Page 65 of Power Play

“I know.”

“The mythology reference.”

“I don’t need mythology.”

“You’ll like it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You’re becoming unbearable.”

“You keep coming back.”

I looked at him.

The smile left his face slowly.

Neither of us laughed this time.

“I do,” I said.

Ryan held my gaze for another second before handing me the stack.

“Good.”

The word followed me all the way to the door.

4

Charm

By the time August settled over Kimball Falls hard enough to make the sidewalks shimmer by noon, Ryan and I had somehow built a routine neither of us had been brave enough to name.

We still called what we were doing tutoring, which had become increasingly ridiculous considering most sessions started with literature and ended with me tucked against his side somewhere, his hand resting over my knee while one of us pretended to keep reading. Professor Brown’s summer course had stopped feeling like an academic punishment somewhere around the second week, mostly because Ryan had spent enough hours dismantling my obsession with finding the correct answer that I had finally started realizing interpretation wasn’t about guessing what someone smarter wanted me to say.

He made me defend everything. If I offered an opinion too carefully, he challenged it. If I changed my argument because he disagreed, he got annoyed and made me go back to the first version. The first time I told him I thought one of his interpretations was bullshit and refused to back down, he looked so pleased I almost forgot we were arguing.

Professor Brown had handed back my last paper with an A and a note written beneath the final paragraph that read, Strong original analysis. Trust your argument sooner.

I stared at the comment long enough that the girl beside me asked whether something was wrong before I remembered I was sitting in a classroom full of people. Three weeks earlier, an A would have mattered because it was an A. That morning, the comment beneath it felt more important.

I took a picture before leaving my seat and sent it to Ryan.

Charm: Brown says I need to trust my argument sooner.

His response came before I reached the hallway.

Ryan: Sounds familiar.

Charm: You don’t get credit for this.

Ryan: I want royalties.

Charm: For what?

Ryan: Intellectual rehabilitation.