2019-11-23 - Chemical Reactions

Summary:

Lydia gets help from a tutor-for-hire.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Sat Nov 23 22:11:55 2019
Location: Washington Square Park, NYC

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

peter-parkerlydia-dietrich

Washington Square Park isn't as busy as it would be in the summer, but still the chill afternoon air isn't enough to keep people entirely away from it either. Lydia had figured that here, under the arch, would be a good place as any to meet her new science tutor. She kind of stands out, with her green glowing aura still visible in the daylight, but she doesn't draw as much attention as one would expect. People are either used to her presence by now, or they just figure her to be some kind of performance art piece.

She had heard about Peter Parker from some of her high school friends who had gone to ESU instead of NYU, and with such high recommendation she sent him an email stating her interest in receiving help with her chemistry class. (While she's rather brilliant in the 'soft' sciences, the hard ones have always been a struggle for her.) In the letter she asked to meet her here and that she's "the one who's glowing green" so she can't be missed. So here she stands, nervously fidgeting like it was some kind of date or something.


Getting around town is easy. You just have to take precautions. But Peter had set up the new backpack, turning it inside out to reveal the inner lining as a standard school laptop backpack, the costume stuff hidden cleanly.
As Peter Parker steps onto the path, he runs a hand through his short brown hair, looking around for the "glowing green" person. He moves at a brisk pace, not quite a jog. He wondered if She-Hulk was switching careers.
He comes into view about a few seconds before he spots her. He is wearing the baggy sweater, baggy jeans, scarf, hiking shoes, and the backpack which was the signature to look for. Green and yellow with the sticker on the back that says, "STAND BACK - I'M GOING TO TRY *SCIENCE!*"

Wow…okay, then. Guess it's not Miss Walters. Still, she needs help with chemistry.
He jogs over towards Lydia, an apologetic smile on his face. "Hi…I'm Peter Parker. Are you Miss Dietrich?"


Lydia herself is dressed warmly. She's got calf high fur lined boots on, in which she's tucked in with thick grey leggings. She's got a long black jacket that looks nice and warm, and a wool cap for her head. She grins and lets out a sigh of relief. She didn't know what to expect from Peter, but it turns out he's just a regular guy, you know? "I am," she says, holding out a hand to shake. "And please, just Lydia is fine. And don't worry, it's not toxic or radioactive or anything."


Peter elects not to tell her about the dosimeter hidden in his backpack. Or its former intended use.
"All right. You can call me Peter, or just Pete." He gives her a more confident smile, and then says, "As I understand, it's chemistry you're having issues with. I had responded for you to bring your most recent tests, as well as your textbook, and we should be able to start with that."


Lydia nods, pulling her hand back from it hanging in the air, unshaken. It's the kind of thing she's used to, so she's not really bothered by it. "Sure. Let's go over to the Arts and Sciences building across the street. It'll be warmer in there and they've got a place where we can sit and study. Thanks for coming all the way out here to meet me, Peter," she says to fill the silence as they make their way across the street. "I know ESU is kind of half way across Manhattan."


Peter is pulling out his notebook when he realized he had been so intent on making a good impression that he'd blundered in the opposite direction. He groaned inwardly. "I'm…i'm sorry, Lydia. You held out your hand and I blundered right past it." He put his backpack on his back, held the notebook in his left hand, and held his hand out to Lydia. "There's a reason they call me the Absent-Minded Professor."


"Ha!" Lydia barks out in good natured laughter. "Don't worry about it. It's a rare thing for people to actually shake my hand that I would have been more surprised if you had." Now that they're in the building, she leads her tutor up a couple flights of stairs and off to a corner of the building which was left open to put sofas and tables for students to lounge at or study in between classes.

"Here we are," she says, finding an open table. She pulls out her backpack, which is stuffed full of books and binders, pulling out one of each. "Here are my tests and notes, and here's the textbook." Lydia's notes and handwriting are immaculate, but her test scores are borderline Cs. While this may satisfy most students, for Lydia it's akin to failure.


Peter erms, lowering the hand after a few seconds, but follows Lydia through the building and up the stairs. It has a strange familiarity. ESU's "brain dorm" was similar to this.

He puts his backpack and notebook down, then picks up the tests and looks through them, pursing his lips as the gears begin to turn. He tilts his head slightly as he reads. "Where do you feel most frustrated, Lydia?"


Lydia turns the book to one of the chapters, and then her accompanying notes and tests. "This, here." she says. "I was doing okay until I got to this part and it just went over my head. I can do the math but I just can't figure out how all this goes together." She gesticulates with her hands to illustrate things coming together, and her frustration with them just… not doing it.


Peter nods, making a note in his notebook, then reads another test. He seems curious. "Okay, Lydia, I think I see what might be the issue. You''re running these chemical reactions but I think you're missing a couple of calculations…"

Peter starts at the beginning, laying out the basic tenets of equilibrium, then points out the part while Lydia is departing from the process. They are small, minute errors, but become big ones when not accounted for. Here. Positive and negative charge here. Can you see?"


Clearly, Peter is a better tutor than Lydia's current Chemistry professor, since she does see when Peter lays it out plainly before her. Lydia is certainly bright enough of a student, but clearly chemistry is so outside her wheelhouse she just kind of got lost in all of it.

"Oh, yes! I think so," she says, pointing to an equation. "And if I do that then I can apply this, right?" One of the strange quirks about the mutant girl, is how she tends to twiddle with her pens with her ectoplasm in absent thought. When she pointed at the problem, she plucked the pen out of the air to point at it without any thought on how this might look to an outside observer.


