His aunt looked at me and smiled. “Nice to see you again. It’s Maisie, isn’t it?”

I nodded, smiling politely. “It’s nice to see you again too, Mrs Kingston.”

She waved her hand dismissively, making a scoffing sound. “Don’t call me that, it makes me feel old. Olivia is fine.” Zach pulled open the fridge; grabbing the orange juice and chugging it straight from the carton which made his aunt gasp and throw her pen at him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to drink from the carton?” she cried.

He shrugged, swallowing and putting the juice back in the fridge. “At least a couple more times,” he replied casually as he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. I made a mental note never to drink juice in his house. He turned to me and smiled. “Want a soda or something?” he asked, pulling a can of Pepsi from the fridge and passing it to me without waiting for me to answer.

“You’re a pig,” I scolded, shaking my head at him. He was so much like Alex that it was unreal; maybe it was a teenage boy thing, though Zach was nineteen so he wouldn’t even be a teenager for much longer.

He just grinned in response.

“Zach, I bought chicken but they didn’t have br**sts like you wanted, so I had to get strips, that okay?” Olivia asked, looking at him hopefully.

He shrugged. “Sure, that’ll work,” he answered. He nodded back to the door we came in through. “Let’s go study then before your colour coded tutoring schedule becomes irrelevant. We don’t want to run out of time and have to skip the red section, do we?” he teased, looking at me with mock horror. He grabbed a pack of cookies and two apples, then ushered me out of the kitchen.

“What do you want chicken for?” I asked curiously, following him up the stairs.

“Dinner. Olivia can’t cook, and if she ever does cook, eat it at your own risk because that crud is toxic,” he replied, shuddering.

I laughed and looked at him to see if he was joking. “You cook?” That had to be a joke; he couldn’t really cook, surely.

“Yep, pretty freaking awesomely actually,” he boasted. He shoved open a door at the end of the corridor, exposing the messiest bedroom I’d ever seen in my life. I stopped, looking at the clothes all over the floor, the unmade bed, the empty packets and soda cans, the screwed up paper scattered everywhere. The place was disgusting, and I couldn’t even identify the colour of his carpet because it was barely visible.

“Seriously? You expect me to tutor you,” I motioned around the room in disgust, “in here?”

He grinned. “Sure. The crap won’t bite ya,” he joked, pressing on the small of my back, forcing me step to into the room.

I cringed as my foot collided with what looked like a half-eaten pie. “Are you positive about that?” I closed my eyes, wishing I was home already. “New rules, tutoring is always at my place,” I added as an afterthought.

“Don’t be such a princess,” he scolded, laughing as he pressed on my back again, making me step deeper into the hazard he called a bedroom.

I groaned, glancing around again at the room and wincing. It really was gross. “Do you even have a desk under all that clutter?”

He laughed. “Nope. We’ll have to do it on the bed,” he replied, and then a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth so I knew he was thinking about how dirty that sounded in his mind.

“Awesome,” I muttered, tiptoeing over his clothes and magazines that littered the floor, heading towards his bed. I plopped my bag down on it as he grabbed the sheets, tugging on them and making it a little flatter to sit on rather than a bulky quilt pile in the middle where he’d obviously just gotten up and left it this morning. My eyes raked over his walls, looking at the posters and clippings he had stuck up. They all seemed to be of the same guy. “Who’s that?” I asked, squinting at the brown haired guy that was probably in his late thirties. He looked a little familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

“Cyril Raffaelli,” he answered as if that made perfect sense.

I raised one eyebrow in question. “And he would be?”

“The best traceur that ever graced God’s green earth,” he replied, looking at the poster in awe.

“Tracer? Like detective type thing?” I asked, looking at the poster again. He didn’t look much like a detective.

Zach burst out laughing and shook his head at me as if I was stupid. “Traceur,” he corrected as if that slight difference in pronunciation made all the difference. “It’s someone who practices parkour. He’s a stuntman and my personal hero,” he explained, plopping down on the bed, watching me.

I blushed, feeling stupid for not knowing that, though why I would know that in the first place was beyond me. “Oh, the jumping over stuff,” I replied, nodding, playing dumb.

He grinned and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the jumping over stuff.”

“So where do I know him from?” I asked curiously. I knew nothing of parkour, so it wasn’t from that.

“Movies?” he suggested. “You ever seen District 13?”

