Dear diary, Danny likes her.

I’m not quite sure why, but Mum actually smiled when I brought up the idea of Penelope tutoring me. She had plenty of conditions of course. Penelope had to come here and help Danny too, whose grades have always been nothing short of perfect, but they’d gotten into a pretty long argument with their science teacher and had been set advanced work. The biggest condition was if I don’t get straight A’s on my first term report card then I’ll never be allowed to speak with Penelope again.

Dad gave her an astounded look at that. “You’re being a little unrealistic there,” he said. “How about at least two A’s? And if Emma manages that, then straight A’s for the semester report. Otherwise you’re putting way too much stress on an eleven-year-old.”

“I’m twelve next week!”

Danny laughed. “Which means eleven right now.”

“Fine,” Mum said. “But if I find a shred of evidence that proves how strange that woman is, then I won’t be letting our g- children near her.”

“Why would I disagree with that?” Dad retorted.

That was last night. I told Penelope the details this morning who agreed to start this afternoon. So right after Danny and I got home, there was a sharp knock on the front door. I bounded down the hall, followed by a bored Danny. They instantly perked up on the sight of Penelope who was wearing a shirt from Danny’s favourite anime. Penelope was easily holding five thick textbooks under one arm.

“You must be Emma’s sibling,” she said.

Danny smiled. “Maybe this won’t be so bad,” they mumbled, before leading Penelope to the living room.

“Are you alright with those?” I asked, pointing at the textbooks.

“Yeah, I’m pretty strong.”

Danny sat in their chair. “Emma said you were studying a justice degree. Does that mean you want to be a cop?” they asked, the same inquisitive nature that Mum has, just less invasive.

Penelope shrugged and put the textbooks down. “I don’t know yet. There’ve been some interesting developments in working with crime prevention through addressing a person’s psyche. I might look into that for a while, or on the side. It depends on how this year turns out.”

“What could change in a year?” I asked, while getting out my maths book.

“You’d be surprised. Life still manages to be unpredictable for me.”

“You make it sound like you’re really old,” I pointed out. “You’re barely twenty, right?”

She laughed. “I’m older than I look. But enough of that, we have work to do.”

I caught Danny’s expression. They were suspicious, but then it softened. It was almost like they knew something was off yet simply didn’t care. I made a note to ask them about it after Penelope left.

Penelope read over Danny’s homework and her jaw dropped. “What primary school science teacher is setting this level work?” she asked.

“I got into an argument about human instinct, which lead to nature vs nurture, which led to him claiming that clearly because I knew so much that I needed the extra work to meet my intellect.”

Penelope put the worksheet down. “This is physics homework.” she said.

“Yep.”

“You’re ten.”

“Yep,” Danny repeated. “I never said he was a good teacher.”

Penelope paused. “You know what? I’m going to go through this sheet with both of you. It’s got enough maths in it that’ll help Emma out as well.”

“But none of these textbooks look like they cover it,” I pointed out.

Danny sat back in their chair. “We can always wait while you duck home to get one,” they said.

Penelope waved it off. “I recognise this anyway. The textbooks were only a guide for you two if you had no homework to reference.”

“You’re actually kind of amazing,” Danny said, surprising me and Penelope.

She chuckled. “Let’s just hope your mum thinks that so I can keep helping you kids.”

Within an hour she had us perfectly working out problems based off the worksheet. Dad joined us with his laptop and admitted that Mum wanted him there the whole time.

“But I didn’t want to make things feel awkward or forced,” he said. “Just don’t tell your mother or she’ll have my head.”

Penelope straightened her textbooks. “Actually, I better get going. I’ve got some of my own homework to do tonight. I’ll drop by tomorrow afternoon, if that’s alright with you, Zachary?”

“Yeah, though I might actually be out here for that one.”

“It’ll make no difference to me,” she said, before saying goodbye to us and heading home.

I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be getting those A’s. Then Mum won’t be able to argue Penelope’s awesomeness.