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Although she’s never been one to flaunt her grades, Regina has always prided herself in having good enough grades. She was a straight A student in high school, granted she didn’t take the most difficult classes known to man. But it comes as a surprise when she takes her first math midterm and has no idea what is going on when she looks at her paper. It’s a wonder because she’s been getting full points on the homework assignments and can actually do most of the problems without looking them up.
Unsurprisingly, when she picks up her midterm the next week, she gets her first D of her academic career. As much as she loathes to admit it, Regina needs a tutor. It’s four weeks into the quarter and while she can drop without a W, she certainly won’t (her pride can’t take it). Though the school offers free tutoring, no one needs to know that she’s failing basic statistics. And, she really can’t fail basic stats because if she fucks up her GPA already, she’s off the team. And while soccer isn’t her true purpose in life, it's probably the most therapeutic part of her life.
As a French and Francophone studies major, she only needs one math class, so she’ll never have to see whoever tutors her ever again and they both can pretend like it never happened. The only problem is that she doesn’t know who is willing to tutor her. Really, anyone would give their left leg to tutor Regina, but the question really is who does she want to tutor her? Certainly not some republican incel white math major boy that will never respect her (not just because she’s a woman but because she’s an athlete and not preparing herself to bear children or whatever idiots believe).
Her friends don’t need to know that she’s failing math already, but Karen already has a stats tutor named Cady Heron, a physics major in the same year as them but apparently effectively a sophomore because of how many units that she got from AP and community college classes, if Gretchen’s information is to be believed (and it always is because that girl is a only slightly strange combination of a stalker and a detective). Regina doesn’t mean to take a page out of Gretchen’s book, but she finds out when she has a class in VEGM—Regina still has no idea what those letters stand for but she’s pretty sure that the V and E stand for Victoria Edwards—and definitely isn’t sitting in the courtyard and watching the door closest to Cady’s classroom.
When Cady Heron exits the building, Regina ambushes her.
“So, Cady Heron, right? You tutor Karen Shetty in stats. I need a stats tutor. And since you tutor Kaz, you’re gonna help me.”
“Um, hi,” Cady grins awkwardly. “I do help Karen with stats. Do you want to join in on our sessions?”
“No. Meet me in McCracken hall on Thursday afternoon. I’ll be in the lobby. I’ll pay you.” Regina stalks off without another word. She probably should have exchanged numbers with Cady Heron, but she can just go through Karen’s phone later and get it if she really needs it.
Thankfully, Regina’s roommate isn’t in when Regina returns from her not-stalking. Janis is a decent person; she’s messier than Regina would like out of a roommate, but she’s not a nuisance. They don’t interact much—neither of them spend much time in the dorm (Regina is most often found in Karen and Gretchen’s room because they are the most codependent not-yet-girlfriends and decided to be roommates when all three of them got into the same university, the athletics building, or the practice pitch, and Regina doesn’t care much for where Janis is). Janis whirls into the room and immediately out after dropping some junk on her desk and picking up some other junk, and Regina follows her out because she doesn’t need to spend any more time than she does in the dark, dank room than she already does.
Sitting in the art and art history building, Regina pulls out her laptop to try to write her paper on Rousseau’s philosophy. Having to take a math class as a French major is a waste of her time and Regina has no business learning statistics when she is trying to study French culture.
(Regina doesn’t even have to be attending college right now, and she probably should be studying business instead of French. She’ll probably declare a business minor, but she has a place in her father’s real estate empire regardless of what she studies. Maybe she’ll open a branch in Paris with her French degree, if her dad will agree. And he will because he’ll do anything for his daughters aside from selling his family business. She also just wants to play soccer.)
She’s fighting with Google Docs when someone sits across the table from her. Looking up, she finds Cady Heron watching her.
“I’m not free on Thursday afternoons, I have a lab. I’m free now, though, so if you want to work on some math right now, I can help.”
Reluctantly, Regina pulls her iPad out and switches tabs to her math homework. Cady spins the laptop to see her homework, and then asks Regina what she knows. When Regina shrugs, Cady starts lecturing to her about the correlation coefficient. None of it makes sense and Regina’s never felt stupider, especially when Karen, who is in the same class but different section, seems to be understanding all of these terms. The longer that she listens to Cady and Cady helps her out with a couple math problems, Regina starts to understand.
“Do some problems on your own now, and if you need help, ask me,” Cady says quietly. “I’m going to go to the bathroom and grab something from the cafe in Lucas because I need to walk. Want me to get you anything?”
