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“Are you sure it doesn’t bother you?” Wickie asks, turning her face to Dawn. They’re in a semi-fancy hotel room in Albany, where they’ll perform with Girls5Eva two nights in a row. Wickie is watching TV, leaning her back against the double bed, where Dawn is laying flat on her stomach, surrounded by books, pens, highlighters and notepads.
“No, it’s fine,” Dawn smiles. She dips down and kisses Wickie, then smiles when she notices Wickie keeps her eyes closed for a beat after they pull away. “Enjoy… whatever you’re watching. What is that?” Dawn asks, looking at a horribly deformed creature on TV.
“I’m not telling you,” Wickie decidedly says. “If I explain this to you, I won’t shut up and you’ll want to keep watching, and we can’t let that happen.”
Dawn sighs and lets her head fall on her books. Wickie fully turns around, cups Dawn’s face with two hands and lifts her up. She looks exhausted. It makes sense, considering they were on a bus for three and a half hours and then still had a six hour rehearsal today. Still, Wickie can’t let her give up. Dawn was dead set on finishing this chapter today and she’ll hate herself in the morning if she doesn’t, so Wickie will just have to help her through it.
“Come on babe, you can do this,” Wickie says. She kisses Dawn’s forehead, then turns around to find the TV remote. She turns the movie off and joins Dawn on the bed, her feet hanging off the side because Dawn and her books are taking up all the space. “Come on, sit up. Laying down will only make you more tired.”
Dawn reluctantly complies. She grabs her books and notepad and scooches backwards on the bed until she can feel the velvet headboard against her back. Wickie hands her the calculator, bright yellow pencil case and the loose pens laying around it. All of this would be a lot easier if they’d gotten a hotel room with a desk, but alas. At least they don’t have to share a family room with the others this time.
“So, what are you working on?” Wickie asks, sitting beside Dawn and trying to make sense of her notes. Dawn was in her senior year of high school when she was chosen for Girls5Eva and unlike Summer, she is determined to finish it, just in case Girls5Eva doesn’t work out. It’s been hard to combine the band and remote studying on her own, but Wickie, who graduated high school last year, has been trying to help her wherever she can.
“Algebra,” she sighs. “I suck at this.”
Wickie takes a closer look at the book and Dawn’s notes. She’s trying to determine the properties of a list of functions. The exercise demands she also draws a graph to go with it, but she hasn’t gotten started on that yet.
“Yeah, I’m no help here either,” Wickie says.
“I’m just gonna give up. I’m too tired.”
Wickie sits up straight and puts on her best stern face. “No.”
“No?” Dawn chuckles, lips curling up into a sly smile. “Are you gonna stop me?”
“Quite the opposite. I’m gonna make sure you keep going.” Wickie smiles back at Dawn. “Come on, you promised yourself you’d finish this chapter today. How many exercises do you have left?”
Dawn counts them quietly. “Four.”
“That’s not too bad. We’ll figure them out together.”
Wickie and Dawn sit on the bed in the dimly lit hotel room, trying to figure out Dawn’s functions. Whenever Dawn wants to give up or starts falling asleep, Wickie is right there to help her keep going. When they’ve finally completed the last exercise, Dawn doesn’t even bother putting the books away. She just throws them on the floor, not caring where they land or if they fall open, rumpling the pages and cracking the spines. Those are all problems for Tomorrow-Dawn. All Tonight-Dawn wants to do is cuddle up in Wickie’s arms and fall asleep.
Wickie, however, gets up from the bed and picks up everything Dawn just threw on the floor and organises it before putting it all in her backpack. She doesn’t care about the clutter, quite the opposite; she’s the messiest out of the five members, but she knows Dawn cares, and she can’t let her wake up to a mess she’ll need to clean up before they leave for their rehearsal and soundcheck.
Once everything is in its place, she gets into bed and pulls an already half asleep Dawn closer to her. “I love you,” Dawn mutters. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you,” Wickie whispers back.