my assignment back and everything’s wrong I will be blaming you for it,” she said sternly, her lips turned upright into a smile the whole time.

Jalen stared at JD for a moment, considering the favour. “Oh alright, I’ll take the notebooks,” she said, looking back at the stack with a grin. “So long as you carry them.” It would be just like her to topple over while carrying a massive pile of books. She didn’t want to risk doing that and looking like an idiot.

Perfect, he had taken the opportunity. Jalen would have invited herself over to his room but that would’ve been too direct considering their current relationship. Which was... what exactly? “I think you’re the one who’s going to be eating my dust,” Jalen said dramatically, making to stand up with the small pile of her own notebooks in hand. Videogames weren’t something she had to lie about – she really was good at them, despite her being a tall, blonde, woman.

[JD Paerson]

"An award for being a jerk or for nickname-giving? Or are those one and the same? Since most people he gives nicknames to usually find it annoying." He did have to snort at the idea of Zac being some sort of spy lord, having all his troops. "Yeah, he probably hired a bunch of people. Beware the gardeners, I'd say."

He shrugged when Jalen questioned his tendency to make mistakes. "Maybe not as much. But if it's just a small mistake sometimes the teacher gives you partial credit." Which was why you were always meant to show your work, so the teacher could go back and see where you went wrong. Which must stink for anyone teaching math. JD had vowed never to become a teacher, himself. "No no, you should be good," he said. The smile was reassuring. She was actually enjoying herself and not too worried about the work. "I can at least tutor someone. I think." Not like he'd actually done it before, but hey, this time seemed to be going well.

He was glad she was willing to take him up on his offer. He didn't like to think he'd hauled all those notebooks out for nothing, and hopefully she'd be able to use them sometime. "Sure, I can carry them. You want the milk crate, too? That way you can have them all together." If she said yes, he'd just take them back to his room, dump them in the crate, and carry it all over to her room.

"You think you can go up against a guy with superspeed playing video games?" Not that he could exactly channel his super speed when he wasn't running, but not many people knew that. "You have guts, I'll give you that. Unless you have an ace up your sleeve." He grabbed the large stack of books with both arms, balancing them against his chest so they wouldn't topple over as he walked. "Come on, we can deal with these books and then see who will emerge victorious from the glorious battle of the Xbox."

[Jalen August]

“Probably both, I would use more colourful works to describe Larousse but that would be very unladylike,” Jalen said with a smug grin. There were many things Zac was – worth respecting wasn’t one of them. The blonde laughed at the gardener joke. “Ah well, people are going to see people hanging out, and unfortunately they will assume what they want from that.” Jalen could care less what people thought about her and JD.

Once JD was standing the girl gave him a hug. “Yes I’ll take the crate, thanks so much for your help today.” Jalen pulled away from the boy and smiled. He really had helped, even though he was being humble about it. She liked that about him – she couldn’t imagine having Zac as a tutor. “You helped me more than you may think, so I thank you, not many can get through my thick skull,” she said with a chuckle.

A single eyebrow raised on the girl’s pale face. “I’m not afraid of you, or your superspeed,” she said, a little grin on her face. “Besides, you wouldn’t cheat, would you?” She asked, a little pout forming on her face. Jalen couldn’t hold that face for long and quickly started grinning again. Following JD, Jay had her stuff carefully balanced on her waist as they made their way through the library and then the halls.

“If I win today, you owe me another ride,” she said, quickly biting her lip, “uh, you know, to that beautiful spot you showed me a couple weeks ago.” There, at least she had managed to save that... sort of. “And if you win, I’ll bake you something,” she said, a quirky grin crossing her face at the challenge she made up. JD seemed like the type of guy who couldn’t say no to a bet. “Unless you have something better to wager?”

[JD Paerson]

Continued at Anything You Can Do.