“I’ll pay, baby,” Regina mumbles, already distracted by pulling her phone out to build her iced coffee order. “Whatcha want?”
Cady, effectively a stranger, takes her phone but Regina doesn’t feel weird about it at all. She works through five problems by the time Cady returns with Regina’s iced coffee, her own lemonade, and two pastries. Weirdly proud, Regina hands over her iPad so Cady can check over her work.
“Good job, Reggie,” Cady beams. Regina feels weirdly good when Cady praises her.
<>
Regina and Cady continue to meet every Tuesday afternoon. Regina almost stops going to the lecture because Cady is a much better teacher than her professor, but Cady tells her that learning it twice is a great study tool. Before her second midterm, Cady goes over everything since MT1 so Regina has all of it fresh in her mind. Since they’re not in VEGM (which Cady was astonished to learn that all the non-STEM students pronounce it as “vegan” instead of “veg-em”), there are no whiteboards around so Cady leans across the table to look at Regina’s iPad, the ends of her braids tickling Regina’s arm. With every correct problem, Cady beams and offers a “good job, Reggie.” Regina doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she hates the name Reggie because Cady’s wide smile is enough to make her stop disliking it.
Gretchen asks where Regina goes on Tuesday afternoons. Regina lies, telling her best friend that she has weights. She hopes Gretchen doesn’t run into any of her teammates but she shouldn’t be this comfortable with lying to her best friends, but she won’t change, even if you give her the opportunity. No one needs to know that she needs a tutor.
The stalker allegations are never going to disappear because as soon as Regina gets her midterm back, she tracks Cady down in one of the third floor VEGM classrooms, waiting outside the glass wall for Cady to get out of class.
“Hi Reggie! Did you get your midterm back?”
Regina has no reason to be so excited that she’s bouncing over a math test, but she is because she needs Cady to know that the tutoring is working.
“I got a B-plus!”
“‘Grats, Reggie!”
Regina finds that she really likes when Cady gets all soft and proud of her, that wide grin splitting her face and the crinkles in the corner of her eyes whenever Regina does something right. Being the reason that Cady smiles like this is only kind of addicting. Regina stares for maybe a beat too long before quirking her head to the right, asking if Cady wants to get a coffee off campus, Regina’s treat.
“Sorry, I’m meeting with a friend right now. I’ll see you on Tuesday?”
Disappointment seeps into Regina’s chest and she does her best to not dwell on it.
“Okay. I guess I’ll see you on Tuesday, Cads.”
What happened to Regina George? Regina George demands that people do things with and for her; she doesn’t ask pretty girls to go on dates, pretty girls ask her to go on dates. In light of this realisation, Regina hunkers down in Laurel Athletics Centre to write yet another essay in French, this time about the Haitian Revolution. In a wild haze of productivity, Regina writes two papers (that may or may not be good) while completely losing track of the time. LSBU DJs are decent company, though a lot of the music that they play isn’t really her taste.
When Regina gets up to take a lap around the building, she genuinely is shocked that it’s dark out. She’s only pretty sure that she’s the only person in the building, which is always fun. Glancing at her watch, Regina finds that it’s time for her favourite LSBU show: Alpha Rat Pack, hosted by Quark. It’s the stupidest fucking name in the world and Regina hates this name so much, but she’s given up on thinking too hard about it. Quark mostly plays songs that Regina doesn’t know but she certainly vibes to. While listening to Alpha Rat Pack, Regina manages to get so ahead that she’s starting on her French Lit final dissertation. Out of a little bit of hate, she also gets ahead in math and she understands what she’s doing. Suck it, Cady Heron.
<>
“Tell me everything you know about statistics,” Cady instructs, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest and looking critically at Regina.
With a white board marker in hand (Cady insisted that they meet in VEGM so Regina can use the whiteboard), Regina draws out scatterplots and bell curves, explaining the parts that she needs to know. She rambles, occasionally settling on off topic examples that get the point across, the weight of Cady’s stare heavy on Regina’s shoulders.
Taking a quick water break, Cady declares “You’re doing so good, Reggie.”
“Thank you, baby,” she responds before diving back into standard deviation. She ignores the heat creeping onto her cheeks in favour of drawing the ugliest sigma on the board. She hopes that the tips of her ears aren’t red, but her hair is down so it doesn’t even matter that much.
Stepping back, the whiteboard is a little bit of a work of art, and it clicks for Regina. This masterpiece is why Cady loves math so much. It truly is a beautiful mess that makes Regina want to learn how to love math.
