Trusting the Wrong Genius

For two years of high school, I tutored the entire class for free. My classmates remembered everything I had done for them, and they were grateful. Then, halfway through senior year, a transfer student arrived. "Two years of tutoring, and your grades are still stuck in the middle. That only proves your tutor is useless!" Selene Chevalier remarked. Right after that, she posted her own report card from Enasteri High School. She had scored near-perfect marks in every subjects. Selene: [I've always believed in balancing work and rest. I never waste time on things that don't pay off. Look at me. I relax and have fun every single day, and I still get scores like these. If nobody minds, I'll tutor the whole class for free from now on.] The group chat exploded. A lot of people hesitated at first. Then, one by one, they messaged me privately and said they wanted to try Selene Chevalier's method. Soon after, they quietly left my tutoring group. I actually felt relieved. Selene had no idea that I'd long since grown tired of sacrificing my own time and energy to tutor my classmates for free, with nothing to show for it. Chapter 1 The second half of senior year had just begun. However, the whole school already knew that the new transfer student was a genius who ranked among the top ten students at the city's key schools. That evening, during study hall, I walked into the classroom with a collection of the toughest math problem types I had spent the entire winter break working through. My classmates were supposed to be studying, but they all fell silent the moment I walked in. Selene sat surrounded by classmates in the middle of the room. She was the one who waved me over. "Summer, you're here. There's actually something I need to talk to you about." She smiled faintly before she continued, "From now on, everyone's going to study with me instead. We don't need you anymore." I froze. I couldn't process what she had just said. Two years ago, I had ranked first in the entire city. Every top school had fought to recruit me, and Enasteri High School was no exception. But at the time, my father was gravely ill, and my mother had no job. School had become a financial burden my family could barely afford. My current high school had waived my tuition and helped me apply for a poverty subsidy and a scholarship. The school had even set aside a storefront where my mother could sell stationery, giving her a way to support our family. I had always been grateful for everything the school had done for us. When I started my first year of high school, I noticed that most of my classmates came from poor families and had weak academic foundations. I offered to tutor them. Some of them hadn't even mastered the basics from middle school and had gotten into high school through sheer luck. I broke down every problem one step at a time and organized each concept point by point. I stayed up late compiling common mistakes and problem templates, then simplified complex material into steps anyone could follow. That was the only reason their grades had risen from the bottom of the class to a stable position in the upper-middle range. When she saw that I had fallen silent, Selene continued, "I know you're not happy, but I looked at our class's grades. "A lot of people have been working hard this whole time, yet their grades are still stuck in the middle. That means the tutoring method is wrong. You're just not a good enough teacher. "The college entrance exam is coming up soon. Nobody has time to waste with you anymore." The class president stepped forward as well. "Summer, we don't mean anything by this. It's just that what Selene said makes sense. Maybe we really have been using the wrong method." A few classmates immediately chimed in. "Yeah, I've seen how outside cram schools work. Kids there improve fast. Raising your score by two or three hundred points is nothing." "It's not like Summer's tutoring hasn't helped at all, but it's just too slow. Meanwhile, Selene keeps making bigger improvements every time." "Exactly! Maybe she has some amazing study method she's been keeping to herself!" At that, the smugness in Selene's eyes was impossible to miss. She raised her voice. "Everyone, I'm not trying to put Summer down. It's just that, in the end, grades speak for themselves. "My results are there for everyone to see. From now on, I'll absolutely do my best to tutor all of you." As soon as she finished, the class president was the first to respond. "Well then, thank you, Selene. It's an honor to study with someone like you, a real genius." Chapter 2 The others chimed in too. "I want to study with the great Selene too!" "Selene, you're too kind. If you tutored outside of school, you could easily charge hundreds an hour." "There's always someone better out there. Summer, you can finally take a break and focus on yourself." I watched everyone crowd around Selene and shower her with praise. My chest ached as if a needle had pricked it, yet at the same time, I felt strangely relieved. "Sure," I agreed without hesitation. Maybe it was for the best. For the past two years, I had stayed up until dawn organizing lecture notes, sacrificed my own study time to answer questions, and paid for printed materials out of my own pocket. I was sick of all of it. I said nothing more, but the class president approached me in private. "Selene's just blunt. Don't take it to heart. Still, everyone wants to raise their scores quickly. "Why don't you improve your methods? If you can be more efficient