Four Of A Kind

Chapter 130: [3.32] Relative to Me

Wednesday arrived with the same inevitability as death, taxes, and Felix wanting my notes. I hadn’t slept much the night before—a combination of worrying about Iris, the mysterious photographer at the bubble tea shop, and Cassidy’s quiz.

Mostly the quiz.

I arrived at the Valentine estate at exactly 3:15, having skipped Felix’s invitation to join him for ramen. The security guard waved me through with almost no hesitation now, which either meant I was gaining their trust or they’d grown tired of checking my ID every single day.

Mrs. Tanaka opened the door before I reached it, nodding once in her usual silent acknowledgment of my existence.

“Library?” I asked.

“Miss Cassidy arrived ten minutes ago.”

That was… unexpected.

I made my way through the manor’s labyrinthine hallways, past the usual gallery of judgmental ancestor portraits, and pushed open the library door to find Cassidy seated at our usual table with what appeared to be the contents of an entire Office Depot spread across the surface.

She wore her glasses again today—thin black frames that made her purple eyes look larger and somehow more intense. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, the black streaks visible among the wine-red strands. She had three different textbooks open, a stack of graph paper (the exact type I’d given her), and a row of colored pens arranged by the rainbow.

“You’re late,” she said without looking up.

I checked my watch. “I’m two minutes early.”

“I’ve been here for twelve minutes, which makes you fourteen minutes late relative to me.”

I set my bag down and pulled out the practice quiz I’d prepared. “That’s some fascinating math.”

“I’m improving.”

She wasn’t wrong. When she finally looked up at me, I noticed a feverish quality to her expression that reminded me of Iris when she discovered a new anime and binged fourteen episodes in one night. Cassidy’s eyes had the same over-bright focus, the specific intensity of someone who has decided that sleep is for the weak.

“Did you… study over the weekend?” I asked carefully.

“No. I went skydiving and then competed in an underground fight club.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I studied. I did the problems from last week again, plus the ones from your website.”

That caught me off guard. “My what now?”

“Your website.” She pulled out her phone and showed me a PDF with practice problems that I’d created for Iris last year and uploaded to a free homework help site. “Someone in the comments said you explained the quadratic formula better than their teacher, so I did all of those too.”

I stared at her, momentarily speechless. “How did you find this?”

“I Googled ’quadratic formula explained for idiots’ and it was the third link.” She shrugged like this was the most normal thing in the world. “Your username is ’ScholarshipSurvival,’ which wasn’t exactly subtle.”

I sat down slowly, processing this. “You studied on your own. Without me asking you to.”

“Don’t make it weird.” She pushed her glasses up her nose with one finger. “I told you I want a 90 on the practice quiz, and I meant it.”

The determination in her voice was new. Not the angry, defensive determination I’d seen when we first started—the kind that came from fear and was directed outward like a weapon. This was something steadier, more focused inward. She wanted to prove something to herself, not just to me.

I wasn’t going to mess with that momentum.

“Alright then,” I said, placing the quiz face-down on the table between us. “Ten problems. You need nine right for that 90. You have forty-five minutes.”

She took a deep breath, picked up her pencil, and flipped over the paper.

I’d expected her to dive right in, but instead she scanned the entire quiz first, her eyes moving methodically from problem to problem. Then she set the paper aside, tore a sheet of graph paper from her pad, and began drawing grid lines with a ruler.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Setting up my workspace before I start. You said organization helps me avoid losing track of steps.” She didn’t look up as she continued ruling perfect lines. “So I’m organizing.”

I leaned back in my chair and watched her prep for the next three minutes, fascinated by the care she took. This was the same girl who, a month ago, had thrown a book across the room because the numbers “looked at her funny.” Now she was color-coding her scratch paper.

When she finally started the first problem, I pulled out my copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and began reading, giving her space to work without me hovering.

Thirty-seven minutes later, Cassidy set down her pencil with a sharp click against the wooden table.

“Done,” she announced.

I looked up from my book. “You have eight minutes left.”

“I don’t need them.” She pushed the quiz toward me. “Grade it.”

The confidence in her voice gave me pause. I took the paper and began checking her work, keeping my expression neutral even as I saw the first problem was correct. And the second. And the third.

Cassidy watched me like a hawk, her fingers drumming a nervous pattern on the table. By the time I reached the last problem, her entire body had gone still, the only movement the slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

I circled her final answer, wrote a number at the top of the page, and turned the quiz to face her.

“Ninety,” I said.

She stared at the paper for a long moment, her expression frozen. Then her eyes widened and she made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “I actually did it.”

“You did it,” I agreed.

Cassidy Valentine, the girl who had been labeled a lost cause by seven tutors before me, had just scored a 90 percent on a practice quiz that would have been a solid C- level test in any high school in America. The realization seemed to hit her all at once, and she covered her mouth with both hands, eyes huge behind her glasses.

“I did it,” she repeated, sounding dazed.

And then she did something I was completely unprepared for: she launched herself across the table and hugged me.

It happened so fast I didn’t have time to react. One second she was sitting across from me, and the next she had her arms around my neck, her face buried against my shoulder. The momentum nearly knocked us both over, and I had to grab the back of my chair to keep us from toppling.

“Thank you thank you thank you,” she said, her voice muffled against my shirt.