A Family problem
Dear diary,
I have gotten used to my new school in the past few days. Kinda. So far it's way better than Falcon-stone. Sure it was more high class, but the students there were driving me sick! Thankfully, now, Steely's parents won't be under such pressure for tuition fees. On top of that, the school is also bigger than Falcon-stone, so that's another positive!
About our magic, if that is what we are calling it. Steely and I are practicing our magic with each other some days after school in Cars Graveyard. Sure, that place is more like a playground for Steely to create, find, work on his experiments, and A TON of other stuff, but I think it has room for another activity. Besides, not many people are around those parts, so we don’t have to be careful.
But that said, I won't let him start our session if he isn't wearing fire-proof clothes.
Flaming Star stopped writing and took a look at his hand that was hidden by his newly gained gloves.
I should also thank him for giving me these fire-proof gloves. I feel comfortable with them. Not because they are comfy, but rather because they stop my hands from bursting into flames accidentally.
Now, about our new friends. I am still not comfortable calling them that but anyway, I've been helping them to write songs and get better in their work, but I haven't really gotten used to them. It's one of those things that takes time, I guess.
Besides, now it seems I have something else to focus on: my dad’s ambition for me to become a businessman like him.
He has been giving me extra books to study and read for a while now. Sometimes he discusses the matters of his job and the decisions he makes with me, giving advice about how to handle his job on top of all that. If that's not because he wants to prepare me to take his place, I don't know what is.
It was a few days ago that he knocked on my door and came in. I was trying to figure out what subjects I had for the day, and he came in and postponed that action.
"Oh, dad?" I said, stepping away from my bag on the floor and standing in front of him.
"Hey, Flaming Star... I have…” He cleared his throat. "I mean, do you have time for a conversation?" He looked at me directly, waiting for my response. He doesn't say that very often and when he does, it's usually about our relationship. But this time, it was about something else.
"Sure." I sat down on my chair.
"So, I wanted to know if you would like to visit Uncle Money Cash for a day?" He raised his eyebrows, and kept his eyes on me.
"Uhm, what do you mean by that?"
"To be beside him at work, I mean." He held his hands together.
"Uh huh." Not getting his point. I was asking myself: Why would I ever want to work with Uncle Money Cash? But then it hit me. He wanted me to get more experience for the job. "Oh, you know?” I rubbed the back of my head. “I am kinda busy these days with school, being new and all. So maybe later?" I stood up and headed back to my bag, hoping that by doing so he would give up on that conversation, and thankfully, he did.
"Of course." After that, I only heard the door closing.
That was the last thing I needed to make me sure about his intentions. I needed to do something. I needed to come up with a way to change his mind about me taking his place. And thankfully, I knew exactly what to do.
We had a math exam that was somewhat essential. It was fairly easy, but I planned on not getting a good mark!
It made sense. If I failed at one of my important exams, which was crucial for participating in other important exams of the career that my father wanted for me, I would have probably changed his mind. At least a little. And if that was not enough, well, I would keep on failing till he finally had no other options other than forgetting about that career forever.
The plan felt solid, kinda. And I was sure, well maybe not a hundred percent but probably sixty percent, that it would work.
It was today that I was enjoying my break, when I heard Principal Celestia's voice on the loudspeaker asking me to report to her office. I knew it meant mission accomplished!
I still wasn't familiar with the layout of the school, but I knew where the Principal's office was. I guess I remembered something from the first day tour. Somehow!
I knocked on the door, and as soon as I heard "Come in!" I headed inside. I have been in her office before, on my first day to be exact, but I haven't gotten used to it, not yet anyway. It was not very big. It had enough space for her desk and a couple of chairs.
"Hi Principal Celestia. You wanted to see me?"
The light outside was streaming in from the window behind her, it seemed she wanted the light because the curtains were all pulled aside to their absolute limit.
"Yes, take a seat."
I knew that I had to give an explanation about my mark, and I was prepared.
"I wanted to talk to you about the mark you got in the recent math exam.” She held her hands together. “And I believe you know why.''
"Yes, I'm aware of the mark I got," I said, taking my seat on the left chair. I made sure I sounded ashamed.
"And you must be aware that this exam's mark was important to be able to participate in the final exam, right?" She leaned towards me. I couldn't tell if she was uncertain or wanted to be sarcastic.
"Of course." Struggling to hide my joy of actually succeeding in my plan, I turned my head away.
"Flaming Star." I looked at her again. "You were transferred to our school recently, and I think this sudden change had some effects on you."
