“Until they started using random squiggles in math, yeah,” said Ryan. “It made me more confident that I wanted to teach. I’m hoping I’ll be able to up until the fifth-or-sixth-grade level. Anything beyond that, and I’m pretty sure I would fail out right along with whoever I was teaching.”
“Good call then.”
“I wouldn’t want to teach in middle school anyway.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why not?”
“Middle school is terrifying.” He scrunched his nose. “Did anyone really have a good time in middle school? I don’t want to have any part in that sort of future trauma.”
Good point.
Glancing down at my own things still laid out on the table, I reached, setting my laptop’s screen alive with light once more. At some point, it had fallen asleep during Ryan’s conversation. “If you are going to sit here, you should at least try to work.”
“So, you’re going to help me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Not yet. “Just …”
I gestured toward his things. He at least had to give me some sort of hope that this wasn’t a ploy to get me to do all the work for him.IfI was going to help.
Clicking his pen, he grinned as he checked something off the top of his notebook.
It’d better not have been a task about me.
I rolled my eyes and checked my email first and foremost. I double-checked my own due dates and other reminders that I had until the end of this semester, constantly reminding me of how I needed to declare a major. If, of course, I did plan on graduating.
Quickly clicking out, I moved on to my next pressing assignment I had started the night before during my last solo library session. Vadika’s busy schedule to start the year was keeping even me busy and ahead of deadlines.
A blessing and a curse now that I had nearly nothing else to do.
I glanced over the edge of my screen back at Ryan.
He lifted his eyes up to meet mine from where he had been glowering down at a set of very messy notes in an equally messy composition book.
“Tell me about this thing of yours you had to go to the dean’s office for,” Ryan said.
I turned my attention back to my work, typing the first sentence of my conclusion paragraph. “That sounds like I did something wrong.”
He only shrugged, as if to ask,Did you?
“No,” I said seriously. “It’s honestly kind of stupid, the more I think about it.”
“I doubt it’s stupid.”
At least, that was one person. Vadika had basically said it was a waste of energy to begin with.
“I had an idea when I started the year that needed approval from the school. Really, I started the whole thing to keep myself busy.” To keep my entire mind busy and everyone thinking I was busy with it. I wasn’t proud enough not to admit it or turn anyone away who wanted to figure out my mishmash of a life for me. “I wanted to have a big campus party of sorts. A Samhain celebration.”
“Sow-een?” Ryan tried to repeat.
“Samhain. It’s Halloween.” I shook my head at his rough pronunciation, giving the more known title for October 31. “I made all the plans and had everything ready, but it looks like it’s a no-go.”
“Why do you say that?”
I shrugged.
“Did the dean tell you no?”
“He told me I needed to get it approved by the student council,” I explained.