“You’re not exactly correct on binomial distribution, but other than that, it looks like you understand everything really well, Reggie.”
Regina doesn’t mean to let her face split into a beam that she never lets anyone see, but she wrangles her face into a smile that’s actually acceptable in public. The grin still borders on insane but she can’t find it in herself to stop.
“You’re adorable,” Cady blurts, her face immediately colouring a deep red.
“Thank you, baby,” Regina drawls, letting her eyes trail over Cady slowly. She hopes that the lazy smile afterwards is enough to get her point across. Meeting Cady’s eyes, Regina winks and moves to grab her phone.
“I’m going to take a lap and go to the bathroom—assuming I don’t get lost in this glass monstrosity. Do you want a snack while I’m up?”
“Can you get me a plain bagel without cream cheese?”
“Course, baby. Anything to drink?”
“No thank you.”
Wandering around the obscenely large STEM building, Regina eventually finds her way from the third floor to the ground floor cafe, treehouse, only for her order to not be ready yet. There’s no one waiting around for their food and it truly is a mystery how VEGM, the STEM building, can have the slowest service. After an absurd amount of time, Regina receives the notification that her untoasted bagel and peach smoothie are ready to be picked up. Juggling her phone, a bagel in a bag, a plastic knife, and her smoothie, Regina manages to make her way back to the space that they’ve taken over.
Regina probably doesn’t need to review this much and she’s not even pretending to be bad at math. She probably should be drafting her research paper for her French philosophy course that’s due on the weekend, but instead she’s choosing to do stats and probability problems with one Cady Heron.
“Promise me you’ll tell me how you do?”
“Okay, Cads.”
“Pinky promise?” Cady asks, holding her right pinky out like a kid, a dorky smile on her face.
Regina tentatively takes Cady by the pinky, intertwining them slowly.
“I pinky promise to tell you my score as long as we can keep studying together.”
Cady nods eagerly, and Regina finally allows her grin to show, her nose scrunching just a little.
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Walking into the stupidly hot classroom in Heldenfels Hall, Regina’s more confident in her ability to determine probability and find the standard deviation of a set than her ability to write in French, even though she’s fluent in French and has been speaking and writing that demonic language since she was eight years old.
When she’s handed the exam packet, Regina very briefly forgets everything that she’s ever learned. Staying calm and collected, Regina hears Cady’s voice in her head, telling her that she’s going to “smash this!” and she starts to work on the first question. Thanks to Cady, Regina understands all of the problems on that damned paper. Her problem solving is not the best (which is why she is a humanities major and decided not STEM), and she’s not having a very good time working her way through the problems.
Regina’s the first one to turn in her exam. It’s only a little bit nerve wracking, but she’s confident in all of her answers. As she’s walking out of Heldenfels Hall, Regina decides to make her way to the other corner of campus to visit the de Moulins museum.
She’s unsurprised when she finds Janis wandering the gallery. With an unspoken agreement, they wander away but gravitate towards each other periodically. The thoughts racing through her head keep her from truly appreciating the art, but she still enjoys the way she and Janis sometimes stand shoulder to shoulder, looking at the same work.
During one of these moments, Regina breaks the comfortable silence that blankets the room.
“I think I like a girl and it scares me,” she mumbles, feeling the smallest she has in years. “I don’t think she likes me back, which is the scary part.”
“Well, get your shit together and stop being scared. Girls aren’t scary.”
Regina doesn’t know what she expected, but it’s not that. It’s the best she’s going to get out of Janis, so she drops it. Looking at a print of a koi pond, Regina thinks about Alpha Rat Pack and Cady Heron. Quark talks about girls, science, and music in most of their segments. The weight of Quark’s words have the same weight as Cady’s when she talks about math, but Regina’s not sure why she even cares. Those threads don’t connect and she doesn’t know why she’s forcing them together.
She drifts away from Janis again, wandering across the room as she wonders about Cady, math, French, and Quark. In the same silence that she found Janis, they get dinner at the dining hall, even though the vegetarian options are less than ideal. The tofu in the Thai yellow curry has a suspicious texture and the dish would be far better off without it, but the curry has a surprisingly good flavour, so Regina keeps eating it. Janis pokes at her probably under seasoned pasta.
“George. What makes that girl scary to you? Do you have rejection-sensitive dysphoria?”
Regina pulls a face as she says “I don’t think so.”
