The Good And The Bad

+|Two|-

+|Joey|-

I breathed a sigh out of my system before searching the library for Ryder. I couldn't match a name with a face all by myself. Hundreds of kids went to this school, how was I supposed to know which one Ryder was? I decided to ask the librarian if she knew where Ryder was and which one he was. She was one of the three librarians, I found her a little bit nicer and easier to talk with than the other two.

"Hi Ms. Leebose, do you know if Ryder Blakeman is here? I'm supposed to be tutoring him here after school now,"

"Yes, Mrs. Berkley told me all about it," She smiled, "He's sitting over at that table there."

I glanced over to where she was pointing. Yeah, I'd definitely seen him around before. I remember seeing him for the first time in one of the second floor hallways in school. His brown almost black hair covered his head while his light gray-blue eyes stood out more than someone would think. His usual colors of clothing were black, dark gray, light gray, dark blue and green, and a little bit of white here and there. Whenever I'd see him, he'd have earbuds stuck in his ears with his eyes forward looking ahead at where he was going. I thanked Ms. Leebose and began heading over to the table Ryder was seated at. I was somewhat nervous, he wasn't exactly nice all the time. My eyes witnessed his words and actions towards teachers and other students sometimes.

I stopped at an edge of the table, "You're Ryder, right?"

"Yeah, you Joey?" He didn't hesitate to look up from his phone screen.

I nod my head, "Yeah."

I sat down across from him, setting my backpack in the chair next to me on my right. Ryder quickly tapped out a text message to someone and then took out what I guessed was his math folder.

"This shit's lame," He slapped the folder down in the middle of us.

"Okay, so what's the most recent thing you're learning in class with Mrs. Berkley?"

"How the fuck should I know?" He leaned back in the chair he was in.

"Do you have any of the recent assignments?" I asked, fishing out one of my mechanical pencils from the front pocket of my backpack.

"Threw 'em out, it's all pointless," Ryder crossed his arms and shrugged.

From my perspective, I did agree with him on most math being completely pointless. I didn't have a career planted inside my brain that required any math I had learned in the many years after my days in elementary school. Teachers have got to be out of their mind sometimes, I swear. They really think we're going to understand some of the algorithms and topics? It sometimes feels like I'm doing homework given by a college professor.

"Look, I know this isn't fun for you, but I know you'll want to have a good life after high school, so can you work with me here? Help yourself out?" The look on Ryder's face seemed like I could have a small bit of hope for a somewhat positive turnout with him. He opened up the slightly torn folder and took out a packet.

"I think we're doing something in this packet right now, I threw everything else out," Ryder explained to me.

I took the packet out of the folder and used a minute to flip through it, "Okay."

I scanned through the math packet, searching for anything easy to start with as a little icebreaker. Maybe the material just didn't come natural to him. I didn't know that at the time, it didn't come natural to him at all. Right after I flipped through the packet, I questioned him about his history with math. He explained to me that he always struggled with it and never was that math genius the students and teacher looked up to. Ryder told me he was usually the worst kid in the class of several. He'd be asked to go up to the board every now and then, and fail at solving the problem. His tone of voice described to me how he struggled and how tough it was. I knew where he was coming from. I too had my struggles with math at a young age. I got better as the years went on, only because my father insisted I be tutored every other day after school. It was agony for the longest time, but this one day, it started becoming easier, like a one-hundred pound brick was lifted off of my shoulders. My tutor, Abby, showed me shortcuts to the answers and methods to use so things wouldn't feel so complicated and stressful. So with what I learned from her, I used it to help Ryder. We started out with a few basic problems from the packet. It was difficult to put the packet in front of him and point to things while it was upside down in my own vision, so I went and sat in the chair next to him so it'd be less difficult on my eyes and brain.