{"id":2269,"date":"2026-05-04T19:59:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2026-05-04T20:04:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:04:43","slug":"willow-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/willow-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Willow (Chapter Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Alexandra Nugent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter Two<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked home slowly, keeping my right hand clenched in a fist. I didn’t want the sweat from my palm to smudge Sage\u2019s neon-green handwriting. It felt like a secret badge of honor, a bright contrast to the dull, heavy card sitting in my other pocket. When I stepped into the kitchen, the house was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator-a sound that always seemed louder when the cupboards were mostly empty. My mom wasn’t back from her second shift yet, but the stack of bills was still there on the counter. Someone had circled a “Past Due” notice in red ink. The red ink looked just like the “Adequate” grade Elesha had mocked. I pulled the embossed card out and laid it next to the bills. The gold foil shimmered against the wood grain of our scarred kitchen table. It was a bridge. A painful, humiliating bridge, but one that led to a place where my mom didn’t have to look so tired every morning. I took a deep breath and reached for the kitchen phone. My fingers hovered over the numbers on the card. Then, I looked at my palm. I shouldn’t have to handle her alone,<\/em> Sage had said. I grabbed my cell phone first. Before calling Elesha, I typed a quick message to the neon-green number:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m going to do it. Wish me luck. Or send help.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I waited, my heart thumping. A second later, my phone buzzed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage: “Good luck, Willow. If she tries to make you sit on the floor, text me. I\u2019ll bring the tennis balls. \ud83c\udfbe”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I smiled, a real one this time. Then, I picked up the gold card and began to dial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hello?” a voice answered after the second ring. It wasn’t Elesha; it was a woman who sounded like she was speaking through a mouthful of glass: sharp, clear, and very cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hi, this is Willow,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. “I’m calling about the tutoring position for Elesha.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Ah, the girl with the grades,” the woman said. I assumed this was Elesha’s mother. “You’ll be here at four o’clock tomorrow. Sharp. Don’t be late; our time is quite valuable.” The line went dead before I could even ask for the address. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, I found myself standing in front of a gate that was taller than my house. I smoothed out my thrifted skirt, took a deep breath, and pressed the buzzer. “Enter,” a voice crackled through the intercom. The gates swung open with a groan that sounded like a warning. As I walked up the long, winding driveway, I felt Sage\u2019s number still faintly stained on my palm. I clutched my backpack straps tight. I was entering the lion’s den, and the only thing I had to protect me was a book and a neon-green lifeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I reached the top of the driveway, the front door-a massive slab of dark wood with polished brass handles-was already open. Elesha was leaning against the frame, silhouetted by the glowing chandelier behind her. She wasn\u2019t wearing her school uniform anymore. Instead, she was in a sleek, cream-colored lounge set that looked softer than anything I\u2019d ever touched. She held a glass of something sparkling with a single, perfect strawberry floating at the bottom. “You\u2019re three minutes early,” she said, tapping a thin gold watch on her wrist. “I suppose when you don’t have a social life, punctuality is all you have left.” She didn’t move to let me in at first. She just stood there, her eyes traveling from my scuffed sneakers up to my frizzy hair, her expression one of mild clinical interest, like she was inspecting a bug. “Wipe your feet,” she commanded, finally stepping back. “The rugs in the foyer are silk. My mother would have a heart attack if you brought the ‘outside’ in with you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stepped inside, my breath catching. The house smelled like expensive candles and something sharp, like lemon bleach. It was so quiet it felt like a museum where you weren’t allowed to touch anything. “The library is this way,” she said, her designer slippers silent on the stone floor, while my sneakers made a loud, awkward thwack-squeak<\/em> with every step. As we passed a massive floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over a perfectly manicured lawn, I saw a flash of movement. A girl in an oversized denim jacket was sitting on a stone wall near the guest house, tossing a tennis ball up and catching it. My heart skipped. Sage. <\/strong>She didn’t wave, but she caught the ball and looked straight at the window, her piercing eyes locking onto mine for a split second. She looked like a rebel spy in enemy territory. “Ignore the staff’s kids,” Elesha snapped, noticing my gaze. She pulled a heavy velvet curtain shut, cutting off the view of the garden. “They\u2019re a distraction. Now, sit. We have a lot of work to do if you\u2019re going to earn that ‘vintage’ paycheck.” I sat at a glass table that felt too cold and too clean. I reached into my bag, and as I pulled out my notebook, I saw the faint, neon-green smudge on my palm. “I’m not alone,” I thought, my fingers tracing the edge of my notebook. “I\u2019m just the only one in this room who knows that gold isn’t nearly as bright as neon green.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I snapped back to reality when Elesha cleared her throat. She didn\u2019t reach for a book. Instead, she reached for a slender, rose-gold tablet and tapped the screen with a manicured nail. “Before we begin,” she said, her voice dropping into that rehearsed, airy tone, “there are a few things you need to understand. My mother expects ‘adequate’ to become ‘exceptional’ by the midterm. If my GPA doesn’t move, your paycheck doesn’t move. Clear?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nodded, my throat dry. “Clear.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Good. Also,” she added, sliding a printed sheet of paper across the glass toward me. “These are the house rules. Don’t touch the art. Don’t go upstairs. And for heaven’s sake, don’t talk to the groundskeepers or their… associates.” She gestured vaguely toward the window where I\u2019d seen Sage. “They have a habit of lingering where they don’t belong. I\u2019d hate for you to get distracted by someone who has even less of a future than you do.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked down at the list. Rule number five was ‘No personal phone uSage during sessions.’<\/em> I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket-a double buzz. Sage. I didn’t dare look, but the sensation was like a shot of adrenaline. “Now,” Elesha sighed, finally flipping open a heavy Calculus textbook as if it were a chore to even touch the pages. “Explain limits to me. And try to make it sound interesting. I’m bored enough as it is.” I opened my own worn notebook, the edges curled and yellowed. For the next hour, the only sound in the room was the scratching of my pencil and Elesha\u2019s occasional huff of frustration. She was smart, I realized quickly, but she was lazy-used to things just happening<\/em> for her because she willed them to. When she finally called for a break to take a “crucial” phone call, she sauntered out of the room, leaving me alone in the silence of the library. I immediately fished my phone out of my pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage: “Still alive? Or has she turned you into a marble statue yet? \ud83c\udfdb\ufe0f”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked at the high, vaulted ceiling, then back at the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Willow: “Almost. I’m currently surrounded by silk rugs and rules. Also, she told me not to talk to you. Apparently, you’re a ‘distraction.'”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My phone lit up almost instantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage: “I\u2019ve been called worse. Meet me by the side gate when you’re done? I have something to show you that isn’t ‘adequate.'”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked up just as the heavy library door creaked open, shoving my phone into my pocket. My heart was racing, not because I was scared of Elesha, but because for the first time, I had a secret she couldn’t buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everything alright?” Elesha asked, eyeing my flushed face as she stepped back into the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Fine,” I said, my voice steadier than I expected. “Just ready to get back to work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept my head down, focusing on the complex equations in front of me. But in my mind, I was already counting down the minutes until I could walk through that side gate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alexandra Nugent Chapter Two I walked home slowly, keeping my right hand clenched in a fist. I didn’t want the sweat from my palm to smudge Sage\u2019s neon-green handwriting. It felt like a secret badge of honor, a bright contrast to the dull, heavy card sitting in my other pocket. When I stepped into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,21,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-articles","category-long-reads","category-serial-by-alexandra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waylandmiddleschool.org\/orange_black\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}