A week has gone by since the second tutoring session with Sour Sweet, and things have not progressed well with her. She still looked like she was being distracted by something, almost as though she constantly has something on her mind, but didn’t know how to tell anybody what’s wrong. I wouldn’t mind it so much except it’s actually made our tutoring sessions less productive. She still came to the tutoring sessions late, stared off into space whenever I worked on a problem, which would force me to spend some time to get her attention whenever I had a question or when she needed to look over what I did, and sometimes ended the sessions early. I don’t know what’s going on in that head of hers, but what I did know was that the sooner Dean Cadance found a replacement, the better.
Aside from tutoring sessions with Sour Sweet, everything else was going pretty well for me. I was getting good grades in all of my courses, except physics. Lemon Zest always tried to find a way to make me laugh and have a good time, which very rarely failed. Indigo Zap forced me to start going to swim practice during my third day at Crystal Prep, even though I wasn’t on the team yet. With Indigo practically running the practice, she made sure that practice was exhausting, but at the same time made sure that nobody was wearing themselves out too much and gave us pointers as to how we can improve our technique. Sugarcoat always offered me a ride to and from school, and gave me her honest opinion about something, in her own special (allows one to really feel the sarcasm.) way. The only thing that she’d never give an honest answer about was anything involving Sour Sweet.
It was weird, I walked into this school thinking that most of the people I would be interacting with would be a whole bunch of stuck up rich kids. Instead, most of the people I’ve met have actually been really nice to me and actually seemed to be looking out for me. In all honesty, the only people who’ve left bad impressions on me were Principal Cinch and Sour Sweet. The only person I really couldn’t get a read on was that one girl with the sun shaped hair clip in her short mulberry hair that was always hanging around after school near my tutoring sessions with Sour Sweet. Maybe I should introduce myself and see what her deal is.
It was currently around 2:35, and I was making my way to the classroom that Sour Sweet had our tutoring sessions in. I don’t even know why I was actually trying to get there on time, since she’s most likely going to come in late again. Take her appointments seriously, my ass. But, when I walked into the class room, I found something I wasn’t expecting to see. There sitting in the classroom was Lemon Zest, Indigo Zap, and Sugarcoat, looking as though they were waiting for me to arrive.
“Wait are you three doing here?” I asked in a surprised tone.
“We’re going to settle things between you and Sour Sweet, today!” Lemon said with determination. “Or, more accurately, you and Sour are going to settle things between the two of you.”
I just raised an eyebrow in confusion and asked, “If that’s the case then why are the three of you here?”
“Because we know what Sour Sweet might be going through and we’re here to give her the push she needs to actually start talking to you about it.” Indigo said.
“You do?” I asked curiously.
“Well,” Sugarcoat bluntly said, “based on how she acts when she’s around you during the day, all of us knowing Sour Sweet longer than you have, what you’ve told us, and what Sunny Flare has observed. Yes, we might have an idea on what’s going on in Sour Sweet’s head.”
Okay, so what she told me made sense to me. They definitely would know Sour Sweet longer than I have. Sour starts mopping around whenever she sees me, and I have told them that our tutoring sessions haven’t been progressing well. But there was one thing that didn’t make sense to me that I needed to be clarified now. “Who’s Sunny Flare?” I asked curiously.
“That would be me, dearie.” A girl’s voice elegantly said from behind me. When I turned around, I found the same girl with the sun shaped hair clip in her short mulberry hair. She then walked in to the room and elegantly said, “I’m terribly sorry I’m late, girls, but I had to take care of something real quickly.” She then turned to me, offered me a hand, and politely said, “Hello, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. My name is Sunny Flare. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“My name’s White Foam. It’s nice to meet you too.” I said returning the politeness and gently shook her hand in return.
“Yes, it’s a shame we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.” She sincerely said. “And I’m sorry for listening in on your tutoring sessions with Sour Sweet without your permission. I still don’t know why those three decided to have me commit such a rude act.”
“Because I’m busy with the tutoring sessions I give after school, Indigo’s always has after school practice with the various sports she’s a part of, and Lemon Zest would probably get bored after five minutes and start listening to music instead.” Sugarcoat immediately chimed in.
“She’s not wrong.” Lemon Zest said as she started to put her head phones over her ears and started jamming out to whatever song was playing. Everybody else just gave her a deadpanned look in response.
