When the doorbell rang at seven o'clock that evening, I was too busy multitasking to answer it. Maddie was sitting at the kitchen table coloring and begging for my attention; I was trying to look at her picture while sweeping up a plate that Clare had shattered while trying to help me unload the dishwasher. The sink was still running from when I'd been cleaning plates, my sisters' toys were spread out all over the floor, and I hadn't even gotten around to the milk Maddie had spilled on the floor when...

Ding dong.

"Darn it," I muttered, propping the broom against the counter and turning off the sink with my elbow. "Stay away from the plate, okay, Clare?" I asked, tucking my hair behind my ear and hurrying to answer the front door.

Cameron was leaning against the porch rail, his hands in his pockets and his black book bag on his back. He smiled at me when I answered, and when I caught my reflection in the glass of the door, I blushed. There were not even words to describe the state of my hair or my rumpled t-shirt.

"You have something on your nose," Cameron said, touching the tip of his nose.

Subconsciously, I reached up and brushed something off my nose which looked suspiciously like spaghetti sauce. "Come on in," I said abruptly, to cover up the awkward moment.

Cameron stepped inside the living room and I shut the door behind him. He only had to walk a few feet before he got a clear view of the kitchen, and his eyes widened slightly at the sight.

"Your parents don't go out of town often, do they?" he asked.

I rubbed my hands on my grey t-shirt and went back to sweeping. "You have no idea."

For a few minutes, Cameron stood in the entry of the kitchen, watching as I swept and then tried to finish the dishes; then he finally entered the kitchen and grabbed some paper towels.

"I figured we'd work on math today," he said as he got down on his knees and began wiping up the spilled milk. "That seems to be your worst grade."

I brushed back my hair out of nervous habit and put a plate in the dishwasher with a little more force than necessary. "An F is an F," I said, "and I have three of them."

"Yes, but I took the libery of talking to your teachers." Cameron tossed the wad of paper towels in the trash can and then came up behind me to toss the shards of plate from the dustpan into the garbage. "They all said you were brilliant, but that your grades were terrible. Why?"

"You're here to tutor me; you're supposed to be the one with the answers."

"Fine," said Cameron, putting back the dustpan. I put in the last plate and shut the dishwasher with my hip as I began picking up some of Maddie's books. "Where are we working? I can go ahead and get set up while you finish."

I was about to tell him that the kitchen table would work fine, but a glance up told me that Maddie had spread her coloring over the entire table--the tip of her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she colored with such concentration that she broke her pink crayon.

"Living room floor okay?" I asked.

Cameron shrugged, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards as he watched Maddie color with utmost concentration, but then he picked up his backpack again and disappeared into the living room.

It was fifteen minutes before I'd finished cleaning the kitchen and settled my sisters down with quiet activities, and then headed inside the living room to conquer the second my first tutoring session. Cameron was sitting on his phone, books, calculators, and papers spread out in front of him, texting.

"Is that your girlfriend?" I asked as I sat down cross-legged beside him. He quickly turned off his phone and tossed it onto the carpet beside him, grinning.

"Of course not," he said. "I don't even have a girlfriend."

I shrugged noncommitally--like I really even kept up with the school gossip. "Are you ready to work a miracle?"

"Sure I am," said Cameron. He sounded as if he worked miracles every day. "You're not stupid, Evelyn. You just need some help."

I rolled my eyes. He had no idea just how much help I needed.

Unzipping his backpack, Cameron pulled out a gigantic pre-calculus textbook and let it drop onto the floor in front of him. "Here's the key to our success," he said, opening it and running his finger down the table of contents. He seemed familiar with books--I wondered if he was a big reader.

"Page 253..." he muttered, flipping the pages in the book until he found the section he was looking for. "Here we go. I got a copy of your class's syllabus from your teacher--you evidently have a test on conic sections tomorrow."

"Fascinating." I, of course, had had no idea about that; I'd lost my copy of the syllabus ages ago and didn't have time to study for a test, anyway. Of course, with Cameron sitting here and looking like an old librarian as he referenced the textbooks, it seemed like I'd have to make time.

Before I had time to bemoan my lack of time, Cameron had pulled out a notebook and pencil and asked, "Do you remember anything about conic sections?"

"No." Why would I have time to learn anything about conic sections?

