Girl in the Hardware Store

Thirteen

To her surprise, when Tweak bounces into her best friend's room, as usual needing no excuse to enter the house she has known all her life and then some, he doesn't greet her with his usual cheeky half-smile. In fact, she nearly crashes into him, sitting on the fluffy orange rug just centimetres from where she throws open his bedroom door. "Kwazii?"

The boy looks disheveled, more so than his usual messy style. He also appears to still be in his pyjamas, decorated with palm trees and beaches, and he barely looks up to acknowledge her presence. Very not Kwazii. "Hey, Tweak," he says quietly.

Tweak's eyes narrow in concern. "What's up, Kwaz? Are ya ill?"

Kwazii looks up at her miserably, meets her eyes with his own previously downcast ones, then gestures to the pile of discarded textbooks around him, which she hadn't noticed before. "What do you think?"

Reading upside down, she takes in the titles of the books, spines bent almost to destruction. Biology textbooks. She remembered now that he had told their friendship group about an impromptu start-of-term biology exam. And it wasn't difficult to figure out what the outcome of that had been.

 Tweak sits herself down by her friend. "What happened, Kwaz?" she asks quietly, nudging comfortably into his shoulder.

"Me and tests," concludes Kwazii.

"But you revised for this one."

He laughs flatly. "You saw me staring at the pages of a textbook. That's not quite the same thing as actually getting knowledge into your brain. Not enough to pass a test, anyway."

Avoiding her best friend's sad eyes, Tweak looks around the familiar sight of Kwazii's room. Organised chaos, just the way he likes it. Sometimes it's a heap of muddled clothes, if he has some kind of event or date to dress up for - "I dress down, Tweakster. Not up!" - or mounds upon mounds of pirate figurines, following whatever theme he's got himself obsessed with this time around. Now it's just the same, but the topmost layer of the mess is comprised of textbooks and post-its. Sometimes you can't even see the dark mud-green of the carpet, and in her teens Tweak has often sighed exasperatedly and helped him clear a space for them to sit in. Some things never change.

"Was the professor annoyed?"

"Prof Inkling's really nice - and a really good Biology teacher. He didn't look cross, just - disappointed," Kwazii says mechanically. "He said that he knew I worked hard, it just needed to start reflecting in my exam results. He knew I knew the content, just the statistics don't show that. Or something."

"Exams aren't everything."

"But they're a pretty big deal - or they will be when finals week rolls around." Kwazii drops his head backwards onto his bed, winces as it lands on a toy car instead.

"I thought you had asked Shel to help you revise?" Tweak wonders aloud as she picks up a random rock from where it had rolled under the bed that she leans on, remembering their lunchtime session a couple of days back.

"He offered. It's just - he had the test too, and I didn't want to intrude on him and Dashi, and -"

Tweak rolls her eyes, able to read his guilty expression far too well. "Kwazii. Did you ask Shel to help you revise? 'Cause he would help, you know that."

He looks sheepish, a few strands of curly hair dropping across his face. "Maybe not in those exact words..."

"Why didn't you ask me?" was her next exasperated question. It was true, they had known each other since they were very young, and all the way through high school they had practically lived at each others houses most of the week, revising for tests and cramming nights before. Tweak didn't see why that should change. Nothing else had.

"I did call at yours," Kwazii told her frankly. "But you were out. Engineering project, I guessed?"

"Oh." Tweak felt slightly guilty. She had spent nearly the entire afternoon and evening around at Barnacles' house, working together on their design. She had also forgotten that Kwazii had next to no self-motivation to study alone, and would procrastinate weeks away if you let him. "Sorry."

He shrugs. "Not your fault. I kinda forgot as well, if I'm honest. And really I should have been going over first-year biology stuff over summer."

"At least this one doesn't count." And at least it wasn't an English resit - yet.

"True." Kwazii seems to brighten up a little at her assurances, and even gives her a tiny grin. "Thanks, Tweak. It's just not the best start to the year, if you see what I mean."

She joins him in his infectious grin, trying to cheer him up. "Oh, don't worry about that, believe me. I went to my first French class and panicked when the lecturer picked on me to showcase what little of the language I could remember from the last lecture before the summer. I started talking about my cat. For three whole minutes. And I don't even have a cat. And - the lecture had been on French History."

Kwazii laughs out loud, a proper one this time around. "Only you, Tweaky."

"And you're gonna ace the next test, I'm sure of it," Tweak continues, really getting into this motivation thing now. "I'll ask Shel to invite you to the next Bio study group, if you want."

He considers it. "Sure. That would be useful, yeah. Bio's the one I find hardest, really."

Tweak helps him pick up the textbooks scattered across the floor, adds her load to a neat pile on the desk, before starting on the pencils that she's fairly sure will impale her foot at some point if she's not careful. "Now what do you want to study first?"

He groans impishly, the sound cutting off as Tweak gives him a stern look. "What - now? But it's like 1pm on a Saturday afternoon!"

"And an ideal time for a study session!" the girl reprimands. "I'll read you this week's English text, if you want. Take notes."

Kwazii settles back down grumpily into the cave he's made to sit in amongst the assorted clothes and toys, though takes a notebook obediently. "Yes, Tweak. Whatever you say."

"Yes, whatever I say," agrees Tweak with a grin, scanning the paper he passes her from a folder marked 'Dyslexia Help' before beginning to read. "Tom felt it was an ordinary day..."