Falling Away (Fall Away #3)

So I stopped trying. I did enough but no more.

Now I wished I tried more and wasn’t so afraid to put myself out there. Maybe if I had reached out for new experiences, I’d know what I wanted to do with my life. Now my options felt limited, because I’d held myself back in high school, and I was two years into college political science classes that I couldn’t just throw away.

I wanted these students to know that their education gave them choices. It was a valuable time.

Penley wrapped up her lesson and then directed the students to their tutors. I stayed where I was, leaning my elbows on the table and forcing a relaxed smile as one boy and three girls came to sit down.

“Hi, I’m K.C.,” I greeted.

The guy held up his pointer finger but didn’t make eye contact. “Jake.” And then he buried his face in his hands and let out a loud yawn.

Jake might be on drugs.

I looked across the table to the three girls. I knew one of them. The younger sister of a somewhat friend from high school whom I no longer kept in touch with. The other two were strangers, but all three of them looked at me as if I were the hair in their soup.

That was one thing that didn’t make me nervous. I had no trouble standing up to women in my own generation.

I kept staring at them, eyebrows raised in expectation.

The dark-haired girl finally spoke up. “I’m Ana. This is Christa and Sydney.”

Sydney I knew. Her sister was sweet. She looked like a little shit, though.

She had long auburn hair, parted on the side and hanging in big, voluminous curls down her back and over her chest. Her stunning brown eyes brought out the red tint in her hair, and her makeup and nails were perfect.

Ana’s beautiful Asian complexion glowed alabaster and her long, shiny black hair and dark eyes were flawless.

Christa had short blond hair cut in a bob with a severe angle. Although the wallflower out of the group, I knew from knowing Tate that those were usually the ones to show their awesomeness later.

All of the girls were dressed the same. Shorts and tank tops.

I smiled calmly. “Nice to meet all of you.” I took out their diagnostic assessments—compositions they wrote at the end of the school year, including their outlines and rough drafts—and handed them their own papers. “So we’re supposed to each share a sample paragraph and discuss what improvements we could make. Who would like to go first?”

No one budged. Jake sat next to me, looking as though he was ready to fall asleep. Ana looked away while Christa and Sydney smirked, challenging me.

“Anyone?” I asked, a grin tickling my face. I remembered my classes when no one would volunteer. Now I knew what being a teacher felt like.

I held up my hands. “I’ll read it if someone wants to give me their paper. This time.”

Jake shoved his paper in my face, still not making eye contact.

“Thank you, Jake.” Relief flooded me.

I cleared my throat, reading out loud. “What do you do when you’re hungry? You might go through a drive-through or hit the store. For eight hundred and forty-two million people in the world, they can’t get food that easy.”

I cleared my throat again, hearing the girls across from me snicker.

“That was a good opening paragraph.” I nodded, keeping my voice light and looking at Jake even though he wasn’t looking at me. “Asking a question right off the bat is a solid way to grab the reader. And I like your voice.”

“He’s barely talked since we sat down,” Sydney joked. “How can you like his voice?”

“I meant the tone that comes through in his writing,” I explained as if she didn’t already know. “Expressions like ‘hit the store’ when most people would say ‘go to the store’ or ‘drive to the store.’ That’s his personal voice. It makes the writing sound natural.”

I caught Jake out of the corner of my eye, looking at me. I turned to him, wanting to be as kind as possible. The truth was, he needed a lot of work. His word choice was boring, he used adjectives when he should’ve used adverbs, and the sentences flowed like mud.

But I wasn’t going to lay all that on him today.

“Two suggestions, though: The statistic you wrote wasn’t cited. Readers won’t know where you got that information and they won’t trust it if you don’t tell them the Web site, article, or text to which you’re referring.”

“ ‘To which you’re referring,’ ” Sydney mimicked, and the paper crinkled in my hand.

“Is there a problem?” I asked, calling her out.

She rolled her eyes and whispered something to Christa.

“Another thing,” I continued, trying to ignore her, “is that there is some passive language h-here,” I stuttered, noticing Christa laughing into her hand and Sydney stealing glances at me. “You might want to spice it up,” I tried to continue to Jake, “by saying—” And when all three of the girls laughed together, I stopped.

“What’s going on?” I tried to keep my voice down.

The girls brought their hands down and folded their lips between their teeth to stifle smiles. Christa sighed sympathetically. “I’m just not sure why we’re being tutored by someone that got arrested.”

Son of a …

I narrowed my eyes and sat up straight. How the hell did everyone know? My mother definitely didn’t tell anyone. And Principal Masters most certainly didn’t tell anyone. What the hell?