Fell On Black Days (A School for Good and Evil Fanfic)

The Student

Hester spent a considerable amount of time debating whether to go to her ridiculous tutoring session, that is, all of English, Spanish, and some random art class she wasn't even sure how she'd been signed up for. She avoided the tutor's eyes when she reached the Calculus classroom, still thinking. On one hand, she didn't need tutoring, and her time might be much better spent elsewhere rather than in the library studying, but on the other, if she didn't go, Lisa would pester her even more than she usually did. So between being stuck with an exasperated stranger for an hour and going home to be pestered by Lisa until she had to go to work, she naturally chose the stranger.

She was already in the library when Hester entered, fixing her with a red eyed stare over a pile of textbooks. She looked like the kind of person others underestimate, the kind that could beat you up without a second glance and laugh. Her muscles were tense, and her rigid posture made her look ready to pounce. A bit uneasy, Hester sat, keeping an eye on her hands, which were eerily still on the table.

"Call me Anadil," the tutor said, not taking her icy stare off of Hester. Hester held out a hand for her to shake, but she ignored it, opening up the largest textbook Hester had ever seen. Hester couldn't help but groan, and Anadil's judgemental glare was almost worse than if she had commented on Hester's reaction to studying. She pulled several photocopied worksheets out of a binder and handed them to Hester. "Let's see what you know," she said, sitting back, and the way she said it was almost like a challenge.

"You will see," Hester shot back, putting her pencil to paper. Surprisingly enough, the first two worksheets were things she had already learned. It was almost offensive that Anadil thought she wouldn't remember how to calculate area, which she learned back in third grade. As she went on, the problems grew more complex, from algebra to calculus and geometry to trigonometry, but each time she was able to reason out the answer, a few times stopping to think through it. When she'd finished, she handed the papers back to Anadil, who flipped to the answer key and started to grade. When she finished, she looked up at Hester.

"Perfect score," she said, her voice bewildered.
Hester grinned. "See, I don't need tutoring. Can I leave now?"

"Not yet. It's only been twenty minutes and we've got an hour." She narrowed her eyes ominously. "Some of those problems I just assigned to you were problems we haven't even learned in class yet. You're clearly very intelligent. You could pass AP Calculus without my help. Why don't your grades reflect that?"

Hester grimaced. Now this was one thing she had not thought through.

"A bit of a personal question, don't you think?" she said quietly. But Anadil was not the kind of person to give up easily. Honestly, Hester thought as she endured Anadil's icy glare once again, she could make a killing on one of those detective shows. She thought for a moment and then added; literally.

Eventually she looked back up, nearly collapsing under her tutor's scrutiny. "Listen," she began. "Maybe it's not that I don't have the capacity to do well in school. My step-mother..." she trailed off, backing toward the door. "She...thinks I should be perfect. God, why am I telling you this?" Just a few more steps until she reached the door. "It's not that I can't pass AP Calculus, or any of these pointless classes." She met Anadil's burning red eyes. "It's just that I don't care." She broke eye contact as quickly as she had initiated it, turning on her heel and running away.

Author's Note: I am so sorry I haven't updated this story in forever 😭 I finished it ages ago, I'm all honesty I just totally forgot I had posted it on Wattpad. If you want to read the full story right now it's on my Quotev and Ao3, but otherwise I'll try to get the rest of the chapters up within the next few days. Anyways, currently working on editing a big Hestadil fic so stay tuned for more SGE content! (And I promise I won't forget abt Wattpad this time)