“The Academy is willing to support you wherever we can,” Bowen said. “There will be extra credit assignments made available to you to help you pull those grades up, if you want them. No one here wants to see you fail.”
No, Jared thought. Can’t have that blemish on your shining record.
Her words played on his mind for the rest of the morning, and more than once Jared forced himself to stop doodling in the margins of his notebook and start paying attention. Bowen had given him a list of the subjects where his grades were “less than expected,” and it wasn’t really a shock. Government, chemistry, French. Three academic areas that, surprise surprise, there hadn’t been a huge emphasis on at military school.
At lunch Jared bought cookies to cheer himself up, then collapsed into the seat at Chris’s table that was rapidly becoming his.
“All right, losers, who has a tutor?” he asked, splitting the packet open and offering one to Clare. Who turned it down. Like he knew she would.
“Uh, nearly all of us,” she said. “How the fuck do you think we keep up at this place?”
“Okay. Well, I need tutoring. Can someone hook me up?”
“Ryder,” Clare said. “Give him Dylan’s number.”
Across the table, Ryder tore a sheaf of paper from her notepad and scrawled a number on it. “Let him know you’re here, and you’re friends with us, and he’ll make time for you.”
Jared nodded and folded the paper, tucking it into his wallet. “Cool. Thanks. Who is this guy?”
“A friend,” Clare said. “Ryder’s brother. He was in our grade until we were what… thirteen? Then they skipped him, so he graduated last year. He’s at UDub now, but he tutors a lot of people here.”
“He graduated early from this place and ended up at a local college? Why isn’t he at an Ivy League school?”
“Family stuff,” Ryder said with the sort of finality that told Jared not to press.
He nodded and leaned back in his chair, content with his cookies. “All right. I’ll call him.”
More people started to fill the table, nearly all of them looking to Chris first to make sure their presence was allowed. He quietly nodded to some. Others, like Adam, ignored him and sat down anyway.
“What do you need tutoring in, anyway?” Ryder asked.
“The classes they didn’t give at my last school,” Jared said, rolling his eyes. “Chemistry, government, and French.”
“Don’t pay for a French tutor,” Adam said. He didn’t even look up from methodically splitting chicken strips. “I’m fluent. I can help.”
“That’s nice of you,” he said cautiously. The memory of their bedtime kiss flickered through Jared’s mind. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Adam said with a laugh.
“You’ve never tutored anyone before,” Ryder said. She looked upset.
“That’s because, darling Ryder, your tits do nothing for me, but his ass does.”
Jared snorted and reached for another cookie, snapping it neatly in half. “When are you free?” he asked Adam, ignoring Ryder’s wounded look.
“Give me your number. We can work something out.”
When Jared got home that afternoon, he was surprised to see a car parked in front of the house. Hadley’s car. He parked next to it, leaving her plenty of space to get out if she needed to, and called out when he walked into the house.
“Hi!” Hadley said, sticking her head out of the kitchen. “Come in. I’m just fixing dinner.”
“I didn’t know you were due home.”
Jared threw his bag on the floor next to the door and toed off his shoes, loosening his tie as he walked through the house.
“Change of plans,” Hadley said lightly. “I’ve got a few friends who want to come and see the area, so I came back to fix the house up.”
“It’s not a mess,” Jared said, feeling oddly defensive.
“I know. Thank you.”
He slid onto one of the stools tucked under the breakfast bar and regarded Hadley with a curious expression. She was wearing jeans, barefoot, with an apron tied around her middle as she stirred a red sauce on the stove.
“What are you making?”
“Lasagna.”
“Oh. Sounds good. Smells good, too.”
Hadley gave him a grin over her shoulder. “Thanks.”
Hadley was about ten years younger than Jared’s mother, making her thirty or thereabouts. She wore her hair long, and had it tied back in a ponytail while she worked. Jared didn’t know much about his aunt; his mom didn’t like her much, and he’d only heard vicious gossip since her marriage and subsequent divorce.
“I wanted to apologize,” she said, turning the burner down on the stove and leaning against a cabinet. “I wouldn’t normally have been out of town for so long, but I picked up a few jobs down in Cali, and it made sense to stay there for a while.”
“It’s fine,” Jared said. “I like the peace and quiet.”
“Oh, God, I can’t stand it,” Hadley said dramatically. “This place drives me mad after a while. I have to get out.”
“Why don’t you sell the house then?” he asked, hoping to sound genuinely curious rather than confrontational. “You could use the money to buy something nice in a place you actually like.”
She huffed a laugh. “Yeah, fair point. It’s… political.”
“Go on,” Jared said. “Share. I won’t tell anyone.”
Hadley grinned and reached into the fridge, grabbing two Pepsis and handing one to Jared. “Oh, all right. Don’t go reporting back to Mommy, though, will you?”
“Jeez, sister. I haven’t spoken to my mother in about a month.”
“Lucky you,” Hadley muttered. “She’s been on my back for weeks. Well, it’s driving my ex-husband crazy, knowing I still have this place. He expected me to sell it, and he was going to buy it back. Stupid, really; he had to know I’d inflate the price, and he’d pay twice as much as it’s worth. And it’s worth a lot.”
“So you’re doing it to