"Well, yeah, it's...a bit hard to get used to the new environment."
"My duties require me to inform your parents about your state, but your records from your last school show that your marks were much higher than this. And I assume this downfall is mainly because of the sudden change. So I've decided to give you another chance."
"Yes, I... Wait what?" For a second I thought I misheard. Snapping out of the victory party I was holding in my head, I gave my full attention to her.
"I have assigned you a tutor to help you get back on your feet. You will be giving another exam on Wednesday. Don't mess that one up!" She stood up and gathered her papers.
"But, but I-"
"You can thank me later. Now go, and don't forget that your first session is today, in the library after school," she said while putting her paper's in her drawer.
I decided to get out of there, simply because I had to attend my other classes and come up with a new plan. "Never celebrate an uncertain victory!"
So far, so bad. It seemed that I had to take the extra step of failing another exam. But before that, I needed to make sure this tutor got sick of working with me so that Principal Celestia would stop trying to help me and actually help me by reporting my state to my dad!
I met up with Steely in the hopes that maybe he could share his thoughts on the situation, to give me an idea. I found him on the way to our lockers and joined him on the short trip there.
"What's up?" I hit him with an elbow.
"Oh, uhm...hi, I'm fine!" He nodded. It seemed that I had snapped him out of his thoughts.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, he finally came back to reality. "FLAME!"
I almost jumped. "WHAT?"
"Your mark! Have you seen it?"
"Of course I have!"
"How on earth did you manage to get that low!?" We reached our destination, so he stopped to open his locker and turned his head away from me.
I leaned against the lockers that were next to him, and after he opened his, he tilted his head to see me. "After all that time I spend with you, studying, doing homework, tutoring, you get that mark?"
I gave out a sigh. "To put it simply, I wanted to get that mark!"
"... What do you mean?" He closed his locker shut.
"Do you remember the time I told you about my father?” I looked at the ceiling, trying to put my words together.
“Which one? The chocolate incident?”
“No, the recent one!” I facepalmed.
“Uhm...him talking to you about his job?” he said with uncertainty.
“Yep.”
"Yeah, you also told me about the offer he gave you a few days ago, which, to be honest, I wish I was you at that point!" Steely and his ambitions, classic! "So, what about it?"
I looked at him. For a few seconds we were just staring at each other ‘till he connected the dots.
“Wait! So, you are telling me that in order to show your father that you don't want to continue his path, you failed your exam!"
"Pretty much!" I nodded without wasting a second.
His jaw dropped open and he frowned. "I can already think of five better ways you could have approached this problem. First and best in my opinion: talk to-"
"Steely! You know that that won't work with him!" I shook my head.
He narrowed his eyes. "I...don't think...so."
"Trust me, he just can't accept that his one and only son won't accept the family business that has been inherited for three generations!" I gave up on leaning against the lockers and stood up straight.
"Well," Steely gestured with his left hand, "I imagine it is normal for him to not approve at first, but maybe if you-"
"No!"
"Bu-"
"Nuh-uh!"
"Just let me-"
"IT WON'T WORK!" I took him by the arms and shook him! "Besides, it would be a waste of time! I don't get why you’re suggesting it either, don't you have the same issue?" I let go of my grasp.
"I don't have the same issue.” Steely shook his head. “ I have a similar issue." He wanted to continue, but instead took a deep breath. "...We'll talk later, we should head to class."
And so we did. But we never picked up on that discussion again. Not in class, not in between the breaks and not even at lunch. Even when I told him that I wouldn't be able to come for our magic practice session after school because of the tutoring I had to go through, he stayed silent.
Flaming Star hesitated to write anymore as a thought crossed his mind. "Oh, man, I totally forgot to call him today!" But he shook it off and continued writing. "OK, I'll finish this, and then I'll check to see if he is still up or not!"
That sealed the door to Steely's magnificent ideas shut! I was on my own in this rabbit hole that I jumped down into. And not even a single idea! I could have just ignored the tutoring session, but I knew it wouldn't do much. So I decided to roll with it and see where it would lead.
After school, I headed to the library, groaning to myself and Principal Celestia in my head. And when I got there, the true challenge began. Because it was not a place that I had been visiting regularly it looked unfamiliar, and the fact that it felt like a maze with walls out of books didn't help either.
So I stepped into the maze, inspecting everywhere with my eyes. I read each shelf category in my mind: "History, myths, language," and before I knew it I was in the middle of the library, staring at the two snake-like staircase that granted access to the second floor. Light was piercing through the glass in the view, giving the place a holy look!
