Learning Curve

Scottie

Finn’s skin is an ashen pallor the likes of which I’ve never seen before. He looks sick and distraught and like every bone in his body is being broken, one by one. Ten times worse than he did fighting an ex-UFC fighter in a dark, dingy basement.

He stares intently at Professor Winslow and his brothers, his jaw grinding with every word they speak at the end of class. He squeezed my hand so hard I had to hold my breath as they explained the trust assignment—meant to be the antithesis of King Leontes’s treatment of his wife Hermione in The Winter’s Tale—and never stopped glaring through the entirety of their trust falls. When we finally got up to do our own with Nadine, she said she could only be the one falling, not catching, because of her bum arm.

Finn finally broke character when I nudged him and laughed, but now, he’s back to mean mugging.

“All right, guys. I’ll see you Thursday. Don’t forget to focus on the theme of trust in relationships as you’re working on The Winter’s Tale project for the next couple of days. We’ll be moving on to something else when we come back.”

“We won’t be here,” Remington, Professor Winslow’s older, incredibly handsome brother, says, making Ty and Flynn laugh.

“Class dismissed!”

Nadine jumps up from her seat and takes off like her ass is on fire, but Finn sits there staring while everyone else is packing up.

“Hey,” I finally whisper, now that we’re without an annoyingly eavesdropping cheerleader audience. “Are you okay?”

Finn’s gaze jerks away from the brother trio at the sound of my voice, and it takes a couple of seconds for his eyes to actually focus on me. “What? Oh. Yeah. I’m good.”

I nod but slow my own backpack packing to wait for him. I might be late for communications since it’s a haul to Hawkley, but that class is basically a joke anyway. I have a perfect grade in there from the one assignment we’ve done so far.

The room is pretty much empty by the time he gets his things together, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to leave to finish entirely.

Something doesn’t feel right, but without an actual reason, I can’t insert myself any more than I already have. We’re the opposite of friends with benefits. We’re friends with intense privacy issues.

I zip up my backpack pocket and sling it over my shoulder, saying a firm goodbye in the hopes that it’ll knock whatever this is out of him. “I better go because I have another class, Finn. I’ll see you later?”

He nods, staring at the large desk at the front of the room, so with a sigh, I finally turn and leave. I get out the door and ten feet down the hall before the singing adrenaline in my veins pulls me up short, and I dive into a side hall to wait yet again. It’s almost a full minute, but when he comes out of the classroom finally, his head is down and his steps are quick. He doesn’t notice me.

I glance both ways after he goes out the door into the courtyard, and driven by insanity perhaps, I head back to the classroom to see if I can find anything.

No one is there, so I run inside and look around like I’m going to find something as obvious as a ticking bomb. My frown grows as nothing remotely resembling a red or blue wire stands out. Maybe I’m making all this up in my head. Maybe he’s just mad that he’s partnered with me. Maybe, I don’t know, he thinks—

All of my thoughts pause as I spin around to the professor’s desk in the front and see a piece of paper, torn, weathered, and folded on the edge of the desk. I check my surroundings again and then jog over to it and pick it up. When I unfold it, it takes me almost no time at all to see that it’s a journal entry, but the writing is chicken scratch that’ll take some decoding.

“Scottie?” Professor Winslow’s voice asks, making me practically do a freaking herkie right there. “You need something?”

“Me? Oh. No. I just…forgot…something. So, I came back to get it,” I scramble to answer. Of course, with the paper in my hand now, I can’t leave it back on the desk like Finn obviously intended, or Professor Winslow will think I’m the one who left it there.

Shit.

This is not good. Definitely not trustworthy group partner behavior.

With no other viable options, I tuck the paper in my sweater pocket and smile, jogging out of the room without another word to the professor. I’m sure the exchange was weird on his end, but hopefully he’ll chalk it up to something stereotypical like hormones.

Every fiber of me vibrates with anxiety and curiosity as I book it straight for my dorm room. Communications class is forgotten along with everyone else as I charge toward the privacy needed to do the unthinkable and snoop on this very private piece of paper.

Carrie looks like she might want to say hello when I pass her in our hall, but I smile and jerk my chin like a total dude and power forward, refusing to be stopped.

My breathing is ragged and my chest heaves as I unlock my door, shove through it, and slam it behind me. My full-length mirror on the wall directly across from it shows a haggard, flushed version of myself with unbelievably wild eyes.

I pull off my backpack and let it fall to the floor beside my desk and then take three deep breaths as I pull the paper out of my pocket. It’s dampened with a thin layer of my sweat at this point, but no less readable, thankfully.

My hands shake as I hold it up and study the words. The first thing I notice is that it’s dated well over forty years ago.

A week ago, I left my family behind. Wendy’s snobby ass thinks I’m a deadbeat when I’m there, so I’m going to show her what a fucking deadbeat is. Pretentious bitch. Thinks she’s better than me. I doubt she’ll feel that way with five little fuckers on her own.

Remington looked like he knew I wouldn’t be back when I left, but the others are too little to realize anyway.

I have a show in Reno tonight that should set me up to head to Vegas for a while, and when I win big there, I’ll figure out my next move. I haven’t been focusing enough on my music lately, so now’s the time.

The first thing that stands out to me is that whoever wrote this is an unmistakable narcissist. The second is the name Remington. It’s not that common, and I have a bad feeling it’s not just a funny coincidence with the one we met today.

I skim through the rest and down to the bottom, where there are, at best guess, some shitty song lyrics.

Hard decisions, big priorities, save me from this drudgery

On my time, on my own, back to life I’ll be

Whiskey neat and a Coke black, I’m on my own and I won’t go back

What is Finn doing with this thing? And if the Remington from today is the Remington in the writing, how in the hell did he get it?