She turned to smile at me. “Really? And about that staring thing?” she asked.
My cheeks felt hot, and I tried to play it cool and just laugh it off, but it felt too loud, and fake. “I'm not staring at you,” I told her.
Julie laughed at that, and her laugh wasn't fake. “Could have fooled me. Every time I turn my back, I can feel those blue eyes of yours burning into my backside,” she replied.
The strangest of thoughts washed over me. She had noticed the color of my eyes. She had paid attention to them, and took in the color for her memory.
It was both exciting and painful for me.
I had crushes before. I was in my early teens before I turned into the beast I was today. I had admired the cheerleader, and flirted my way into getting the cute, smart girl to let me copy her homework.
Girls had crushed on me too. Everyone has had a crush, or been crushed on, I figure. It come with puberty and acne.
I hadn't liked anyone after. Even girls I had liked in school, those crushes disappeared after you just happen to hear their conversations about how ugly you look.
It was hard to like a girl that couldn't find anything attractive about you, and you knew the only thing beautiful about her was the outside.
Here I was, almost eighteen now, and finding myself drawn into the mystery that was Julie Michaels, and feeling very conflicted about it.
Julie was beautiful, in a simple, and magnetizing way. Not voluptuous, or sexy, but beautiful. She held the kind of candor that only someone who is naïve and trusting could be.
I was not any of those things. Simple, naïve, trusting, beautiful, nothing. I held no place in the world, and especially in hers. I could offer her nothing, and she seemed like the type that would be willing to accept that if she thought she really loved someone.
I was complicated, untrusting, ugly, and I didn't deserve anything from her, and she deserved nothing from me.
She was staring at me, arms crossed, and a sly smile on her face. It all seemed mocking now, and I could feel myself replacing the walls I had temporarily let down.
“Were you going to help me or not?” I asked, my voice gruff, my eyes averted from her.
“Sure. Let's ignore the previous conversation. I got you,” she said, winking at me as she picked up the backpack that my sister had dropped off on her way to work.
“I'm not ignoring anything,” I told her, and I managed to catch her eye as she sat the bag by the bed. She raised a brow, biting the side of her lip.
It made me angry, ready to punch myself in the face kind of angry. She couldn't be more adorable than when she bit her lip like that.
“You know, you're a horrible liar,” she told me, trying not to laugh, but it was escaping without her consent.
I looked away from her. “Yeah, well, you're a horrible nurse,” I told her. Not that it was true. It was just the first thing that came to mind.
She shrugged though, which kind of ruined the bite in my remark. “That might be true. Nursing isn't my first love,” she said. I looked at her again, but her body language suggested that the topic was closed, and she was already moving on.
It was the first time I saw some amount of weakness in her.
She pulled my table to me, and opened my backpack. I watched her take out a few of my books, and then chose the Biology book from among them and sat it down on the table.
“Where are you at?” she asked, looking up.
I took the book and flipped it to the Unit Ava had been teaching me from, and then spun it around to Julie again. She looked over it briefly and then nodded.
“I remember all of this. It really is simple, if you're willing to listen,” she replied, holding my eyes with hers.
Something had changed, and I wasn't bold enough to ask what it was. I simply nodded.
♥
It seemed like forever between the time Julie started on Biology and the end when we were in my Trigonometry. If I had hair, it would have been pulled out by now.
However, despite my constant complaining, Julie was a great teacher. Ava was good, but maybe it was because I didn't take her seriously half the time that I never really learned anything.
Julie had put things into terms I could grasp to, things only people our age would really understand. She was slow, and patient, and when I did something right, she would smile.
Her smile held the power to make the lion inside of me cower into the kitten it was.
She placed the books back into the backpack and stood up. “I think your sister will be proud. That's less work she'll have to catch you up on, and you did a really great job,” she replied, turning to smile at me.
I nodded, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, sure. Ava will just be happy that she doesn't have to teach me what all of that meant,” I told her.
Julie laughed slightly, laying the backpack in the chair. “You weren't a bad student,” she told me.
“That's because you were a great teacher,” I replied. It only took me a moment to realize how big of a compliment I had given her. “Ava is too. She's just . . .”
“Your sister,” Julie finished for me. She looked up, smiling. “I couldn't really take in my work when my mom was teaching me, because she was my mom. So, I asked her to switch me to a computer program, and the rest I mostly taught myself.”
