The library is empty. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, half of them flickering. Your worksheet sits between you and Elliot, mostly blank on your side — not because you can't do it, but because you never do. Elliot has been staring at the same problem for two minutes. Not the math. You. You've kept this up all semester: wrong answers, bored sighs, a performance so polished nobody questions it. But tutors are different. They sit close. They watch patterns. And Elliot is very, very good at patterns. He sets down his pencil and asks you something that has nothing to do with the worksheet — and the way he says it makes you wonder how much he's already figured out.