“Then you have nothing to be scared of. Move on with your life if she doesn’t like you back.”
“I’m not even sure if I like girls.”
“Experiment, George.”
“Ta gueule, idiote.” Speaking French always gets Janis to shut up.
Janis peels off, going to Van Engen Hall while she continues on to their room. Flicking on the fairy lights around the room, Regina calls Cady, who, uncharacteristically, doesn’t pick up. She leaves a voicemail, telling her about how the exam went.
Glad that Janis is off doing something probably stupid, Regina opens up the Minecraft Launcher to go die trying to raid an ocean monument. Regina’s tearing down the monument so she can make a guardian farm when Janis comes back. She mumbles something, but Regina can’t hear her through her headphones.
Feeling like a loser, Regina takes a sip of her energy drink so she can be awake and alert enough for Alpha Rat Pack.
“Welcome, Alpha Rat Pack. As always, I’m Quark, here in the good ol’ LSBU prison cell. I hope all your finals are going well, mine certainly could be better, but enough about me. Tonight, I have a playlist for quiet study vibes, but not lofi music to study to. Join me as I do some practice problems for my physics final for the next two hours,” Quark’s only slightly crackly voice drawls over Regina’s headphones. Regina’s glad that she decided to stay awake for her favourite radio segment. Slowly grinding away at her farm (see failing at redstone) and listening to Quark’s playlist is a good time and great fuel for her insomnia.
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Regina meets Cady in McCracken Hall on Monday afternoons and in VEGM on Thursday evenings once Winter Quarter starts. Soccer is in the offseason so she just has weights on Monday and Wednesday mornings and field sessions on Saturday midday. Regina’s only STEM class this quarter is chem so she can fulfil the lab science requirement, and she quite likes chem. Well, she enjoyed high school chemistry and based on the syllabus, she learned a lot of the content in high school, so it shouldn’t be too hard (though Regina thinking that is going to be a curse, so she also thinks about knocking on wood).
Bunkered down in Laurel late at night, Regina does her best to get ahead in her cults class, her English essay writing class, and her French imperialism history course. Alpha Rat Pack is still at 2 AM, so Regina and her Reign energy drink continue to listen to her favourite DJ.
“Welcome to Winter Quarter, Alpha Rat Pack. I hope you have your syllabi and your textbooks from zlib or whatever your favourite pirating site is. I am in quite the throwback sort of mood, so today I’ve prepared a good old 90s and 00s rock playlist for you, my alpha rats. I hope you don’t hate Green Day. Here’s to not running out of dining points, doing laundry at least somewhat regularly—please wash your sheets sometimes—and those two lecture halls in Daly Science being absolutely freezing during the first two classes of the day.”
Regina breathes out slowly, Quark’s drawl oddly comforting, especially when she has no idea who this DJ is. She probably shouldn’t be as attached to some random DJ that she’s never met, especially when her crush on Cady Heron didn’t disappear over winter break. With one hand fiddling with the cross around her neck, Regina stops caring about her education for a second. Closing her eyes, Regina lets the tension seep out of her body to the tune of Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”
Regina’s glad that Cady didn’t suggest getting together to get work done in the mornings because Regina George doesn’t emerge from her bed until well after 11 AM. Thankfully, she’s living in an on-campus apartment with Gretchen, Karen, and a fourth girl who is never in the apartment. Gretchen and Karen are both morning people, so Regina almost always has the apartment to herself in the mornings. With no classes until noon, Regina takes her time getting ready, eating breakfast at the table in patterned pyjama pants and a bra.
Though Cady’s no longer tutoring Regina, she still (very endearingly) tells Regina when she’s doing a good job, even though she doesn’t always know what Regina’s studying. Cady’s taking her English essay writing class as well, and it’s very well known that she hates it. Cady hates writing essays and she makes it very well known, so it turns out that this quarter, it’s Regina tutoring Cady (more like guiding her writing and proofreading essays for her).
Study sessions between Regina and Cady are chaotic to say the least. Cady scribbles on whiteboards and papers while Regina rambles, both practising her pronunciation (even though she’s fluent in this stupid language) and trying to do grammar worksheets. Cady talks her way through many of her physics problems at the same time that Regina mumbles to herself about verb conjugation. Any business student (Karen) would be terrified if they walked into the study room to Cady’s mess of papers and rushed math on the walls and Regina’s laptop and iPad charging cables tangled on the table.
