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No doubt about it, Chase thought Locke was crazy to say that Chase’s brain wasn’t the problem here. ”Really Chase, you’re not stupid or anything. English can be tough. My friend Eaan is in a grade higher than me and he’s failed it three times. Three!” Chase’s handwriting, while still young, actually looked like letters instead of alien cipher. ”But you know what’s the important thing? ‘Never, never, never give up.’ Winston Churchill said that, and he was a great man.”

There was hesitation when Locke offered Chase his dictionary. It probably was because of Chase’s mutation, but the teen thought it was because Chase now was facing not only a book, but a book that had everything about Chase’s least favorite topic stuffed in it. ”Yeah, I’ve had it for years,” The length of time Locke had his dictionary probably wasn’t important, since there was something else that Chase was interested in. It was the few pictures that he had kept in the dictionary and forgotten were there. Detective Cervantes had taken some of them for evidence, but so far there had no new news.

The look on Locke’s face was a fear entirely different from the fear of a pop quiz in math. ”Oh, yeah, those. Um… I don’t know who’s they are, but those are pictures of me when I was younger than you are now,” Honesty was important to Locke, but there were things that he couldn’t bring himself to explain to kids. Chase had enough to worry about with his homework Why should he worry about Locke getting strange mail?

It wasn't like Chase was stupid. That much Locke could see. The problem was that Chase had hit a wall and didn't know how to get past it, or maybe didn't even want to. Maybe what Chase wanted wasn't to do his homework, but rather to have it done. Learning by teaching wasn't going too well. Determined not to give up quite yet Locke had asked "Alright, so a plant is something that grows. How does it get in the ground in the first place?"

He hadn't answered Chase's question and the boy wasn't hiding his frustration about that. Well, he was going to have to get use to that. Sometimes you don't get answers because someone is trying to make a point. "Alright, so it starts as a seed, but how did the seed get in the ground?" The failed green bean experiment had proven that Locke knew that plants came from seeds. He could have failed the project, and he did, but Locke had planted the seed in the dirt. It just never grew.

This was his last attempt to get Chase to recognize that you planted plants. If asking about the seed didn't get Chase there, Locke was going to give him the dictionary to help him out. Yes Chase's assignment was smaller and simpler than Locke's, but he couldn't keep trying to pull the answers out of him. Locke needed to get some of his own work done. Hopefully Chase knew how to use a dictionary. What grade did Locke have to use one himself?

It felt weird to have a small child try to stare into his brain. Locke knew that was what Chase was doing, because he often had done the exact same thing many times before, with anyone trying to teach him his hated subjects. He wanted them to tell him what the answer was, not how to get to it. Yes he knew that unless he knew how to do it himself it was pointless to know the answer, but that didn’t mean that on days when he just wasn’t getting it that he didn’t want someone to get his suffering over faster. Well, there were students here that probably could tell what you were thinking just by looking into your eyes, but Chase wasn’t one of them. He was going to have to figure out the watch thing on his own

Which given time he managed to do. That rare smile that was usually reserved only for Chris or Mai was now given to Chase. It took the kid some time, but when he got it, he got it. Chase was better off than Locke. If Locke didn’t get the assignment he kept trying the same stupid things over and over again. He was consistent, but he was also stubborn and determined to show that the way he was doing it could work. It never did, but Locke couldn’t understand the right way. ”Yes. Watch can mean the time telling thing, and it can mean to see something. Sometimes a word doesn’t mean just a thing. Like a fish isn’t just what swims in a tank. It’s also used for how you catch one. You go fishing for fish.”

Some of the words might be harder to think of the different definitions without a dictionary. Locke had brought his down with him. How many teenagers actually used their dictionaries on a regular basis for homework other than to look up the spelling of a word? Not only did he use his dictionary for his English homework, he also enjoyed the function of the thesaurus.

The teen looked over Chase's mostly blank homework sheet. The assignment made sense to him, but there was a significant age gap between him and his pupil. It had been some time since Locke got to sit down with a little kid and help them with their homework. The easier work was a nice break from what he had to do, a chance for his brain to do something mindless and effortless. Words with double meanings? Not a problem at all. The challenging part was finding a way to get it to not be a problem for Chase.