Cameron exhaled as if he figured this would be harder than he'd thought. "Well, we'll just start at the beginning, then," he said. "You do know that a conic section is formed when you intersect a plane with cones, right?" He was reading aloud from the textbook, his finger following the page as he read. I noticed he had extremely large hands.

"Why are you assuming I know everything?" I asked, frustrated because I didn't know. "I told you I didn't remember anything."

"Fine. Read this, then, while I write out some practice problems for you." He shoved the textbook into my lap and pumped his mechanical pencil so that lead came out.

I wanted desperately to roll my eyes, but I did have to pass eleventh grade, and Cameron was my only hope, so I settled with tucking my hair behind my ear and starting to read.

It was easier than I thought. The material absorbed like a sponge, and by the time I got to the end of the chapter, I was actually enjoying myself. Cameron had written out five problems onto notebook paper by the time I'd finished.

"Want to give these a try?" he asked me, handing me his pencil. It was warm to the touch from where he'd been gripping it.

I rolled the pencil back and forth between my fingers, studying the first problem. Cameron had asked me to graph some type of conic section which, after referring to my reading, I discovered was an ellipse. Like I had any idea how to do that.

Just to look like I was being productive, I drew out my coordinate system on the graph paper--then just stared. "Help," I muttered.

Cameron glanced over from where he had been scanning the textbook with fascination. "You know the center's at (8, -1)," he said, taking out another pencil and drawing a dot on the coordinate system where it belonged, "Since this part here"--he pointed to a spot on the equation--"says just that."

"I'll take your word for it," I said.

But Cameron wasn't listening--he was continuing to show me how to work the problem, talking faster as he apparantly grew more excited (how could anyone get excited over a boring little equation?) "A 16 and a 25 are the demoninators of the fractions, but you need to find the square root of those numers to figure out the two radii of your ellipse."

I tucked my hair behind my ear again and did a quick calculation. "So four and five?"

"Right. So count out four in the x-direction from your center and five from your y-direction..."

"And then draw the ellipse!"

Cameron broke out into a grin as I sketched the final graph and then held it out in front of me to stare at it. I didn't think I'd ever been more proud of a homework problem in my life--probably because this was the first one I'd actually done in years.

"Now try problem number two." Cameron tapped the paper with the tip of his pencil and I started in on it, reading it carefully so that I could answer it without his help this time.

He stayed for over an hour before it was getting late and Clare and Maddie were starting to get tired. I knew I'd have to give them baths and put them to bed at a decent hour before going to bed myself.

We packed up in silence, Cameron putting his books and papers back in his bookbag and me straightening the papers he'd given me to keep--the ones with the practice problems on him and the helpful sheets where he'd outlined all the steps to solving and graphing different types of conic section equations. When we walked to the door and I opened it to let me out, he turned around and said, "Try and get your homework done tonight, okay?"

I smiled a little. "Maybe I will."

He raised his eyebrows at me and I shut the door behind him, watching out the window as he hopped down the porch steps and out to his car.

~*~*~

After I put Maddie and Clare to bed, I lugged my backpack upstairs to my bedroom and began to unpack it, setting out my books and assignments onto my desk. It would be a wonder if I'd even be able to complete my homework, after not even knowing what was going on in my classes, but at least I could give math a try.

I found the math problems relatively easy after Cameron's tutoring session, and after I finished the set of twenty questions I studied for the test before pulling out my English. I had a lot of catching up to do--we were supposed to have read The Great Gatsby already, but I hadn't even started. I opened up my copy and yawned as I turned to the first page, wondering how much I could get through before I fell asleep.

I'd only made it through two chapters before my eyes started to droop and I drifted off...

Tires screeching. Screaming and the sound of slamming breaks. My body jolted; the airbag caught me and knocked the wind out of me. Glass breaking, the car spinning out of control. The ceiling of the car caved in and I screamed again. Suddenly, everything was quiet. The only thing I was aware of was that my head was throbbing and blood was trickling down my forehead. My leg felt broken. In the distance, I could hear sirens, but before I had any time to react, blackness overcame me.

When I woke up, tears had wet my copy of The Great Gatsby and my heart was pounding. I checked my digital clock and saw that it was only one-thirty in the morning, but there was no way I could go back to sleep. I couldn't just tell myself it had been a dream, because it hadn't been.

It had all been real.

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