The first time Cady misses a study session, Regina’s only kind of worried. Cady didn’t give her a heads up, but she has the room reserved, so Regina sits in the booked study room, annotating a text for her English class, hoping that Cady shows up.
The second time Cady misses a study session, Regina’s annoyed. It’s the second time this week and they only have two a week. Regina does her chem homework and leaves the study room early because she can’t concentrate.
The third time Cady misses a study session, Regina’s pissed. She doesn’t exactly love being stood up during three standing dates, especially since she’s been helping Cady out, plus the fact that Regina neither missed nor was late to a tutoring session.
In that damned study room in VEGM the Thursday after the third time, Regina’s prepping for an in-class essay in her history class when Cady waltzes in, half an hour late. Regina’s so relieved to see Cady that she forgets to be mad.
“I’m so sorry, Reggie,” she rushes out as she puts her backpack down and pulls out her laptop and pad of engineering paper. “My sleep schedule is such a mess and I didn’t wake up when my alarm went off.”
“What about those other three times?” Regina means to snap, but she just sounds exasperated.
“I also slept through those alarms.” The guilt in her voice is enough to stop Regina’s anger in its tracks.
Regina just goes back to collecting her notes and building her outline.
“Okay, baby,” she mumbles distractedly. LSBU is playing in her left earbud but the music is nowhere near as good as Quark’s selection. “Do you need help on that essay you had last time you were here? It’s due this weekend, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes please. I have a thesis but no idea on how to organise this.”
“Of course you don’t, you STEM student,” Regina says, incredibly affectionate but she doesn’t care too much. The fact that Cady might not like her back still scares Regina, but, unfortunately, she’s taking Janis’s stupid advice. “What’s your thesis?”
Though Regina has her own essay to prepare for (which she really should be preparing for because her speciality is European history and she’s taking an East Asian history course), she workshops Cady’s essay and Cady even manages to write the whole thing because no one else has the study room booked. Regina’s running on a combination of caffeine and, as it grows later, her insomnia, and Cady is weirdly awake for a girl who takes mostly early morning classes. Proofreading Cady’s essay, an alarm goes off on her phone and Cady panics a little bit.
“Oh, Christ on a bucket,” she mutters. “I’m going to be late.”
“Where are you going?” It’s nearly 2 AM and she really shouldn’t have anywhere to be on a Thursday night.
“I have to, uh, meet a friend.” The lilt in Cady’s voice turns her statement into a question and Regina decides not to press it because she doesn’t want to hear that Cady has a boyfriend and that she has absolutely no shot.
“Well, I’ll see you around, baby.” Regina offers a crooked smile. “Don’t miss another one of these meetings.”
Cady returns her smile with a grin and then rushes away.
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The week before finals, their room is a mess. The room in VEGM is almost always booked and almost no one ever goes into McCracken unless they know about the study rooms on the third floor, so the two of them practically live there during the evenings and late into the nights. Cady is suffering with all the math and she’s incredibly frustrated all the time, especially when she doesn’t get the right answers on her math problems and it’s a wonder that she tutored Regina at all.
With an oral exam coming up, Regina spends the first half of the week trying to draft responses to all possible prompts, trying to articulate her thoughts about modern French culture. When she looks up from her notes, Regina finds Cady watching her.
Cady grins when they make eye contact before looking back down at her calculator. Somehow, Regina only really has two finals: chem and French philosophy. The oral exam is a sort of at home exam where she has an appointment with her prof on Zoom where she has to respond to her prompt in 15 minutes. French philosophy is an in-class essay and chem is some traditional exam.
An unknown amount of time later, Cady groans and drops her head onto the table.
“I need a break. Speak to me in French?”
Regina runs through another one of her potential prompts until she decides to do something stupid and says “Tes yeux, j’en rêve jour et nuit. Je crois que je t’appartiens corps et âme, mais je ne suis pas certaine.”
About to start articulating her thoughts on another prompt, Cady cuts her off.
“J'aurais aimé que les choses soient autrement, mais je ne t’aime pas en retour.” Cady’s head is tilted to the right and her eyebrows furrowed, and Regina’s fluency fails her for a moment when she has to take a minute to translate.
“I never said I love you,” Regina snaps, only a little incredulous.
“Well, uh—”
“Get your head out of your ass; it is not a hat, Heron.”
Regina has the wherewithal to spare a glance in Cady’s direction as she aggressively packs her backpack. As far as Regina can tell, she’s wearing a mix of confusion and hurt on her face, but Regina’s ego’s a bit too bruised for her to care.