Flaming Star stopped writing and held his mind from drifting into odd places. "Why am I trying to make the boring library sound really cool? Ugh, never mind that part!"
He took his pen and crossed a section of his diary.
It was then that I heard a familiar call. "Over here!"
I checked around to track down the voice, and among the twists and turns of the library I caught sight of a familiar face. Sunset Shimmer! I wasn’t sure what she was doing here, but she was waving from behind a table, so I felt as if she wanted me to get closer to her. And yeah, she totally broke the first rule of being in a library. But I guess because no one was there beside us, and maybe the librarian, it didn't matter.
"Hi," she said as I got closer. "Are you ready to get started? Because we got a LOT of work to do."
"YOU are the tutor!?" I pointed at her! To be honest, I don't know why I was surprised. Of course, it would have been her!
"Yeah." she smiled. "Should we get started?" She sounded really interested in it.
"Let's just get this over with." I sat down in front of her and dropped my bag on the table.
I still ask myself: "Why her?". She was the one who gave us a tour, she was the one who finds my song's notebook and on top of all that she is the one who can see memories with direct touch! THAT is what I hate the most. Not that I don’t hate the other two, but If she touches you, privacy just goes straight out the window!
To start with, she went over all of my mistakes and explained the proper way to solve the questions to me, one by one. "I'm sure if you try to focus on these mistakes, you'll get something way higher than what you got this time!"
"Yeah, whatever." I rolled my eyes. The fact that I had to sit there and let someone else explain stuff that I already knew to me again was painful. On the other hand, It seemed she wasn't bothered by tutoring me at all.
"OK. Now try answering these questions again. Don't be embarrassed to ask for help when you have problems." She handed me the same exam paper again. Upon looking at the exam paper, the memory of the convenient ways I answered the questions wrong came flooding back and made me fight my cheek muscles just not to smile.
Question number 6: Find X in the problem below.
And my answer was a simple arrow and a circle around X. I still wonder how they thought I wasn’t joking.
It was then that it hit me! If I pretend that I understand nothing and ask her to explain it again and again, I'll eventually get her to quit tutoring me. And when she does, I'll fail again, and this time Principal Celestia for sure reports my state to my dad. Bingo!
"Um, how should I answer this again?" I pointed at question six.
"Let me see." She leaned forward to check on the paper. "Oh, try to even out both sides by squaring them."
"Oh." I looked at the question again. "OK, but then they won't be equal!"
"They will, let me show you." She grabbed the pen from my hand in a quick swipe and started solving the problem again. "By squaring both sides, the square root of X will be gone. Then, you just apply the square to the other numbers and do the rest; the final answer should be 3.5."
"But doing so messes up the whole problem, and it will no longer be equal to one another."
"Oh, no. Look again. If you add, subtract, multiply, divide or power both sides of the problem to the same number they will remain equal or whatever symbol they had in between them." She brought her notes and showed them to me. "You got it?"
Now was the time. "Yeah, but can you repeat it one more time?" I smiled.
"Yeah." She smiled back. "But listen carefully." She took the pen in her hand again and wrote down the process for me again as she was explaining it. "You square both sides to remove the square root of X. Then do the rest of the calculations, which, in the end, should give you the answer X equals to 3.5."
"OK. Got it!"
"So now that you understand how to solve it, try solving another one." She took a piece of paper and wrote another math problem on it which was similar to the last one with another square root on X.
I looked at it, stared at it, rubbed my chin, hoping she would say something.
"What are you waiting for?" she said, leaning back on her seat with her hands crossed.
"Maybe... explain it one more time?" I smiled again. Judging from her expression, she was losing her patience. Slowly, but surely.
"I think it's better to start with something more simple." She took the exam paper in her hands again as she sighed and started looking for another question. "This one.'' She put the paper down on the table again and pointed at the question that was on the first page. "Take a look."
It was a normal calculation with only a lone X on one side. Much more simple than the last question, but much harder to act like I don't know it.
"Oh, um," I said as I looked close at the problem she gave me. "Hmmm, let's see."
From the corner of my eye, I could see that she was giving me a doubtful look, as if she knew I wouldn't be able to solve it. It was after a few minutes of me staring at the paper that she just took the paper from my hand.
"Let's try a different way," she said with an annoyed voice and pulled a lot of papers from her backpack.