“Nope.” I studied the guy again and suddenly it hit me. “Oh I know! The guy that dives out of the helicopter in Die Hard 4!” I said excitedly. “I loved that movie. Mostly I loved it when Bruce Willis kicked his butt.”

He laughed. “That’s him,” he confirmed. “Hey, we should watch District 13, you’ll love it. It’s French subtitles though, but I bet you like foreign movies being super brainy and all.”

I frowned as he stood up, heading over to his cupboard and pulling it open to reveal a shelf jam packed full of DVDs. “Zach, we’re supposed to be studying,” I reminded him, unzipping my bag and pulling out my notebook. He sighed, frowning, looking like he would rather be doing anything other than this. I sat down on his bed and kicked off my shoes, crossing my legs. “English first?” I suggested.

He groaned and flopped down on his bed face first, burying his face in the pillow. I ignored his obvious unwillingness and flicked open my notebook. Big black writing on the first page caught my eye. My mouth dropped open in shock at the word that was written there, the same word that desecrated my locker this morning. ‘Bitch’. I frowned at it, not knowing how on earth it had got there. How the heck had someone got hold of my notebook and written that across my Spanish essay without me even knowing? Why would someone even do it in the first place? My mind flicked to Sandy again, it had to be her, I’d humiliated her at the party in front of everyone when I called her a dirty tramp, and this was probably her revenge so I had to rewrite my assignment.

My jaw clenched tightly as an acrid taste filled my mouth. I really should have taken Zach’s advice before and punched her. I flicked through my book to see that almost every page had the same ugly black scrawl on it, ruining all of my work that I’d done for classes. I spotted my Algebra notes that I’d made this morning, they’d been ruined too, so that meant that this had to have been done today, either lunchtime or this afternoon.

Something hit me in the arm, snapping me out of my angry state. I slammed the book shut, trying not to cry from anger. I wasn’t very good with emotions; I cried easily, I guess I was a bit of a weakling of sorts. I looked back at Zach to see he’d hit me in the arm with his book, one eyebrow raised curiously. “We starting then or what?” he asked.

I gulped, nodding. “Yeah, I guess, sorry,” I muttered.

He cocked his head to the side, looking at me like a curious puppy. “What’s up?”

I smiled, appreciating the concern in his tone. “Nothing,” I lied. “Right, so have you read The Crucible?” I asked, motioning towards his book that was in perfect condition and looked like it hadn’t even been opened.

He smiled sheepishly. I’ll take that as a no then! “Sure I have. It was awesome.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes at him. “So there’s no need for me to go over the general plot with you, right?” I asked, smirking in his direction.

He pursed his lips. “Well, I’d actually like to hear your take on the plot, just so I can be sure that you appreciated it to its full potential like I did,” he answered smugly.

I had to laugh; he was actually a pretty funny guy. He smiled and scooted up next to me, biting into an apple and handing me the other one as we started going through book step by step.

After an hour later we were doing really well. He was actually a pretty quick learner, well, when I could keep his mind on task anyway. His thoughts seemed to wander off a lot and start veering off onto other things so I had to rein him back in again. I could see why he would have such a problem with studying on his own, with no one to keep him on track he was probably doodling in his notebook within ten minutes. But he did seem willing to learn, which was a good thing.

He threw down his pen suddenly and stood up. “I’m hungry and I need to start dinner. Want to come and help me?” he asked, looking at me hopefully.

I shook my head. “No, but I’ll sit there and read to you while you cook dinner, how about that?” I offered.

He groaned, rolling his eyes. “Isn’t there a movie of this I could watch instead of reading it?”

I laughed and grabbed my shoes, putting them back on before I stood up so that my feet didn’t touch anything rancid that was on his floor. “Two movies actually, but they both sucked, so read the book,” I instructed.

As it turns out, I didn’t get much reading done while he cooked, because his aunt was still sitting up the table, and she could probably talk the hind legs off of a donkey. My head was spinning as she talked on and on, but she was an extremely nice person. Her and Zach seemed to get on really well, the conversation bounced back and forth while he prepared a homemade chicken pot pie. When the front door opened, Olivia bounced out of her seat and headed into the other room eagerly, talking to someone.

Zach frowned and shoved a large ceramic dish into the stove, then washed his hands. “That’ll be done in an hour. You want to stay for dinner?” he offered.