Awaken Read Free Page B

wrong, they have their benefits, but if you turned it off once in a while your heart wouldn’t stop beating. The world wouldn’t cease to exist.”
    “But
you
would cease to exist,” I pointed out, and he answered me with a look that was so intense it made my heart skip.
    “Is that really what you think?” he asked.
    “I’m not saying I agree with it,” I said. “It’s just how life is.”
    He pulled a small notebook and pen out from his back pocket. He uncapped the pen with his teeth and jotted something down on the thin, plastic-based paper. I stared at his hand with fascination. I thought only my ancient-minded mother attempted longhand.
    He glanced back at me. “I know. I get a lot of crap, okay?”
    “I just didn’t think anyone wrote longhand anymore,” I said. “Except for my mom, who I swear time-travels back to 2010 every other day to pick up lifestyle habits to live by.”
    He creased his eyebrows and stared back at me for what I felt like was too long. “This is going to be fun” is all he said.
    I frowned at his comment, but before I could ask what he meant, Mike began the study session. Justin distracted every brain cell I had, but I was determined not to let him see that. I raised my hand to ask one of the questions I had highlighted from the assignment.
    Before Mike called on me, he smiled and asked me what my name was. I lowered my hand slowly and looked around the classroom, taken aback by this. A stranger had never come right out and asked me my name before. It was invading. He didn’t need to know my name. This was just a tutor session. I chewed on my fingernail as I contemplated how to respond. I felt eyes turn to look at me, one set of eyes in particular.
    “Why do you want to know my name?” I asked, defensively. Mike smiled, which irritated me even more. Was he enjoying making a spectacle out of me?
    “It helps if I can say your name when I call on you, that’s all,” he pointed out. “It’s more personal than saying ‘Hey you.’”
    “Oh,” I said, as I made sense of this obvious logic. It
was
personal, which I wasn’t used to.
    “Sorry,” I said. “My name’s Madeline.” It felt strange to hear my name out loud. My voice echoed off the walls as if I were speaking into a microphone. I waited for him to glare at me but he just nodded with encouragement.
    “Okay, Madeline,” he said, and used the ElectricBoard to answer my question for the class. As he spoke, humiliation flooded through my chest for being so rude. I’m used to the luxury of feeling embarrassed in the privacy of my own home. I wanted to explain myself, to remind everybody this was my first public study group, that I wasn’t used to being around people. I turned my head to see Justin watching me.
    “What?”
    “Is this really the first study group you’ve ever been to?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
    “I’ve been to a lot of study groups,” I said.
    “Okay, the first real one? Nondigital?”
    I nodded and his eyes fell into an unbelieving stare, like I was lying. As if he already knew me that well.
    “My parents limit where I can go online,” I said quickly. “A lot of sites are blocked from my computer so I had no way to find these groups.”
    “That’s right,” he said with a nod. “You’re grounded.”
    “That’s right,” I added, and gritted my teeth. “Now that we’ve announced I’m a juvenile delinquent to the entire room, can we please change the subject?”
    I turned away but I could still feel his eyes on me as if they weighed down the air between us.
    “We have a lot of work to do,” he said.
    I shot him a confused stare. What does he mean,
we?
The tutor started lecturing again, before I could ask him.
    Through the rest of the study group I observed Justin out of the corner of my eye. I noticed a few odd things about him. First, he couldn’t sit still. He was either tapping his foot, or drumming his fingertips on the table, or chewing on his pen or his nails. If