than her, we'd still rather study with you. After all, we've got two years of history together." I laughed. Even a backstab had to sound like they were doing me a favor. Who they chose to study with was none of my business. I had people of my own who genuinely wanted to learn from me. "No," I refused without hesitation. The class president turned around and made an announcement to the class. "From now on, tutoring is Selene's job. Summer, fill Selene in on everyone's academic situation so she can get up to speed. "Also, let's have Selene take over as study group leader. She's kind enough to tutor everyone for free. It wouldn't be right to leave her without a title." I had founded that study group and led it for two years, yet a single sentence was all it took to kick me out. I did not fight for it. I only gave them one word. "Okay." Denise Austin, the classmate who sat beside me and whom I got along with well, poked me. "Summer, don't be too upset." The classmates sitting nearby crowded around too. "Summer, don't take it to heart either. Selene came from a top school in the city. Her methods are bound to be more reliable." "Yeah, nobody meant to replace you. Everyone just wants to raise their scores quickly. The college entrance exam doesn't leave us any time to waste." "You've worked hard for the past two years too. You might as well rest now. With Selene leading us, you don't have to bother anymore." They called it comfort, but every word was a veiled provocation. Fortunately, none of it bothered me in the slightest. I put away the half-finished math problem set on my desk and packed up to leave for the day. Good materials and carefully organized problem sets deserved to go to people who actually valued them. Denise saw me packing up and asked, "Summer, why are you leaving so early today?" I answered flatly, "It's just the normal time school lets out, isn't it?" That left the whole group speechless. School officially let out at 6:00 p.m. I had commuted from home for the past two years, yet because I tutored the entire class, I had never once gone home on time. Every day, I stayed behind until 10:00 p.m. to work through problems with them and answer their questions. Then I walked home alone in the dark with only a flashlight to light my way. On my way home, my phone suddenly buzzed with a friend request. It was from Selene. Selene: [Summer, it's Selene. Send me the study materials you used to tutor everyone, along with the print shop you usually use. I want to compare prices.] She added a hugging emoji at the end, as if the two of us were close. The sheer absurdity of it almost made me laugh. She had publicly dismissed my tutoring as useless. Now she was demanding every resource I had poured my time and effort into, as if she had every right to them. At first, I typed out a long paragraph because I wanted to argue back. After a moment's thought, I deleted every word. In the end, I only sent her links to the materials I usually used. Not long after, Selene's messages came flooding in. Selene: [What?! There's this much? I'd have to work through every single problem myself and organize everything. How much time would that waste?] Selene: [And it's all so expensive. Am I supposed to pay for this myself?] Chapter 3 All these years, I had always paid for everything myself. I bought practice books one at a time, worked through problem after problem to organize the material, then paid out of pocket to have everything printed into study packets. After two years, I had never asked a single person in the class for a cent. I slowly scrolled back through the chat history. It held two years' worth of conversations between my classmates and me about schoolwork. Math was Cole Clarkson's biggest weakness. I created a tailored study plan for him, broke down the key concepts, put together a customized set of practice problems, and watched his scores climb little by little. Melissa Ludley's grades were poor, and her family saw school as a waste of money and pressured her to drop out. I tutored her privately time and again, helped raise her scores, and kept her chance of staying in school alive. Whenever Wendy Walters ran into a type of problem she could not solve or a concept she could not untangle, I patiently broke it down step by step and helped her overcome the hurdle. … I remembered every one of my classmates' weak points, gaps in their foundations, and struggles that held back their scores better than they did themselves. But now, all of it amounted to nothing more than me getting sentimental over my own sacrifices. I did not wallow in self-pity. Instead, I opened my chat with a close friend who had been a year ahead of me in middle school. After graduating from college, she had opened her own in-person tutoring center, and she had wanted to buy my full set of notes and problem sets for quite some time. I sent her a message. [Hey, you mentioned before that you wanted to buy the notes I put together. I just finished organizing a new set. Do you still want it?] She replied almost instantly. [Yes, yes, yes! We'll take it! We'll pay top dollar!] I smiled faintly. I remembered that quite a few students from the class next door studied at her tutoring center. I could not wait to see what happened. At the next mock exam, my class would be compared against the class next door. … My class had spent all that time chasing the shortcuts Selene preached. The other class had spent it grinding through problems and building solid fundamentals. I expected the gap between them to be