“Then why do your notes look like you sent a three year old to your class?” I admonish, motioning toward the page in front of me. “Or better yet, why are you not just taking notes on the computer if your penmanship is this terrible?”
Even as the words leave my mouth, I’m aware I might be coming across a little too harshly. But, I mean,come on.When I agreed to this asinine idea of tutoring him, I wasn’t expecting things to be this bad.
I wait for some smart-ass—or dumb-ass—comment to come whirling back at me, but that’s not what happens. Instead, I watch as Camden’s jaw pulses, his gaze staring daggers at the open page in front of me.
“No. I’m, uh…” He trails off and glances toward the door before he mutters, “I’m dyslexic, actually.”
Guilt instantly slams into me like a stack of bricks, tightening my stomach into knots as my gaze falls back to the page in front of me. When I first looked, it appeared as some half-English, half-gibberish words because of his spelling. Yet now as I drag my gaze over the page, even my untrained eye can spot the signs of dyslexia I’d missed in my haze of irritation.
Letters out of place or flipped within their respective words. Spacing issues. Misspellings that, with a closer look, appear to be phonetically sounded out.
Unfinished sentences, like he was having trouble keeping up with the instructor.
Ah, fuck.
My teeth sink into my lower lip as I lift my attention back to him, only to find the frustration has left his body. Instead, he’s slumped back in the chair across from me, staring at his hands resting in his lap. The picture of defeat.
And I feel terrible.
Wetting my lips, I whisper, “Why do I get the feeling you’venever told anyone this?”
He shrugs, eyes still cast down. “Because I haven’t. I mean, my parents obviously know, and my teachers in high school did too. But no one here does.”
“Why?” I ask, unable to keep the incredulity from the single word. It’s enough to have his gaze slowly lifting to meet mine, and once again, the embarrassment I see there is gutting.
Especially when the only thing he does is shrug again in response. Like he’s accepted this is how it has to be, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Camden, you realize you can get extra testing time to account for your dyslexia, especially in classes where there is a lot of reading and writing,” I explain, being sure to keep my tone as far away from accusatory as possible. “And you can record all your lectures instead of having to take notes—you just have to register with the disability office. There are programs with specialized tutors through Leighton to help, or I’m sure the team could get you someone who has office hours that better fit into your schedule.”
“You don’t think I know all this?” he scoffs, shaking his head. “But all it’ll accomplish is showing everyone I’m even more stupid than they’ve already decided I am.”
The statement comes out with a bite of bitterness and, if I’m not mistaken, some resentment too. Then again, he’s telling this secret he’s kept for three years to someone who is guilty of treating him the exact same way.
Fuck, just this week, I called him a brainless Neanderthal to his face. And while I felt awful about it at the moment, it pales in comparison to how I feel right now.
Words can’t even begin to describe how much of an asshole I am.
“You’re not stupid. You have a learning disability.”
“I’m not sure anyone really gives a shit about thatdistinction,” he mutters, though it seems to be more to himself than to me.
But still, I hear it. And more than anything, it confuses me.
From everything I know about Camden—all that I’ve noticed during the past year or so of living with him—it’s that he’s the most carefree, easy-breezy person around. I’ve never met someone who couldn’t give less of a shit about other people’s opinions of him.
Which begs the question…
“Why does it matter what anyone else thinks about it?”
“It doesn’t,” is his instant reply. Or moreso, his instinctuallie.
Which is why I cock my head and ask, “Then why are you letting it stop you?”
His attention slices to me, a deafening silence filling the small study room we occupy. At first, I don’t think he’s going to answer. In fact, I’m waiting for him to play it off and fall right back into his blasé ways.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he takes the knife currently lodged in my stomach and twists it further.
