The address from the anonymous text led me to an abandoned rail yard at the edge of town.
By the time I arrived Saturday morning, Ethan was sitting on the curb outside a chain-link fence with a patrol officer standing over him and a clear evidence bag full of rusted bolts beside his shoes. One of his baseball teammates hovered ten feet away, looking guilty enough to explain the anonymous message.
"Tell her why you climbed a fence marked NO TRESPASSING," the officer said.
Ethan adjusted his glasses. "Oxidation extra credit. The samples here had better surface corrosion than the hardware-store nails in the lab kit."
I stared at him. "You risked a citation for rust?"
"For an A," he corrected.
The property manager declined to press charges once the officer confirmed nothing had been damaged, but Ethan still left with a formal trespass warning and no samples. I made him throw the bolts back into the collection bin before we drove away.
"Next time," I told him, "we find legal rust."
"Noted," he said, as if getting detained for chemistry were a normal scheduling error.
By Tuesday afternoon, my patience for the athletic department had not recovered. I sat in the library study room, tapping my pen against a history textbook.
Cam Dawson was currently doing everything in his power to avoid looking at it.
He leaned across the oak table, resting his chin on his hand. His signature arrogant smirk was in full force. "You know, Avery, if you keep glaring at me like that, people are going to think you're actually obsessed with me."
"I am obsessed with you passing this class," I said, sliding the textbook directly under his nose. "Page forty-two. Read the third paragraph."
Cam didn't even glance at the page. He reached out, casually tracing the edge of my notebook with his index finger. "Come on. It's a gorgeous afternoon. We could take this study session outside. Grab a coffee. I know a great spot off campus."
"I don't drink coffee with my students," I replied flatly. "Read the paragraph, Cam."
"You have a much better reading voice than I do," he countered, flashing a perfect, charming smile. "Why don't you read it to me?"
"Because I already passed junior-year history." I tapped the center of the page. "Stop stalling. Read it."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Cam’s smile vanished. His relaxed posture went rigid. He pulled his hand back from my notebook and leaned away from the table, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.
"I'm not doing it," he said. His voice was sharp, stripped of all its usual playful warmth.
I frowned, caught off guard by the sudden hostility. "It's one paragraph about the industrial revolution. It will take you thirty seconds."
"I said no, Avery."
"Why?" I challenged, leaning forward. "You've been dodging the reading assignments for two weeks. You charm your way out of worksheets, you try to flirt your way out of quizzes, and you refuse to open the book. What is your problem?"
Cam glared at me, his jaw clenching. "My problem is that this is a waste of time. Just give me the bullet points so I can memorize them."
I didn't back down. I thought back to our previous sessions. I thought about how he always managed to answer my verbal questions, yet his written quizzes were blank.
"What was the primary economic shift during the early 1800s?" I asked abruptly.
Cam blinked, thrown by the sudden quiz. "The transition from agrarian societies to urban manufacturing," he answered instantly.
"Correct," I said. "And what invention accelerated the textile industry?"
"The power loom."
I stared at him. He knew the material. He had clearly listened to the teacher's lectures. But when I pointed at the page containing those exact facts, he treated the book like it was radioactive.
"You know the answers," I said quietly. "You just can't read the text."
Cam flinched. He looked away, staring hard at the blank whiteboard on the far wall. The silence stretched out, heavy and uncomfortable. He looked like he wanted to bolt through the door.
"I have dyslexia," he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.
He refused to look at me. The arrogant, untouchable athlete persona was gone.
"The letters don't stay still," he continued, his tone defensive and bitter. "They flip around. They run into each other. Reading a single page takes me twenty minutes, and by the end of it, I have a splitting headache and no idea what I just looked at."
"Have you told the school?" I asked. "You can get accommodations for exams."
"No." Cam snapped his attention back to me, his eyes blazing. "And you aren't going to tell them either."
"Cam, it's a medical learning disability. There's no reason to hide it."
"You don't get it," he interrupted, leaning forward. "You put me in a room with Jace Brooks and Noah Reed. Those guys make everything look easy. If I tell them I can't get through a basic history chapter without the words scrambling, they won't look at me the same way."
