butterflies ⋮ sam evans

3 | "grilled cheesus"

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In the mind of Finn Hudson, Jesus had presented himself in the form of a grilled cheese sandwich and he had since been praying to it as if it were a genie that would grant his every wish. But he had yet to express these feelings to anyone, and was currently debating on whether telling the Glee club about his experience.

At the same time, Keilani was trying to focus in history class on the worksheet in front of her. Mrs. Hannikin had gone on another bender the night before, and so had handed the students an assignment at the beginning of the period to do with the textbook and then promptly fell asleep at her desk. In a way, Keilani was a little bit happy about that. She liked having the quiet time to focus on her work, and since she usually finished with a little bit of time to spare, she liked to use to write.

Sam, on the other hand, was not having a lot of fun with this. And Keilani could tell, even if she didn't know exactly why. Over the past few weeks of sitting together, she had slowly gotten more comfortable with actually talking to him and vice versa. It didn't help that since they were in US History, he would bust out into a George W. Bush impersonation every five minutes that would make her laugh to no end. Sam liked to probe her for more weird facts like the one she had told him on the first day that together, which Keilani honestly had an endless supply of.

So, when Keilani had finished the worksheet with a lot of time to spare and she saw that he had barely completed half a page without having written something down for at least five minutes, she figured she'd hold off on writing for a little bit. "Hey, do you need some help?"

He seemed to snap out of this trance and realize how long he had been sitting there like that. "If I'm being honest, yes." Sam sighed, choosing to look at the poster behind Keilani's head rather than face her directly. "These type of reading assignments are always really hard for me because of my dyslexia, and I need to keep my grades up if I want to keep playing football."

"Well," Keilani began softly, focusing her gaze up at a nervous Sam. "You're kind of lucky because you're in good company. I have dyslexia too, and fun fact so did Albert Einstein."

Sam felt himself breathing a sigh of relief, because here was this crazy smart girl sitting beside him who didn't judge him for his dyslexia and even had it herself. But then a question came to his mind. "But you like to read. And write. How does that work out?"

"Well for one thing, music and piano has always really helped me." When Sam raised an eyebrow, Keilani realized what she had implied and quickly back-tracked. "This isn't a pitch for Glee Club, I swear. Music has just been shown in different studies to help a lot with dyslexia. Learning choreography for Glee also really helped me because it helps with memorization and recollection, even though I'm still kind of a shitty dancer. But I spent a lot of time trying to learn different techniques that made it easier for me to read and write, and I've figured out what works for me and I stick with it."