"Alright," he said, thinking of his angle of approach, "You know what an orange is. It's a type of fruit. It's also a color. That's what these words are like. Oranges and oranges. Or... our names. Chase can mean to run after something, but it also means you. I'm Locke and my name can mean the thing that you put a key in, or something to do with boats and water." Technically those were spelled two different ways, which made them more of a homonym instead of a word with many meanings. No need to confuse Chase more by filling him in on that bit of information. There were plenty of words that meant more than one thing. It was hardly any wonder that English was one of the hardest languages to learn.

"You're suppose to think up something to say that has each different meaning for the word. Like you could say 'My name is Chase,' and then for the other meaning 'A dog will chase a rabbit.'" Chase's name wasn't on the list of words for him to figure out meanings and sentences for, so Locke had no problem giving him a clear example. If Chase asked he might help to think of how stamp could mean something other than postage, but he was not going to just give the kid all the answers.

History and English had always been Locke's strongest classes. He enjoyed the memorization of historic dates, reading about the battles that the brave fought for purposes that did not always seem clear at the time. History never changed, it was consistent, already determined. It wasn't like math where the right answer changed overtime, where the thing you had to figure out could be anything. America was not settled by the Australians, no queen of France ever said "Hey do you want pizza?". History made sense, because once you understood the first part of it, you could see where the later bits came in. When was the last time that someone told you that you could predict the next prime number based upon the first three?

Science was worse in some ways. Science was all about the unknown. Do potatoes really generate electricity? How does one determine terminal velocity? Is the earth really turning, or is it just the stars and sun moving? The only saving grace for science is that it explained things like earthquakes and Locke learned about the Moh's hardness scale.

English had uncertainty too, but it was the good kind. This kind of uncertainty had to do with viewpoints, not a number or a fact that could not be interpreted in a new way. Locke had eagerly laughed at the Simpson's episode when Lisa was asked how a number felt. That was the sort of math he could do. You could b.s. your way through that.

Helping Chase out was no big deal really. Yeah Locke was still under a mountain of work to make up, but Chase had his own work to do too. While Locke worked on his own history essay he could give Chase direction. Given that he wanted to go to college for childhood development it was probably a good idea to interact with kids in a more educational way than to pop in a video that promotes positive behaviors.

The stack of homework and classwork that Locke was going through never seemed to decrease as he worked not only on this marking period's work, but the previous one as well. Logically he had to be making it dwindle, it wasn't as though the past period had increased in size, so he had to be going through it. It just was every time he managed to get one assignment finished, there was yet another one that had to be done if he wanted his grades to improve for this semester. But he was Locke Tori, the Earthwalker, and he could make a mole hill out of a mountain. This was going to get done.

Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars was playing softly on his laptop as he double checked his reference. No chocolate this time for Kid Death. Chase was going to have to focus, and that's hard to do when you're on a sugar buzz. Snacks really didn't belong in a library, but Locke snuck in a few of those peanut butter cheese cracker thingies. Now all he needed was his study companion for the evening.

Complicated indeed, more complicated then things were for Locke. Chase's birth family was still alive, or at least that was the assumption that Locke was going to operate under, which meant that he still had blood relatives, which if not for the birth of the twins, Locke would not have. It wasn't his place to question why Chase had been removed from his actual family and and given a new mommy. The kid was young and given how messed up things had to be for you to get a new family, it probably was a painful topic. "Blood isn't everything," Locke comforted Chase, "Family is the ones that love you and that you love. They're the ones that laugh with you when you play games and sing happy birthday to you."

Locke remembered how Chase had never gone Trick-or-Treating before, but what sort of parents didn't acknowledge a kid's birthday? Chase had to have had birthdays since he had a twin. "Russel and Abigail are still there, but you get a choice now. Do you still want them as your brother and sister? I'm sure your new mom would understand if you told her if you wanted to see them again or not."