Besnik sighed as he walked through the hallways of the high school. He had gotten a D on his poetry report. Tempted to crumble it up, he shoved it into his book bag instead. He knew his father would be disappointed when he saw the grade.

"There goes my hope for a car," he mumbled sadly to himself. One of the requirements his father had set down was that he had to keep his grades up. Unless he found a way to do better with poetry, he could kiss the idea of a car goodbye. With another sigh, he stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. Maybe I need to get a tutor, he thought and grimaced. Where was he going to find a poetry tutor?

Occupied with thoughts of the previous day's events, Charles left only half of his attention upon the duty of navigating through the crowded hallway as the ringing bell denoted the end of 2nd period. He thought of the strange bubbles he had seen rising up from the lotus seed the way his girlfriend had tensed up when he mentioned the event to her along with his trip in the Menewsha Botanical Gardens with Ran. He couldn't help but feel that there was some mystical connection between Ran and the seed from the antique store, but Jane refused to discuss it with him, leaving Charles in a guilty and confused muddle.

"But this is my birthday!" she had cried. "Can't we talk about something else?"
His heart squeezed at the memory. Was he wrong to have brought it up? Was it considered cheating to have spent the afternoon with another girl?
His mind now completely off of the task of walking, he ran straight into lean, tan-skinned boy, knocking his own backpack off his shoulders in the process. Various books and loose sheets of homework exploded out of the bag and spilled onto the floor of the emptying hallway. The graded essay on modern poetry he had written slid right next to the tan boy, its bright red "A+" face up on the floor.

"Oh man, I'm so sorry!" Charles said. "Are you okay?"
He quickly gathered his papers back into his backpack, internally chastising himself for being so careless.

Besnik stumbled when he accidentally bumped into someone. "Ah! I'm so sorry!" he apologized, crouching down to help the other teenager pick up his things. It would be rude if he didn't help out since, after all, he was to blame for the books and papers being dropped.

He picked up one paper and paused upon seeing the bright red lettering of the grade. "T-This is yours?" he asked, showing the other teenager the poetry paper. Could he really be that lucky? Were the gods of fate smiling on him for once? Or was it all just some giant coincidence that he happened to run into someone that had aced the poetry assignment?

"No, don't worry about it! I wasn't really paying attention," Charles laughed. He shoved the remainder of his books back into the bag and hoisted it back over his shoulders.
"Thanks for helping me pick it up, man." He gave the boy a wide, genuine grin. Charles had seen him around the school before, but he had never talked to him.
'I wonder why,' he thought. 'He looks like an interesting guy.'

Gently slipping the poetry essay from the boy's hands, Charles' ears turned red in embarrassment. He certainly hadn't meant for anyone else to see this; if his friends found out he was doing so well in poetry, he would never hear the end of it.
"Er...yeah. Haha, I think Mrs. Tuttle just likes me," he grinned sheepishly.

"Mrs. Tuttle actually likes people?" Besnik asked, looking doubtfully at the older boy. The woman certainly seemed to hate him quite a bit. He sighed as he climbed to his feet, shifting the book bag slung over one shoulder. "I wish she liked me. If I don't pass this poetry stuff, I'm going to be walking for a long, long time."

He hung his head and chewed on his lip. Would it be okay to ask the older boy for help? He didn't want to force himself upon the other boy. And surely this guy had more important things to do than tutor a no one like Besnik in poetry.

"Well, maybe not. I guess it's hard to like anyone when you're a bitter old woman who wishes her husband was Shakespeare," Charles laughed. "But why would you have to walk? Are the 'rents threatening to take away your car or something?"
He couldn't say he understood the situation - his mother made only just enough money to pay off the monthly installments for her own car - but the mournful look on the younger boy's face pulled at a fragile place deep inside himself.
'I want to get to know him, anyway,' he reasoned silently.

"Uh, would you like some help with that, then?" Charles asked casually, averting his gaze to the dull gray lockers on the other side of the hall.

Besnik chuckled at that comment. "I feel sorry for her husband then."

He looked down as a sad look flickered across his face. "My dad won't even let me get my license if I can't keep my grades up," he explained with a sigh. "And even after that, I would still need to earn enough money to afford one."

He looked up, blinking widening brown eyes. "You'd do that?" he asked in disbelief. He couldn't imagine why the older boy would even care to help a lowly underclassman like him. At the same time, he couldn't care about the reason. He needed all the help he could get if he even hoped to pass Mrs. Tuttle's poetry class.

"Man, that's really a bummer," Charles nodded. He thought of his own father and how prohibitive he was of his pursuits. Perhaps they might be able to relate, after all.

"Yeah, sure!" he smiled in response. He couldn't help but laugh at the younger boy's surprised expression. Although Charles was well-known around the school and could be considered popular, he didn't think of himself as unapproachable. He found it quite amusing and flattering at the same time.
"Are you free right now? We can head over to the cafeteria."

Besnik couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed when he heard the older boy laugh. Had he said or done something funny? He hadn't been trying to, so he couldn't figure out the reason for the other boy's amusement.