"What… are... those?" I pointed my finger towards the papers with my eyes widened.
"Nothing. Just some sample exams that I borrowed from vice Principal Luna for tutoring purposes, and we are going to work on them, hoping that we might get somewhere."
Once again, I thought I had the whole thing in the bag. But apparently not. Not yet, at least.
Things were just getting harder and harder for me. There were A LOT of sample exams. For hours, we sat there, and she kept explaining each question to me and I kept acting. I started seeing numbers on the walls, as they themselves were spinning around.
Sunset Shimmer too, seemed quite fed up.
"IT'S SIMPLE MATH! WHEN YOU MULTIPLY A NEGATIVE NUMBER BY A POSITIVE ONE, IT STAYS NEGATIVE!" Her eyes widened, her breaths became rapid and furious, and her voice was filled with the energy to rip my head off! “MATH IS MATH!” She handed me another sample exam and slammed her hands on the desk.
I was done. I couldn’t keep the act up anymore. I took the sample test and answered it as fast as I could.
As a result, Sunset locked her eyes on the paper with her mouth wide open. For a good five minutes, she was just staring at it. Speechless. I wanted to close her mouth, but she looked kinda funny with that face, so I decided not to.
After a while, she spoke up. "Am I...hallucinating?" She looked me in the eye with shock vividly visible in her cyan eyes. "H-how did you do that?"
"I did it. That's what matters. Can I leave now!?"
"NO!" She slammed the table with her hands and stood up. "HOW?"
I really wasn't in any shape to think of an answer to shake her off of me, so I spilled out a bit! "I knew everything you've been trying to teach me, ok?"
"Wait, that doesn't make any sense..." She shook her head.
"I WAS ACTING THIS WHOLE TIME!"
Her left eye started twitching. Her teeth were about to crush one another. A volcano was about to erupt. "WAIT! You are telling me that I just wasted my afternoon to help you learn something that you already knew, and you didn't tell me after ALL this time!” She sounded super mega pissed off.
"Um, yeah!" Just when I said that, her face started to get more and more red. However, she took some deep breaths and calmed down.
"So, how do you explain your mark?" She lowered her voice but kept staring me dead in the eye, frowning.
"I...DECIDED to get a bad mark." I let out a sigh.
"BUT WHY?"
"It's a family problem! Now goodbye! I’m leaving!"
“Wha- No, you ca-”
"If I tell you what it is, it won't be a family problem anymore." I grabbed my backpack.
I walked off, making my way to the library's exit. I don't know why, but when I wanted to leave the library, the path looked way more straight than when I entered. Though it didn't matter when, I heard the fast footsteps that came from behind. Before I could turn around, Sunset had already taken my left hand. Well, it's not a family problem. Not anymore.
After a few seconds, she let go of my hand. But within those few seconds she was holding it with all her force, almost squishing it. Her eyes lost their light, and transformed back to their normal look.
"What did you see?" I rubbed my hand away from her when I got the chance.
"Your whole conversation with Steely Armor, your encounters with your dad and... well, let's just say I saw enough." Her breathing had slowed down a bit. "Listen, Flaming Star, this isn’t how you should solve this issue. Try talking to your father, or get help from someone in your family. Like, why don't you talk to your mother about it?"
I stayed silent for a second and stepped back. A shiver went through my whole body.
"Is there a problem?" she asked while coming closer.
"She...she has passed away," I said with the last breath that was in my cold chest.
"Oh, I...I'm sorry to hear that." She looked down
"That's fine, besides, talking to my father won't solve anything. I'm sure of it.” I wanted to walk away, but I decided to add something extra. “Also, don't use your magic on me ever again."
She crossed her arms, gave me a frown, and leaned back, "First off, I'm sorry, but you didn't give me a choice. If I had driven you crazy, you would have done the same." She pointed at me with her finger. I wanted to talk back, but she beat me to it. "Have you ever tried?"
"What?"
"Talking to your father!" She raised her voice slightly. "Have you?"
For a second, I didn’t say anything. Mainly because I didn’t have anything to say. She was right! I never actually tried to talk to my father about my passion and what I want to do.
"So you haven't tried." She raised her eyebrow.
"No, But it doesn’t matter.”
"Then how are you so certain?"
"Because I know my father!" I rolled my eyes.
"But it's not like he will imprison you or anything. Talking won't hurt!" She turned around and walked to our desk. "Trust me, It will be way easier this way." She was gaining some distance from me, but I think I could hear her nagging about how I wasted her time.