Chapter 96: [2.71] Sabrina Knows Everything, Even Things That Haven’t Happened Yet
She pulled the paper back and stared at it. Her jaw tightened. "I had the right setup. I factored it right. But then when I went to find x, the numbers..." she stopped.
"Moved around."
"Yeah." She said it low.
"Right. So we’re going to do sothing different." I opened my bag and pulled out a sheet of graph paper I’d prepared on the drive over. Grid format, each step in its own box, visual separation between operations. The kind of scaffolding that nobody had ever thought to build for her because nobody had looked at how her brain actually processed information. They’d just kept handing her the sa ladder and acting surprised when she fell off the sa rung.
Troubleso? Yes. Worth it? The seven problems on that first sheet answered that.
I put the graph paper in front of her. "Each box is one operation. You don’t move to the next box until the current one is finished."
She looked at it. "This looks like sothing you’d give a ten-year-old."
"It looks like sothing that works."
She opened her mouth.
"Seven out of ten," I said.
She closed her mouth.
We worked for an hour. She got loud twice, once when she made the sa sign error three attempts running, and once when she got problem six correct on the first try and actually made a noise that startled both of us.
She clapped her hand over her mouth imdiately. I looked down at my notes and said nothing, because if I acknowledged it, she would spontaneously combust with embarrassnt and we’d lose the montum.
"Don’t," she said, muffled behind her hand.
"I didn’t say anything."
"You were thinking sothing."
"I’m always thinking sothing. It’s called having a functional brain."
She dropped her hand. Her face was flushed. She pointed at the next problem instead of addressing any of what just happened, and I moved on, because that was the job.
By the ti we finished, the sun had moved and the library was dim at the edges, the light concentrated in the center of the room where we sat. Cassidy had the chips spread in front of her. The gap between our totals had shrunk. Not closed, but shrunk.
She counted hers. Then she counted mine.
"You’re still winning," she said.
"Yes."
"By less."
"Yes."
She leaned back in her chair, arms crossing, studying
with those purple eyes in a way she’d probably perfected on people she was trying to intimidate. It didn’t really work on
anymore, which she knew, which I suspected annoyed her more than most things.
"Why are you good at this?" she asked.
"At math?"
"At people."
I looked at her.
"Seven tutors," she said. "Seven people who gave up. You’re still here and you changed how you work instead of blaming ." A pause. "Why."
Honest question. No edge on it, no trap. Just Cassidy without the armor for approximately four seconds.
"Because the seven tutors were trying to solve you," I said. "I’m just doing the job."
"That’s a non-answer."
"It’s the true answer."
She looked at
for another mont. The library was quiet. Outside, sowhere in the house, I could hear Harlow’s voice and then Vivienne’s, talking about sothing down the hall.
"The test is in ten days," Cassidy said.
"I know."
"If I win the bet, you have to do everything I say for a full day."
"That was the deal."
"I’m going to make it very unpleasant for you."
"I assud."
She gathered her pens into a neat row, which was a new habit, sothing she’d started unconsciously over the past week. Color order. Red, blue, green, black. She’d started treating her study materials with the sa care she gave her tennis rackets. I noticed. I didn’t say anything about it.
"Sa ti tomorrow?" she asked. Very casual. Very careful.
"Calendar says four-thirty. Vivienne moved it to fit the brand call."
"Of course she did." But there was no real heat in it.
I started putting my things away. Across the table, Cassidy picked up the graph paper format I’d made and looked at it once more. Then she folded it and slid it into her own notebook.
She was going to practice tonight. Without being asked.
Troubleso. The whole situation was troubleso. Spending this much ti building sothing for a girl who threw pillows and staged elaborate Manhattan decoy missions and made
stand in an ice cold shower fully clothed.
And yet.
The seven problems. The folded paper. The way she’d said sa ti tomorrow like it was just a logistical question and not the first ti she’d ever voluntarily asked for a tutoring session in her life.
Terrible return on investnt. Completely worth it. I couldn’t explain that math to anyone, including myself.
I was halfway to the door when she spoke again.
"Isaiah."
I stopped.
"If I actually pass this test." She didn’t finish the sentence imdiately. I waited, hand on the doorfra. "What happens after? For you, I an. Does the contract just... keep going?"
"Until the end of the sester, based on the performance review."
"And then?"
"And then I graduate. Collect a reference letter. Move on."
A pause. I heard her shift in her chair.
"Right," she said. "Okay."
I turned around. She was looking at the poker chips, not at , arranging them by color. Red and white and blue in separate groups, sothing to do with her hands.
"You’re not going to make
say it," she said.
"Say what."
"That this has been." She stopped. Tapped a chip against the table. "Whatever. Go away."
I looked at her for a second. The window light had gone gold and it caught in her hair, the wine-red and the black streaks, the loose pieces around her face. She was still looking at the chips.
"Four-thirty tomorrow," I said.
"Obviously," she said. Very hostile. Very pink around the ears.
I went.
In the hallway, Sabrina was leaning against the wall with her book open, which ant she had either been there for thirty seconds or the entire hour. With Sabrina, both were equally possible and equally unsettling.
"She asked about after the sester," I said, because there was no point pretending she hadn’t heard.
Sabrina turned a page. "Did she."
"You knew she would."
"I suspected." She glanced up. Her purple eyes were level and calm, reading
the sa way she read everything, all the way down to the subtext. "What did you tell her?"
"The truth. End of sester, I move on."
Sabrina looked at
for a mont longer than necessary. "And you said that as though it were simple."
"It is simple."
She turned another page. "Mm."
I waited. With Sabrina, the ’mm’ was never the end of the thought.
"You’ve been here three weeks," she said. "Cassidy practices voluntarily. Harlow has a functional calendar for the first ti in recorded history. Vivienne said ’adequate’ to sothing you did, which, for her, is practically a standing ovation." She paused. "And you think you’re going to leave at the end of a sester and it will be simple."
I didn’t have a good answer for that.
"Troubleso," I said finally, which wasn’t an answer at all.
Sabrina’s mouth curved. Very small. Very deliberate. "Yes," she said. "It is."
She went back to her book, and I continued down the hall, and sowhere behind
the library light was still on, and Cassidy was probably still sitting there rearranging chips by color and telling herself it ant nothing.
It probably ant nothing.
I’d stop thinking about it by dinner.
Probably.
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