“So,” Krista said, putting her items down on the desk and then sitting down, “Sorry about that. Where is Megan? She run to the bathroom?” Krista looked around. They were in a back corner of the library, near the stacks. It was almost completely silent and no one was near them. Callista shook her head.
“She didn’t show up either,” she said and for a brief instant she saw that wolfishness in Krista’s eyes again. But it was only a brief shadow this time and then it was gone.
“Well I guess we need to get to work then,” Krista said, “Get out your work book. I think we were on page 112 when we went off last time.” Callista dutifully bent over from her chair and grabbed her backpack. Her ACT book was still in there. But as she bent over she could have sworn she saw Callista trying to stare down her shirt to look at her cleavage. But when she got back up with her book, Krista was carefully taking a note in her spiral notebook.
“We were finishing up that unit on trigonometry, right?” Krista asked, opening her book to the same page. Callista nodded.
“Yeah, I remember because Megan was having an issue with Question 24 and you said that we would address it first thing this session,” Callista said. She had totally already figured out Question 24 like two minutes after they’d started talking about it. Megan was nice enough, but she was always slowing them down.
“Oh shit!” Krista said and Callista was shocked. Krista never talked like that. For a moment, Krista didn’t say anything. She just looked down at her papers with her brow furrowed. Then she just threw up her hands and slammed her book shut. She crossed her arms in front of her breasts and looked at Callista.
“What is it?” Callista asked, concerned. Krista was usually organized, laid back, boring, and sullen. Today she was confused, high strung, bizarre, and angry. It was like she was a different person. Callista never really, like, cared for Krista, but it was still disturbing to see her so different.
“You are already so far ahead of Megan,” Krista explained, “And now she is going to miss this lesson too. We will get hopelessly split.” Suddenly Callista didn’t care about Krista’s mood or anything else. This was totally a chance to get out of this early. She could meet up with her boyfriend and do all the things she wanted to do!
“Yeah, and plus, half our time is already over, we’d get through like half a lesson and it would be extra hard to get Megan caught up to the right place,” she explained. She didn’t even know if that made sense, but she was going to try anything and everything to get out of this. Krista nodded her head.
“Well, I promised your mother that we’d finish one of these lessons every day, we are going to have to stay here the whole time, until 11:30,” Krista explained. Callista’s stomach dropped into her shoes. That would totally ruin her entire plan for the day.
“No but you said yourself that we’d totally mess up Megan’s progress,” Callista said, but it didn’t look like Krista was buying it. She picked her book back up.
“I am just a little rattled today,” Krista explained, “We have to get the whole hour done.”
“But I have things to do today!” Callista said. It didn’t look like her touching concern for Megan’s well-being was getting anywhere, so she decided to just jump straight to the honesty.
“So you just want to do an hour of work and go?” Krista asked, looking down at the thick workbook that they’d only gotten about halfway through. Callista looked at it too and her mind like totally started to whir. She was so sick of this stuff.
“Just let me go now,” she begged, “You know I am like, light years ahead of this stuff. We can, like, save ourselves some annoyance and just go our separate ways.” But even as she said it, Krista was shaking her head.
“No, no, no. I spoke too soon. I can’t take your mom’s money and not keep you here the whole time. Plus, I don’t know if you know this, but she doesn’t trust me. She comes by once every half hour to make sure you are here. Callista’s eyes darted to the nearest window. She tried to see, but it was far away. There was no way of knowing if her mom was there. But it was exactly the kind of shit her mom would pull!
“So you are going to keep me here until 11:30! This is like, totally stupid and shit Krista! Give me a break, we both know this is stupid. Can’t we… I don’t know, make a deal or something.” Callista asked in frustration. She didn’t even really know what that meant, she was just so fed up with her mother’s bizarre insecurity. And she wanted this bitch, this person who worked for her, to just help her out. And as she said it, she noticed that Krista was looking at the window, like she was thinking about something. For a long while, Krista didn’t say anything and the tension mounted.
“Okay, I guess it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to keep you the whole time,” Krista said and Callista smiled and clapped her hands, putting her first towards her mouth. Krista put up a hand, “And maybe if we aren’t going to do the whole lesson and I am going to break my promise to your mother anyway, then I might as well let you off without having to do any work at all.” Callista couldn’t believe it, she was about to get everything she wanted.