impossible to ignore. For the rest of that stretch, Selene's speeches swallowed up nearly every free period. "Honestly, everyone's been fooled by this so-called local-style education. Burying your head in books doesn't even work for students today. What we need is a balance between work and rest! "I'm speaking from experience. At Enasteri High School, I never had to grind through concepts. I just memorized the conclusions, and the time I saved was completely worth it. "Isn't it better to spend that extra time having fun? Young people should live a little. Don't let studying tie you down!" At first, everyone was thrilled to be free of my tutoring. They no longer had to stay up late grinding through problems. Of course they were happy. But after a solid month of that, quite a few of them started to feel uneasy. Without coordinating with one another, they began coming to me one by one to vent. Wendy was the first. "Summer, you have no idea. Selene dragged us all out to karaoke last night. We didn't leave until midnight. "Today, the teacher called on me to answer a question, and my voice was so hoarse I couldn't get a word out. I got scolded for it." Then Melissa came to me. "I was planning to finish my homework at home this weekend, then help my mom at her food truck. "But Selene insisted I was being a killjoy and dragged me to the arcade instead. She said if I didn't come, she wouldn't let me keep studying with her, so I didn't have a choice." Every time, I just listened quietly. I never said a word or offered an opinion. … The mock exam kept drawing closer, but Selene continued dragging them out to have fun. She even dared to skip the study halls the school had scheduled. Denise finally could not take it anymore. She grabbed my hand, urgency filling her voice. "Summer, what are we supposed to do? If we keep messing around with Selene like this, can we really still get into college? I look at my textbooks now, and they feel like strangers." I yanked my hand free and said flatly, "Maybe. Hasn't Selene always gotten good grades?" I was not deliberately being sarcastic. I still firmly believed that effort led to results, which stood in direct opposition to Selene's talk of shortcuts. But ever since she had arrived, her scores had remained near the top on every single quiz. Once, she had even come within five points of beating me. Chapter 4 The only problem was that, out of everyone who kept fooling around like that, Selene was the only one who managed to keep her grades up. A couple of days later, Denise came to find me again. "Summer, why don't you talk to the class president? Maybe you could go back to tutoring us. "I know it's slower, but at least we'd actually make real progress. That has to be better than drifting along like this." "No," I refused without a second thought. I wasn't going to throw myself at people who didn't want me. Not a second time. The day before the mock exam, Selene finally organized a token study session. She carried a stack of photocopied materials to the front of the classroom and slapped them down on the podium. "I prepared all of this myself for everyone, free of charge. You don't need to waste money on practice books anymore. You can spend that money having fun instead." As she spoke, she glanced over at me, her voice laced with provocation. "I would never do what certain people do. They pretend to tutor everyone for free when they're really using it as an excuse to make their classmates buy materials from their family's stationery store." I ignored her and kept my head down as I packed up my things. But she wouldn't let it go. This time, she called me out by name, "Summer Barnes, what do you have to say for yourself? Why don't you tell everyone how much money you've made off them over the past two years by sending them to buy materials from your mom's shop?" I could ignore her jabs at me, no matter how many times she made them. But the moment she dragged my family into it, I couldn't let it slide. I snapped my head up and stared at her. "Selene, if you're going to accuse me of something, back it up with proof. "My mother's stationery shop has always sold materials to our classmates at cost. Sometimes, she even gives them away for free. "When have I ever made a single cent off anyone? Don't make up accusations out of nowhere." "Making things up?" Selene let out a scornful laugh. "You know perfectly well whether I'm making things up. You've tutored everyone for free every single day. Isn't that just an excuse to drum up business for your family's shop and take our money?" A few people nearby tried to smooth things over, but every word they said leaned in Selene's favor. "Summer, Selene was probably just saying it offhand. Don't blow it out of proportion." "We're all classmates. There's no need to make things this tense over a little money." "Yeah, Summer, maybe Selene was just joking around. Don't take it to heart. Nobody actually thinks you made money off us." Selene crossed her arms and looked pleased with herself. "I was just joking. Why are you taking it so seriously? You're acting like I bullied you or something." In that instant, every eye in the room turned to me. Some people were trying to make peace. Others were watching the show or whispering among themselves. Somehow, they made me feel like I was the one being unreasonable. I was about to argue back when our school advisor suddenly walked into the classroom. Her gaze swept across the noisy room before settling on me. "Summer, come to my office." I followed her out of the