After a few minutes of waiting, we started to hear footsteps approaching the classroom from the hall. “That’s probably her.” Sunny Flare quietly said matter-of-factly. “It’s time to settle this. And would someone please get Lemon Zest to turn off her music.” She said pointing a finger at Lemon Zest, who was still jamming out to her music. Indigo Zap, who sat closest to her, tapped Lemon Zest on the shoulder to get her attention and pointed at her ear when she did have her attention to let her know that she needed to turn off her music. Lemon Zest nodded in response and paused the song she was listening to.
After a few seconds of waiting, we saw Sour Sweet start to enter to room. She was looking down towards the ground with a solemn look on her face, like she was dreading stepping into the room. She took three steps into the room before finally looking up. She immediately stopped walking when she saw her friends and me, and almost immediately showed signs of panic. “What are you doing here?” She defensively asked in her sour tone as she tried to back away from us.
“Sour, dear.” Sunny calmly said as she reached a hand out to Sour Sweet to try to calm her down. When she made contact with Sour Sweet’s shoulder, Sour Sweet started to tense up, but soon started to relax when she realized that Sunny Flare didn’t want to hurt her. “I know that what you’re going through is really hard to talk about. But, this can’t go on anymore.”
Sour Sweet sighed before sadly saying, “I know it can’t, but-“
“’But nothing, Sour Sweet!” Indigo Zap loudly interrupted. “All you have to do is talk to White Foam. Just tell him what you’ve been going through.”
“That’s just it, Indigo.” Sour Sweet quickly replied. “I don’t know how I should tell him.”
Sugarcoat walked up to Sour Sweet and bluntly said, “Here’s what you need to do. You need to tell him the actual reason you signed up to be a tutor, what happened afterwards, and why that’s been affecting you’re interactions with White Foam.” She then gave her a comforting smile before saying, “I know talking to him is going to be hard for you, but keeping it to yourself is going to be harder on you. You understand?”
Sour Sweet stood their silently for a few moments, most likely in deep thought, before looking to Sugarcoat and saying, “Okay, I think I understand.”
While the girls were talking, I sat their thinking about what they were talking about. Apparently this situation stems from a problem she’s been having for a while, and what do they mean by ‘the real reason she signed up to become a tutor?’ Are they saying that she didn’t sign up just for the extra credit?
“Do you want us with you, or do you want to talk to talk him by yourself?” Lemon Zest asked with concern, pulling me away from my thoughts in the process.
After a few moments of silence, Sour Sweet finally responded, “I think I’m alright by myself.”
The other girls nodded in understanding and made their way out of the room. Sunny Flare was the last to exit, but before exiting turned to us and said, “If you need anything, just let us know.” She then closed the door behind her as she left to give us some privacy.
The two of us just stood there awkwardly for a moment, with me not really knowing what to do at the moment and Sour Sweet looked nervous and uncomfortable. Eventually, I decided that if we were going to get anywhere, then the first thing Sour Sweet needed to do was relax. “Do you want to take a seat, Sour Sweet?” I asked pointing to a couple of the desks.
She seemed surprised by the sudden question, probably not expecting me to say anything, but soon settled down before she responded. “Sure, I’d like that actually.” She said sincerely. I nodded in acknowledgement and the both of us took seats in the two desks closest to us. After a few moments of sitting, she looked like she was actually starting to relax, which also caused me to relax to. Eventually, she gave a sigh and asked, “Where do I start?”
“Well, Sugarcoat did recommend starting with why you decided to sign up to be a tutor.” I pointed out.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly before taking a deep breath. “Well, this might not come as a surprise to you, but I’ve always kind of been a mood swinging bitch, especially to people that pissed me off.” She’s right, that didn’t come as a surprise. “But then, something happened that made want to change all of that.”
“What happened?” I asked curiously.
She hesitated for a moment before responding. “There was this girl that used to go here that I was just awful to. Actually…we were all awful to her, but I was the worst to her.” She said with a hint of regret. “No matter what she did, I always had something to criticize her about. Accidentally cuts in front of the line to the buses while she was trying to figure out where she was going? Made a mean comment about that. Accidentally gets in my way, but almost immediately stepped aside to let me continue walking? I told her that I’d be watching her before walking off. Have her as a team mate during the Friendship Games and have her cost us an event by losing the lead I put us in to give the other team a lead we almost didn’t recover from? You better believe I was frustrated with her. I hated her and I let her know it on a daily basis. But by the time I realized how my almost daily habit of yelling at her, criticizing her, and just overall making her life a living hell was affecting her, was the day that she became a she-demon at the end of the Friendship Games.”
“What a moment,” I interrupted with slight alarm. “You mean that figuratively, right?” I asked hopefully.
“I wish I was.” She said not missing a beat. “That was probably the scariest thing to happen to me in my life.” I looked at her to see if there was any indication that she was lying. I couldn’t find any.