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
"I'd rather people think I'm just a dumb jock who doesn't care," Cam admitted. "I'd rather be the guy who parties too hard to study. It's easier to let them think I'm lazy than let them know I'm actually stupid."
"You aren't stupid," I said firmly.
He let out a hollow, self-deprecating laugh. "Sure."
I didn't offer him a sympathetic smile. I didn't reach across the table to pat his hand. He didn't need pity, and he clearly didn't want it.
Instead, I reached out and slammed the history textbook shut.
Cam jumped slightly at the sharp noise.
I shoved the book into my backpack and stood up. "Grab your stuff."
He looked at me in confusion. "What? Are you dropping me from the program?"
"No," I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "We're going to the gym."
Ten minutes later, we were standing on the empty hardwood of the school's indoor basketball court. The fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead.
I stood at the free-throw line, holding my phone and a stack of blank index cards. Cam stood a few feet away, holding a basketball, looking bewildered.
"Here is how this works from now on," I announced, pulling up a voice recording app on my phone. "I am going to dictate your textbook chapters into audio files. You will listen to them on your headphones while you run drills."
Cam stared at me. "Audio files?"
"Yes," I said. "And for vocabulary and dates, we are doing it verbally. I read the definition. You give me the term. If you get it right, you take the shot."
I held up a flashcard.
"I'm not treating you like you're stupid, Cam," I told him, keeping my voice steady and authoritative. "But I'm also not letting you use this as an excuse to fail. I'm not lowering the bar. I'm changing how you reach it."
Cam looked at the flashcard in my hand, then down at the basketball. A slow, genuine smile broke across his face. It wasn't his usual flirtatious smirk. It was real relief.
He bounced the ball once. The sound echoed loudly through the empty gym.
"Hit me, Coach," he said.
For the next two weeks, we abandoned the library table. We spent our sessions on the court, on the bleachers, and walking laps around the indoor track. I recorded hours of history lectures on my phone. Cam listened to them endlessly.
He stopped making excuses. He showed up on time. He answered my verbal quizzes while sinking three-pointers from beyond the arc.
Two weeks later, I was sitting alone in the library study room, organizing my calendar for the upcoming group session.
The wooden door flew open so fast it slammed against the wall stopper.
Cam burst into the room. He was practically vibrating with energy.
"Avery!" he shouted, ignoring the quiet rules of the library.
Before I could even stand up, he crossed the room in three long strides. He grabbed me by the waist, hoisted me straight up into the air, and spun me around.
My feet left the floor. My hands instinctively grabbed his broad shoulders to steady myself.
"Cam!" I gasped, my heart leaping into my throat. "Put me down!"
He didn't listen. He just laughed, a loud, booming sound of joy. He set my feet back on the linoleum, but he didn't let go of my waist. He held up a crumpled piece of paper right in front of my face.
It was his History midterm.
Right at the top, circled in bright red ink, was a B+.
"I got a B," Cam beamed, looking down at me. His eyes were shining. "I actually passed the damn thing."
"I told you the audio files would work," I laughed, genuinely thrilled for him.
"You're a genius," he said, his hands still resting warmly on my hips. He leaned in slightly, the space between us feeling very small. "I owe you big time."
"Just put me down and read the next chapter," I said, pushing lightly against his chest.
"What is going on in here?" a cold voice demanded.
Cam and I both froze.
I turned my head toward the doorway.
Jace, Ethan, and Noah were standing still in the entrance.
They had all arrived for the mandatory group session at the same time.
Jace was frowning, his eyes locked onto Cam’s hands still gripping my waist. Ethan looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
But it was Noah who commanded the room.
Noah stood dead center in the doorway. His gaze darted from Cam’s flushed, smiling face down to where we were still pressed closely together. His expression was unreadable, but the intensity of his stare made the air in the room feel suffocating.
Cam slowly dropped his hands from my waist, taking a half-step back.
Nobody said a word.
Silence stretched between the five of us.
Whatever this had started as, it was no longer just schoolwork.
