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Little seven year old Luka was stressed beyond belief. He only had forty minutes left before he had to turn in his math test and he wasn’t even done with the first page. He knew his test anxiety was bad but he didn’t think it was this bad. It seemed he wasn’t quiet enough with his panicking because his soulmate heard him.
‘Couffaine, I can’t concentrate with you being a nervous wreck. What has got you so wound up?’ His soulmate asked.
‘It’s my math test Damian. I can’t remember anything.’ He mentally answered.
‘Why is that?’
‘My test anxiety!’
Damian filed that bit of information away for later, ‘What is your math test about?’
‘Multiplication.’
‘Tell me a question.’
‘Uhhh, five times five.’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Wait you can’t give me the answers Dami!’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s cheating! And cheating is bad!’
‘Do you want to fail?’
‘...no.’
‘Then write down twenty-five.’
Luka mentally grumbled about it, but still wrote down the answer.
‘Now what are the other questions?’ Damian demanded.
‘Okay what is nine times eight?’ Luka responded.
‘Seventy-two, next question.’
And that was how the two of them spent the rest of those forty minutes. Bickering about math questions until Luka had finally finished the test with five minutes to spare.
He flipped his test so that his answers were faced down while the blank side of the packet was faced up. He spared a glance around and saw that the rest of his classmates were either reading a book, doodling on the blank side of their math test, or had their face down on their desk and were using their arms as pillows.
He decided to put his head down since he didn’t want to doodle or read. That would take too much concentration and he wanted to talk to Damian. Damian beat him to it.
‘I don’t understand why they put such absurd questions on that test. Johnny has 3 apples, his mother gave him 5 times that amount, how many apples does he have now? What kind of question is that?’ Damian ranted.
‘Those are test questions. They’re always weird.’
‘Tt, I apologize that you must deal with that stupidity for the rest of your life.’
‘Not the rest of my life. Just the rest of the time I’m in school.’
‘That is what I meant. What are you doing now?’
‘Talking to you.’
Luka didn’t have to see it to know Damian was rolling his eyes. He could feel the eye roll despite him being many miles away.
‘Besides that Couffaine, you know exactly what I meant.’
‘Just waiting for the bell to ring so I can go home. It should be ringing any second now.’ As he said those words to Damian the bell rang and he got up to go home.
‘Do you not see what you got on your test yet?’ Damian questioned as Luka would usually tell him what grades he got as soon as he received them.
Luka continued to talk to Damian as he walked to his sister's school. 'She hasn't graded them yet, I should be able to see what I got tomorrow.'
Both soulmates stayed silent for a moment. Luka because he was making sure he had the correct destination and Damian because he was thinking. Finally Damian spoke up.
'Didn't I review the multiplication with you two days ago, or yesterday?'
‘Yeah, yesterday.’
‘Then why were you so nervous that you forgot everything? And what does this test anxiety have to do with it.’
‘You don’t know what test anxiety is?’
‘No, now what is it?’
‘Test anxiety.’ Luka paused for a moment to think about how to explain it to him, ‘It’s where you get super nervous, anxious when taking a test. People have different types of test anxiety, mine is that I forget everything.’
Damian nodded to himself as Luka waved down his sister. The Couffaine siblings started walking home together when Damian started talking again.
‘Well that doesn’t sound very pleasant.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Does this happen often?’
‘Often enough that I’m surprised if it doesn’t happen.’
‘If that happens again ask me to help you.’ He stated it more than asked if he was allowed to help.
‘Wait really?’
‘Yes. It is quite distracting to not only hear but feel your nervousness and if I can prevent that then I will.’
‘Oh, thanks Dami.’
‘Tt, there is no need to thank me. I am simply doing what is best for me which, in turn, is helping you.’
Luka knew that Damian was just trying to keep a little bit of his pride in not admitting that he was helping him, so he let him be. He had learned the hard way that when Damian got moody like this it was best not to tease him.
‘Okay, well I’m almost home and I’ll have to work on homework. So talk to you when I’m done?’
‘Of course, I’ll be here.’
Luka helped his little sister walk the plank onto their houseboat and yelled to wherever their mom was that school was over and they were home.
“LU!” The usually quiet voice of Juleka shouted at him once they got to their shared room. She took the short time where he was about to answer to jump onto her bed.
“Yes Jules?” He responded as he put his backpack down and started pulling his homework out.
“How’d the test go?” Her head was hanging upside down and all her hair almost touched the floor. He could clearly see the blood rushing to her head and he went over to get her to stop. Once she was upright he answered.
“The test went fine.”
“What grade did you get?”
“Not sure yet.”
“You think you did well?”
A small smile, could be called a smirk, accidentally made its way onto his face. “I think I did pretty well.”
“Really? You didn’t forget everything?”
“I mean I forgot some stuff but then I remembered.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
Juleka was quiet for a moment as she studied him, her brown eyes staring into his soul.
“You’re hiding something.” She finally stated.
“What! Why would you think that?”
“Your way calmer than you usually are after a test. You didn’t say anything on the walk home and you seemed really startled when I said you’re hiding something.” Juleka listed off, brown eyes narrowed at him, “So tell me dear brother what are you hiding?”
"Nothing Juleka." Before Juleka could protest he continued, "Now if I remember correctly you have math homework you need to finish right?"
"...right."
"Better get on that then."
"Hmph. We're finishing this conversation later!"
"Math homework!"
Juleka pouted at him before grabbing her work from out of her backpack. She opened her math book and started to get to work. Luka started reading over the questions on his homework. It was silent as the two siblings worked.
That all but lasted two minutes before the siblings went back to their bickering. Damian listened from afar, feeling everything his soulmate felt and basically hearing his side of the playful argument. Luka, no matter how hard he tried, could not stop his talking from reaching his thoughts, which in turn reached Damian.
And if during that day’s training he smiled a little too much it never left that room. And if he helped his soulmate’s argument with his sister, no one was the wiser. The only thing the people around them knew was that Luka miraculously did good on his latest math test and Damian spent a little longer training than usual. And that was how everyone’s memory of that day would stay. Some secrets don’t need to be shared, just yet.