“Okay, I’ll just take your word for it and let you continue.” I said nervously. “Sorry I interrupted you.”
“Don’t worry about it, I figured that you were probably not going to believe me as soon as I told you about that as soon as I said it.” She said jokingly before returning to a sadder tone. “As I was saying, after the whole she-demon incident, many of us realized that it was our mistreatment towards her that caused her to go berserk on everyone, so we wanted change how we treated others to keep something like that from happening again. We decided that we were going to be more helpful around the school. It worked out well for the others, Sunny Flare was giving helpful advice to the fashion students and asked for nothing in return, Indigo Zap started paying more attention to her teammates instead of herself, Sugarcoat signed up as a tutor for various courses, and Lemon Zest did whatever she could to raise student moral.”
“But as for me,” She continued as a tear started to roll down her face, “I was the lost cause. I did the exact same thing Sugarcoat did by tutoring certain courses, but there were a couple of differences between us. One was the reputations we had beforehand. We were both considered two of the schools best students, but she was only known for being too blunt for her own good and I was the girl with the mood swings and a bad temper. What happened as a result was that Sugarcoat ended up getting fully booked to tutor people and nobody even dared to have me as a tutor. To be honest with you, I figured that something like that would happen” She paused for a moment to wipe away some of the other tears that started to develop. “I probably wouldn’t even be that upset by it if it wasn’t for the other thing that was different between Sugarcoat and I in this situation.”
“And what was that?” I asked, beginning to feel sorry for the girl in front of me.
“Our reason for signing up to be tutors.” She immediately answered. “Sugarcoat did it solely for the purpose of helping other students. I wanted to do it not only to help others, but also to… help myself.” She sadly admitted as she started to drop her head down towards her desk.
“What do you mean by that?”
Her composure started to become less relaxed as she began to speak. “Because the main issue I’ve always had is how I interact with other people. I interact with the four outside just fine, but it’s trying to interact people I don’t know that I start having problems. Hell, it was so bad that I actually promised myself that I’d actually start treating others better. So I thought, if I put myself in a situation where I have to help others by teaching them about the subjects they’re having problems with and be patient with them, then maybe I’d actually start understanding how to interact with other people. But how could I when nobody was willing to sign up for my tutoring sessions? You don’t know how frustrating that was.”
She then turned her head towards me and I saw that she had tears streaming from her eyes. “And when I first ran into you, that built up frustration combined with the collision just caused me to take it all out on you. And when I did that, I started to revert back to my old ways. And I just stayed with my old ways up until the end of our first tutoring session when you called in out on me. When you did that, I realized what I had been doing and knew that there was no going back. All I wanted to do after that was apologize to you about the way I had been acting, but how could I? How could I when you’ve already seen me at my worst? Hell, I don’t blame you for hating me, because I would definitely hate myself too. I just…I’m just so sorry!” She finally blurted as she threw her head down into her hands and began to cry.
I sat there trying to comprehend everything she just said to me. To say that I was surprised by everything that Sour Sweet told would be an understatement. I wasn’t exactly ready to forgive her for everything she’s done, but at the same time I understood where she was coming from. All she wanted to do was make an improvement in her life, but had no one willing to help her do so. I couldn’t blame her for being frustrated; anybody would be frustrated by that. When I first started these tutoring sessions, all I wanted was to have someone help me out with physics. But I never imagined that I’d be paired with someone who needed more help than I did.
I was pulled away from my thoughts when Sour Sweet lifted her head up to try to wipe away her tears and sadly said, “When someone else gets an open slot for tutoring, you can go ahead and switch to that person. I won’t be angry at you or blame you. You’re probably not ready to forgive me yet. Not after all I’ve put you through.”
I couldn’t see her like this. I don’t know why with the way she’d been treating me, but I just couldn’t. It was at that moment that I knew exactly what I needed to do. I started scouting the desk closer to the desk she was sitting at. And when I brought the desk right next to hers, I turned towards her and pulled her in for a comforting hug. I felt her tense up for a moment before she began to relax and buried her face into my shoulder as she returned the hug. After a few seconds of comforting her, I began to speak, “I’ve been thinking, and you’re right. I’m not ready to forgive you.” I felt her hug me tighter, probably preparing herself for the worst. “But, I’m willing to give you another chance.” I said sincerely.
Sour Sweet immediately raised her head off of my shoulder so that she could look at me with a look of disbelief. “Why?” She shakily asked. “Why would you give me a second chance? You don’t have a reason to...”