"Um," he mumbled, doing a quick mental check of his schedule. "Yeah, I think I have some free time right now." He looked up with a grin. And this way I can avoid passing by those jerk seniors, he thought. The only reason he had to pass by them was because they liked to block the hallway near his locker. He hoped by the time they finished their tutoring session that the seniors would be gone.

"Awesome," Charles grinned back. "Let's get going, then."
The hallway was empty by the time they began to head to the cafeteria. Through the numerous wooden doors that lined the path, the muffled sounds of classes in session could be heard. As the two boys passed Room 104, Charles paused briefly and looked in through the glass window. His eyes halted upon a statuesque blonde who was sitting in the back row, texting on her cell phone as the teacher droned on about torque and circular motion. Charles raised his hand to wave, and mouthed the words, "Hi, Jane!"
Jane's eyes flickered up and her lips parted in a smile that appeared to be bursting off of her face. She lifted up her shoulders and waved back, letting out a quiet squeal in the process.

Besnik paused when Charles stopped in front of one classroom. He raised his brows in question at the older boy, who missed it since he was waving to someone inside the classroom.

"Someone you know?" he voiced his questioned curiously as he moved to the other side of the door. He leaned up against the wall, waiting on the older boy.

Startled by the younger boy's voice, Charles nearly tripped over his own feet and steadied himself against a nearby locker.
"Oh! Uh, sorry about that. It was just my girlfriend."

His ears reddened once again, and he straightened himself out.
'Now is not the time to be flirting,' Charles told himself. 'Not when I'm trying to get to know someone.'
He quickly waved goodbye to Jane and made his way back into the hallway. Parting the heavy double doors, he strolled into the stairwell and led the tan boy to the ground floor.

"So, I forgot to mention. My name's Charles. Nice to meet you!"
He reflexively held out his hand for a handshake, but then realized how unnecessarily formal the gesture was. He pulled his hand back and swept it through his hair, laughing as he thought of how ridiculous he looked.

"Ah," Besnik said as he followed after the older boy. He had never had a girlfriend himself. He guessed that went along with being dubbed a loser in school. Mentally, he shrugged off that little detail.

"I'm Besnik," he introduced himself, feeling a bit awkward about his odd name. He started to reach out to shake the older boy's hand, but Charles pulled away before he could. He blinked up at Charles, lost again at the reaction.

I have a lot to learn about hanging out with others, he realized as the corners of his lips twitched downward.

"Besnik? That's an awesome name!" Charles exclaimed. "I got stuck with plain 'Charles'. I must've been asleep when they were handing the cool names out."

As soon as he pulled his hand back, he noticed that Besnik had reached out to meet his gesture. Awkwardness filled the atmosphere, and Charles attempted the break up the tension with an equally awkward joke.
"Ehehe, I see you haven't learned the 'slide-n-slick' yet. Don't worry, you'll get it soon enough. It's all in the wrist."

He walked through another set of double doors leading into the cafeteria and held the door open for Besnik.
"...okay, that wasn't funny."

A faint color rose to Besnik's cheeks. No one had ever told him that his name was cool or anything like that. Most people stared at him with a strange look when he announced his name. "My mom picked it," he explained, scratching one cheek with his finger.

"What's 'slide-n-slick'?" he asked, genuinely confused by the term. He had never heard of it. He entered the cafeteria when Charles held the door open.

"Well, she has good taste," Charles said. He was both surprised and secretly pleased to see that his comment had made Besnik blush. Charles' friends had often teased him about his tendency to turn red in the ears, but here was proof that he wasn't the only one!
"Is Besnik an ethnic name or something?"

The cafeteria was deserted with the exception of several studious-looking students scattered around the tables, cautiously chewing as they pressed their noses to their textbooks.
'Figures,' Charles laughed silently. 'All the serious kids study in the cafeteria while everyone else goofs off in the library.'

As Charles grabbed a nutrition bar and typed his student code into the cashier machine, he attempted to explain to Besnik the notion of the "slide-n-slick", which in truth he had come up with on the spur of the moment.
"It's where you make as if you're about to shake someone's hand, but slide your hand up and away at the last moment. You slick your hair to finish it off, as if that's what you intended to do in the first place. Good for situations where the person refuses to shake your hand," he chuckled.

"I think it's Romani," Besnik answered as he tugged on an earlobe. "You know, like Gypsy." He fleshed a little darking, hoping Charles wouldn't find that weird or anything.

He glanced around the cafeteria, glad to see there weren't too many other students there. His gaze snapped back toward Charles when he started to speak again. He listened to the explanation. "O-Oh," he said, coming to understand the term better. "That's a common thing for people to do?"

Charles shuffled over to a booth in the corner of the cafeteria and sat down, shaking the cheap plastic table. He tossed his backpack onto the floor and took out a few dogeared English books and his poetry essay. Looking directly into Besnik's eyes he replied, "that's pretty cool. Very mysterious. My mom knew a gypsy once, before she got married."

