Chapter Four: Tutoring
Dawn was so dead.
Seeing as she skipped several hours of learning, she probably wouldn't have time to catch up. And it was Thursday. Friday was exam week. Thursday, to the students, was usually spent reviewing what had been learnt in the week. Now, thanks to the set-back song, Dawn had to catch up on TWO days of learning.
'Oh school, have pity on thee,' she muttered, blowing a strand of oily, blue hair from her baggy eyes.
'Still after second period, and you're ranting off about poetic nonsense!' Paul finally snapped. It was bad enough being her tutor and lending her his notes, but putting up with her half-asleep words?! That went way too far in Paul's opinion.
'Sorry, I didn't sleep well last night,' Dawn apologised meekly, resting her head on her hands.
She watched the teacher lecture about something that seemed extremely boring...
'Wake up,' something prodded her in the ribs.
With a groan, Dawn sleepily blinked and yawned, feeling suddenly refreshed.
'Ah, did I fall asleep?' She asked, making a mental note to ask Paul for his notes later on.
'What do you think, Troublesome,' Paul said sarcastically. The nickname had become something of a pet-name, but Dawn refused to have her name being called something as stupid as that.
'Do I really need to tell you my name again?' she glared at the teen.
He rolled his eyes, 'I think I've got the message. C'mon, we've got Free Period. You can make up for your loss of study time in the cafeteria or something.'
'Whatever. Let's just get this over and done with,' Dawn sighed, picking up her books and heading out the door to the cafeteria.
Few students were in the place at the time, a few outcasts and stragglers left behind. Of course, Paul didn't really care. Dawn, however, looked around with confusion.
'Ah, these people do not have friends?' she enquired, coming to a conclusion.
'I guess so,' Paul shrugged. He couldn't care less about 'other people', just the ones in his small group of friends.
'Ai, it must be sad to have no friends,' Dawn commented, staring at a girl with red hair, darker than Misty's, sipping a can of soda.
Suddenly, Paul stopped, making Dawn bump into him.
'What makes you say that?' he asked quietly as Dawn took a step back.
'You will be lonely, and sad. Well maybe not sad, but the outcome I suspect, is having a depressed aura,' Dawn commented.
The purple-haired teen was suddenly jolted back to a memory, another time, another place-
'Emo freak.'
'Outcast.'
'Loser.'
'Paul!' Dawn was close to slapping him, when he regained his composure.
'Yeah?'
'You kinda fazed out,' Dawn explained. 'What happened?'
The voices came back. He swatted at them mentally like flies, 'Nothing. Now hurry up. We're wasting study time.'
He gruffly made his way to an empty table and plonked his bag and books on it. Dawn did the same, only in a more graceful fashion.
'Let's start with Maths first,' Paul suggested as Dawn dug in her bag for her Maths homework.
'Ok,' Dawn scrunched her eyebrows up in concentration. A few minutes of staring blankly at the sheet of paper, she announced, 'I don't know how to solve this.'
Scowling, Paul skimmed through the page, 'This is just angles! Heck, even a first-grader could figure this out!'
'Maybe for you,' Dawn muttered, playing with the eraser at the tip of her pink pencil.
'I'll explain it slowly so it'll get through that thick head of yours,' Paul said, ignoring the deadly glares shot at him. 'This is just triangles and squares, so it should be pretty easy to figure out. All the angles in a triangle add up to one-hundred and eighty degrees. Do you follow?'-Dawn nodded, so he continued, 'A square is just double one-eighty, which is three-hundred and sixty. If you want to figure out a pentagon, what do you think we do?'
'Uh, times one-eighty by... three?'
Paul nodded. At least she could pick things up easily, 'You see the pattern, Dawn?'
'Yeah,' Dawn nodded. 'So, they go up by one-eighty each time? I mean, a hexagon would be seven-hundred and twenty degrees, a heptagon would be nine-hundred degrees, so on. It's just adding one-eighty on to the previous number, right?'
'Yup,' Paul said. 'Now hurry up. Free Period is ending in about thirty minutes.'
To his relief, Dawn finished her homework in less than five minutes, thanks to his explanation.
'Okay, are we done here?'
'Not yet,' Dawn sighed, reaching in her bag for another sheet of paper. 'I have to write a poem for English.'
'So?' again, Paul scowled. 'Since you're such a great lyric writer, why don't you write up with a few lines and hand it in?'
Dawn shook her head, 'It's not that simple. I need to wait for the ideas to come to me. Inspiration. Quotes. Lines from movies. Whatever.'
'So, you're saying, you need inspiration?' Paul asked.
'Yeah...'
'Then go ahead and look around. There's lots of 'inspiring' ideas here,' Paul said sarcastically.
Almost as if struck by lighting, Dawn bolted upright in her seat, 'That's it!'
'What's it?'
Ignoring his question, she looked him in the eye and fired her own, 'Is there anything you'd change about me?'
Startled, the teen blinked before answering, 'No.'
'Why? I mean, if that's your answer, do you have anything to back it up with?'
Paul took a deep breath.
In. Out.
'I wouldn't change a thing about you, because you are one individual in a million. One in a million. Unique. It shouldn't matter what others say. Or think. Because you're your own person in a million. There's no one out there like you,' Paul said truthfully. In all honesty, it sounded like he was talking about a certain, blue-eyed girl in general, but he let it slide.
For a moment, the pair were silent.
'Wow,' Dawn breathed, breaking the silence. 'That was inspirational all right.'
She took a deep breath, as if inhaling the idea and inspiration. Then, she let it out, and her eyes seemed to have this peaceful, serene quality that seemed to appear only in times like this.
Quickly, she wrote lines and lines of seemingly endless words and Paul watched in amazement as her hand became a flying blur. At last, she ceased, and with satisfaction, read the paper.
Oh, her eyes, her eyes
Make the stars look like they're not shinin'
Her hair, her hair
Falls perfectly without her trying
She's so beautiful
And I tell her everyday
Yeah
I know, I know
When I compliment her she won't believe me
And it's so, it's so
Sad to think that she don't see what I see
But every time she asks me, "Do I look okay?"
I say,
When I see your face...
There's not a thing that I would change
'Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile...
The whole world stops and stares for a while
'Cause, girl, you're amazing
Just the way you are.
Yeah
Her lips, her lips
I could kiss them all day if she'd let me
Her laugh, her laugh
She hates but I think it's so sexy
She's so beautiful
And I tell her everyday,
Oh you know, you know, you know
I'd never ask you to change
If perfect's what you're searching for
Then just stay the same
So don't even bother asking if you look okay
You know I'll say,
When I see your face...
There's not a thing that I would change
'Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile...
The whole world stops and stares for a while
'Cause, girl, you're amazing
Just the way you are
The way you are
The way you are
Girl, you're amazing
Just the way you are
When I see your face
There's not a thing that I would change
'Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile
The whole world stops and stares for a while
'Cause, girl, you're amazing
Just the way you are.
'That's an A+ for sure,' she heard Paul comment.
She had almost forgotten Paul had been there. Blushing, she folded it up and placed it neatly into the pocket of her bag.
'I don't think I have anything else...' Dawn trailed off.
'Oh, I forgot to tell you,' Paul got up from his chair. 'The teacher was handing out flyers for this concert thing next week. Apparently, if we enter, we get an extra mark. I think all the guys are joining too.'
'What do we have to do?' Dawn asked, curiously.
'Sing a duet.'
When he received no reply, he turned around. His eyes widened in shock.
Dawn was sprawled on the ground.
Fainted.
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I tried a cliffie again. Never seen such an epic fail in my life XD
-xxxSkittlesxxx