“You might be right, I probably don’t.” I agreed. “But it’s like you said, how can you improve your interactions with others if don’t have someone willing to help you out? I just think you went about it the wrong way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” I explained carefully, “you put yourself in a situation where your way of interacting with people you don’t know completely relied on people coming to you. If anything, you needed to seek out others to help you with your social problems.”
“I think you have a point there.” She reluctantly agreed. “But, what do you mean seek out others?”
“I meant going out to make friends.”
“But I already have friends!” She defensively replied.
“Then make new friends. Someone who you’re not already on friendly terms with. That way you can learn from experience how to treat others you don’t know and keep your mood swings under control.” I pointed out.
“So, someone like you?” She asked, looking up at me hopefully.
I sat their silent for a moment. Would I really consider her my friend? Sure she’s treated me like crap for the most part, but at the same time she regrets the way she treated me, apologized for her actions, and accepted my attempts to show her comfort during the situation. I chuckled a little bit when I realized that the answer was obvious. “Yes, Sour Sweet, I’d be willing to be that friend.” I answered truthfully.
Sour Sweet just continued to stare up at me with disbelief as more tears started to appear. Eventually, she quickly threw her arms around me for a tighter hug than before and buried her head in my shoulder again to cry into it. The difference this time was that these tears were out of happiness rather than sadness as she continuously mumbled 'thank you' into my shoulder. I returned the hug and gave her light pats on the back let her know that everything’s alright. After about a minute, we separated from the hug and I asked, “So, what should we do know?”
“Well, thanks to me being emotional, we’re really behind on tutoring,” She said jokingly. “So, why don’t we spend the rest of the time catching up?”
“You sure you’re up for that today?” I asked with concern.
“I’m, like, a hundred times better than I was the past couple of days. Besides, this talk really made my day.” She said sweetly as she started to get her notes from her bag. “Would it be alright if we started with the material from our second tutoring session? Seeing as I was kinda out of it.”
“That’d actually be nice.” I happily replied as I pulled out my physics book and notes out of my bag as well.
So that’s what we did, only this tutoring session ended up actually being more productive than our first tutoring session. She actually did a quick overview of the notes with various questions asked in the middle of it to make sure I was paying attention. We also worked problems from the physics book, only we did it one at a time so that she could check my work after each problem, told me what I doing wrong, and worked me through the steps to solving the problem correctly. It was by the fifth problem that I was starting to get the questions correctly, as well as some small praises from Sour Sweet. Overall, it was a much better experience than any of the other tutoring sessions we’ve had so far. Sure, she went into her sour tone from time to time, but she wasn’t near as condescending as she originally was.
We were on question ten when we were suddenly interrupted by someone quickly swinging the door open. We turned to see who it was, only to find Lemon Zest in the doorway frantically saying, “Dudes, you’ve been in there for, like, an hour and a half! Are you guys doing okay in here?” Then she saw the notes and books on our desks, as well how close our desks were together, and began to calm down before asking, “Are you guys…studying.”
“We’re catching up on the tutoring sessions.” Sour Sweet explained “And as it really been an hour and a half?”
“Uh, yeah! Have you guys been reading the clock?” She said pointing at the clock that hung on the classroom wall, which sure enough read that it was just past four.
“Shoot, we should probably start getting out of here.” I said as I started gathering up my belongings and putting them in my backpack.
“I agree.” Sour Sweet said as she did the same. She then turned to me and asked, “Hey, since we have a lot we need to catch up on, do you mind meeting up during the weekend?”
I was surprised by this sudden question. We just know started becoming friends and she’s already offering to meet up on the weekends. Then again, this probably just her way of apologizing for being the reason we were behind on our tutoring sessions. “Sure, I don’t mind. Where do you want to meet up?”
“I was thinking that we should probably meet up at your house, since it’ll give us a nice quiet place to work. I would offer to meet up at my house, but I don’t want my parents checking up on us every fifteen minutes. I haven’t exactly brought any boys home for them to pester.” She said jokingly.
“Alright, my house works fine. My parents should leave us alone once they realize we're working on physics.”
“Okay then, do you mind giving me your address? That way I at least know where I’m going.” She stated bluntly.
“Actually, I need a ride home.” I admitted, “So if you can drive me home, I can show you where it is so that you know where to go.”
“Alright, that sounds like a good idea.” She happily said as she started to walk out of the classroom with me following close behind her. After a few moments of walking, I couldn’t help but think back to what just happened during the past hour and a half. I walked into that classroom expecting another disappointing tutoring session with Sour Sweet. Now I’m walking out of it, with the most unlikely person I’d ever imagine myself calling my friend. I wouldn’t haven’t any other way.