classroom. "Summer, congratulations. Your recommendation for Northshine University has been approved. The school has already received the official notice, and we'll take care of the rest of the paperwork for you." I froze for a moment. Then everything suddenly became clear. All my earlier frustration vanished in an instant. Now I even found myself looking forward to seeing what kind of scores the people who had embraced Selene's "work-life balance" would manage on the mock exam. … When the results came out, the whole class crowded around the announcement board to check the rankings. To everyone's shock, our class had claimed almost every top spot in the grade. Classmates who used to rank in the lower-middle range had shot up the rankings, with some gaining nearly two hundred points in a single month. Someone couldn't help but cheer. "This is amazing! I can't believe I gained this many points! We're set now! We're definitely getting into a good college!" "Guess we really did need Selene. After two years of tutoring with Summer, we never saw improvement like this." "Look at the board! Selene's number one! She actually beat Summer!" Chapter 5 I followed everyone's gaze to the results board. First place: Selene Chevalier. Second place: Summer Barnes. Selene had beaten me and taken the top spot in the grade, a position I had held for more than two years. Selene stood off to the side of the crowd, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "See? I told you there was nothing wrong with my study method. "Lucky for all of you that I transferred into this class. Otherwise, who knows how much longer that so-called top student would've held you back." The moment she said it, several classmates around me shot me strange looks. I clenched my fists without thinking, but I couldn't come up with a single word to argue back. Selene wasn't wrong. Grades were the most direct proof there was. This time, I really had lost to her. Even the students from the class next door who had used the notes I'd put together had failed to outperform the students in my own class who had studied with Selene's materials. Was it possible that there really was something wrong with the way I tutored? The thought had barely surfaced before I shut it down. One reaped what they sowed. Nothing in this world rewarded results without the effort to earn them. Unless something else was going on. … That night, after I got home, I privately messaged Denise and asked her for the review packet Selene had sent out before the mock exam. After I went through it carefully, the truth hit me. Eighty percent of the problem types in that packet matched the questions on the mock exam almost exactly. It was practically the same as having the questions leaked in advance. However, the mock exam questions came from the city's Department of Education. How could Selene possibly have known what would be on the test? No matter how much I turned it over in my head, I couldn't figure it out. Still, I kept the discovery to myself. I had no real proof. If I spoke up recklessly, people would only see it as jealousy over losing first place and accuse me of trying to slander Selene out of spite. Whether my suspicions were right or not, the college entrance exam would settle it soon enough. A mock exam might have loopholes that allowed questions to leak. The real exam would never allow that kind of shortcut. … In the days that followed, I accepted my senior's invitation to work at her tutoring center. I went there every day and worked one-on-one with her students to reinforce concepts and clarify key points. Meanwhile, the classmates who had still felt a flicker of unease after the mock exam now threw themselves completely into eating, drinking, and having fun with Selene. Their mock exam scores gave them all the excuse they needed. Two days before the college entrance exam, they even went out to a bar with her to unwind. "The worst thing you can do before an exam is get too tense. Having a little fun now and then helps you perform better. "Just stick with me and you can't go wrong. I guarantee most of our class will get into an Ivy League school!" Selene claimed. The nights before the college entrance exam were supposed to be reserved for getting enough sleep and eating light meals. Going out drinking at a bar was out of the question. I stepped in to stop them, but the class president led the mockery against me. "Come on, Summer. We get that you're jealous of Selene, but the facts speak for themselves. You just don't measure up to her in any way." "Exactly! We're lucky Selene transferred into our class. Otherwise, who knows how much longer your rigid tutoring style would've held us back!" "If it weren't for you, we'd already be on track for Northshine University!" Hearing all that, whatever warmth I had left toward them vanished. After that, I stopped bothering with anything related to the class. … The weather was clear on both days of the college entrance exam. Because I already had a recommendation slot, I didn't sit for the exam myself. I only went through that year's leaked practice papers online. There was nothing unusual about the problem types. I had practiced all of them before. Anyone who had put in steady, honest effort should have scored well. After the final subject ended, I planned to reach out to my senior at the tutoring center. Instead, the moment I opened my phone, I saw that the senior class group chat had exploded. There were more than 99 messages, and every single one was either tagging Selene or... me.