He blinked and turned his eyes down to the nutrition bar he was holding. Ripping open the smooth, metallic packaging, he tore off a piece of the bar and put it in his mouth.
"Well, you shee, I kaina came up wish the teum ash a joke," Charles explained as he chewed. He swallowed and tore off another piece, giving Besnik a toothy grin to show that it was all in good humor. He then realized that a piece of bran was wedged between his teeth. Blushing copiously, he closed his mouth and removed the chunk with his tongue.

"Sorry about that, I keep forgetting not to chew with my mouth full. Do you want some?"

Besnik wasn't sure what to say as he plopped down across the table from Charles. If his mother had been a Gypsy, his father hadn't bothered to tell him about it. "Yeah, I guess so," he finally said as he pulled out his own books and paper. He glanced down at the essay and cringed at all the red markings on it.

He glanced up when he realized that Charles had started speaking again. "Ah, no, that's okay," he said when offered a piece of the nutrition bar. He rummaged inside his book bag and retrieved a candy bar that he had brought from home.

"So, uh, where do we begin?" he asked, warily glancing at the books on poetry.

Charles shrugged and popped the piece of bran bar into his mouth and chewed. From the pile of English books he had placed on the table, he removed a thin paperback and slid it towards Besnik. Swallowing, he flipped the book open to a heavily highlighted page.

"I guess the first thing you should know is that annotation is really important. It's just highlighting recurring words and underlining phrases that you don't understand or that you think are important. Seems a little pointless, but it does go a long way."
He paused to check if Besnik understood.

Besnik unwrapped his candy bar and took a quick bite before he looked over at the book Charles was showing him. His eyeballs nearly fell out of their sockets when he noticed all the highlighting.

"Annotation?" he repeated glancing up at Charles and then back down at the book. He skimmed over everything highlighted and noted that they were exactly like Charles had said. "Right. Got it. I'll remember that." He repeated the word a few times in his head to get it ingrained in his brain.

Charles looked at the page and burst out in laughter.
"Well, I guess this is a bad example. I highlighted nearly everything on this one."
He flipped through the book and stopped on a different page, creasing the inside so that it stayed open. Considerably less yellow highlighter had been used on this page; only the recurring words "fan", "sun" and "butterfly" had been highlighted. IN the margins, Charles had scribbled various notes in pencil.

"Let's use this one as an example," he said, and began to read the poem aloud at a deliberate pace.
"Below the murumur of the whispering shadows
who speak their secrets only to the sun
Tears trickle silently down fiery cold porcelain
the pale cheeks of a shy butterfly
fluttering helplessly in the late afternoon
While the sun shrieks in agony as it drowns
into the hungry earth
she hides behind her folding fan
like a butterfly under a dewy leaf
Alone in the conquering dusk
the sun has left her for another
The one that bathed the darling butterfly
in its warm light like a baby to its mother's breast
no longer sings its promise of love
But she is not without a friend
for even the shadows know that the dark has its virtues
They hide in its cold secretive arms
and mumble the things that the sun cannot know
and that man should not hear
And so does the fragile butterfly
in the slats of her folding fan
which hide her tears and shield her dripping nose
so that no other will know her fear."

Charles waited for a few moments so that Besnik could digest the poem, and handed the book over to him.

Besnik fell silent as he listened to the poem that Charles read. When handed the book, he skimmed over the poem a few times. His eyes kept getting drawn to the lines about the folding fan. He felt a pinch in his chest, wondering what strange twist of fate had brought him to meet Charles and read this poem. It only made him think of his late mother and her favorite fan.

He blinked a few times as he remembered the odd event that had occurred recently with the fan that he had bought. The mist cloud still hovered over the fan, and his father still couldn't see it. Maybe I'm just weird, he thought, frowning. Why could he see the smoke but his father couldn't?

He looked up and realized that Charles was probably waiting for him. "Ah, sorry," he said with a weak chuckle. "I'm not very good with this stuff."

"No, that's okay," Charles chuckled in reply. He took a final bite from his nutrition bar, balled up the wrapping, and threw it through the air toward a trash can standing seven feet away. It hit the rim and dropped in, prompting him to smirk in victory. He saw Besnik looking at him, perhaps expectantly, and Charles turned back to the open book with a crack of his neck.

"Well uh, there are a couple symbols in this poem. If you see a bunch of recurring words, chances are that they have to do with the theme, and themes in poetry are typically guarded behind symbolism. That's why highlighting those words is kind of important. One of the symbols is the sun. We think of the sun as a source of light and energy, and some people associate it with happiness. But in this poem, it takes on a different meaning. Can you tell what it is?"
Charles glanced at Besnik, hoping that he wasn't putting too much pressure on him. The last thing he wanted was for Besnik to feel discouraged and dislike poetry.

Besnik chewed on his lip as he dropped his gaze back to the book. He frowned, fighting back embarrassment when he couldn't figure out what the other meaning could be. His eyes scanning over the poem again and again as he feared that Charles would think him stupid for not getting it.

"I, um, it," he mumbled and reached up to scratch the back of his head. "It seems more sad than happy."