Peter nods. After the weirdness he has seen, this sort of thing is officially NBD. No Big Deal. "Right. and when you follow through on the process with those values accounted for…see what the result is for yourself." He doesn't give her the answer. He lets her work it rhough, knowing what she now knows.


Lydia pulls a spare sheet of paper from her binder, and starts working the problem, slowly and deliberately. The equations seem to factor and reduce more cleanly, leaving a far simpler answer and one that just feels kinda… right. She nods to herself, flips the page around for Peter to see and looks at him expectantly.


Peter nods, then holds up his notebook. He had tackled the same problem, laying out his work, displaying how it broke down into the results of the reaction. The answer was circled in his red pen.
The result is identical.
"Now…do thet for the next one." Peter smiled encouragingly.


Lydia takes her paper back, flips it over to work on the other side and squints at the problem. She slowly, carefully starts with some numbers, a diagram to help her visualize it, and an equation, and starts to work on it. Halfway through she scowls at what she's working on. Things just aren't adding up right.

The girl blows out a frustrated breath, "Okay. I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong, but I just can't put my finger on where it is." She flips the paper around again to let Peter look at it.


Peter looked. He points to a point. "Right here. Take a step back, look at it. You are accounting for two of the three steps to be calculated. Valence, mass…and charge. Remember the charge has to be equal on both sides. Take a breath, look at it again>"


Lydia takes a moment to breathe, clear her mind, and to look at the work she's done. "Charge…" she murmurs looking at the numbers. "Oh! Here!" She starts to scratch out a few steps in her number crunching, rewrites an equation and goes on from there. This time, things are reducing and simplifying neater, which usually indicates that one is on the right track. "So I think I got it this time," she says, showing Peter her work.


Peter looked at it, nodded, then showed his. His writing is precise, the work easy to read.
Again…the same answer.
"All right, Lydia. You're on the right track. Now…" he passed her another test, one equation circled. "Now…do this one. Knowing what you know now. I think you'll find a different grasp of it."


Lydia nods enthusiastically, getting genuinely excited now that she's actually beginning to understand this stuff. A+ student, here she comes! She chews on her lips as she looks on the equation, and starts working on it. This time it goes much smoother than the last time and the answer comes out neat. "I think I'm getting the hang of this," she says.


Peter doesn't push her. She has the tools already, she just needed a course correction in how to use them. Her own success is proving to her that she is grasping what has eluded her.
"Right again, Lydia." He nods approvingly, then hands over a sheet from his notebook. A new question, not one she has done before. "All right. Enough fixing the errors. I want you to take this one fresh. Take what you have learned."


Lydia drums her fingers nervously as she gets a fresh, never before seen problem and stares at it. She rights a few things down, then squints at it, writes something else down, shakes her head, scribbles it out, and then writes something entirely different down in its place. From there, she starts working on the problem, only stopping once to go, "Oh right! Charges!" When she's done, she takes a minute to look over her work and satisfied that she hasn't made any big mistakes, hands it over to Peter for review. "I think I'm getting the hang of this," she says.


Peter grins. It is the grin of a pleased teacher whose student has made good. He wordlessly holds up his notebook.
The same result. Right down to the coursework.
"I think we've made a breakthrough here, Lydia. Ready to tackle some more?"


Lydia nods eagerly, "Yes! Let's do this!" All in all they spend a good hour and a half tackling the subject, and by the end of it all, Lydia has learned more from Peter than she's done from her actual professor. When they've gotten done through all the work, Lydia leans back in her chair with a, "Phew. That was a lot. Thank you so much for helping me with this."


Peter chuckles. "It helps when the student is willing to adapt and learn. I had one last week I spent five hours on and he REFUSED to learn a single thing. Then blamed me and wanted his money back. I took the liberty of telling him I recorded our last session to prove to his parents how little interest he had in actually learning." He stood up. "Normally, I charge $50/hour for collegiate work…but you've been a breath of fresh air, and I'll cut you a break. Thirty bucks for the whole session. As long as you tell anyone who asks about the break you got that I give breaks to people willing to learn."

God, was he ever a soft touch.
He put his notebook in his bag, then extended his hand. "You're going to ace this class if you keep this up."


Lydia, herself, stands and puts her own notebooks away, and while she's in her backpack, she pulls out a wallet to get Peter his payment. "I hope so if I want to keep my 4 point GPA." She takes his hand in hers, before giving him his payment, her hand is cold to the touch, and whatever skin her ectoplasm comes in contact with is left chilled and tingling for a few seconds.

"I can't thank you enough for your help today," she says. "My Chemistry professor is just too busy to help anybody through his material."


Peter does not flinch or pull away. His Spider-Sense hadn't tingled, so he was in no danger. And a little chill? It's November in the Big Apple, you expect a little chill.

"Well, you want to keep hiring me, my weekly rate is cheaper, anyways." He pockets the cash after ending the handshake. "And you can help me by promising me to apply what you have learned. These tools are yours. You earned them. Don't shy away from using them to help yourself.:


Lydia nods. "I think I can manage that," she says jokingly. Once she gets her wallet stowed away and her backpack zipped up and ready to go she turns back to Peter. "It was a pleasure meeting you," she says. "I'm glad you were willing to come all this way to help me out. I'll keep you in mind if I run into trouble again."


Peter grins the hangdog smile he is also known for among his friends. "Story of my life. Take care, Lydia."
And with that, he shoulders his backpack and walks towards the subway briskly. Just another college kid with Thanksgiving coming on and hoping to get his grades in order.
Right?


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