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My stomach dropped at her words, the sudden sensation feeling like I was on a rollercoaster. “You don’t know that,” I said, trying hard not to feel offended. “My grades—”
“Their classes are much more competitive. Their focus is math and science, whereas Brentwood focuses more on the arts.”
Yeah, right. Brentwood didn’t focus on the arts. Above all else, it focused—no,worshipped—sports. That was evident when the mathletes team was cut from the school’s list of clubs last year. Evident even further when they gave jocks a free period during the school day for weight training. What did art students get? A dingy little studio.
And kids who liked mathematics? We got calculators that were nearly two decades old and an unlimited supply of graph paper.
There was a sharp knock on the office door before it swung open, revealing a girl that easily could’ve been Principal Oliphant twenty years in the past. The same blonde hair streaked with deeper layers of gold, the same thin nose and arching eyebrows, except the girl in the doorway wore a blue and gold cheer uniform. “Mom, can Iplease—” She cut herself off when she saw me, blinking. “Oh. Uh. Hey, Maisie.”
Since Brentwood was a big school, my path didn’t frequently cross with Madison Oliphant, but each time it did, it was enough to make me want to snap something in two. One specific day during freshman year—the day we went from planning to be in each other’s weddings to ex-best friends. I stared at her now, unable to conjure an ounce of politeness to return her greeting.
“Maisie,” Principal Oliphant said when it became obvious Madison wouldn’t say anything more with me in the same room. “If anything changes, I’ll be sure to let you know, okay?”
That was a pathetic cop-out if I’d ever heard one, but I also registered the hidden meaning behind her words:dismissed. My five minutes to win her over were up, and I’d lost.
I hadn’t even had a chance to read my speech.
Madison stepped out of my way as I walked to the door, her eyes on her shoes. Yeah, I didn’t want to look at her either.
With only a few minutes left until the class change, I went to the cafeteria, depositing my satchel onto the tabletop and all but slouching onto the chair.
What good was it being the top student at Brentwood High if I had nothing to show for it? Doing away with the ranking system completely meant that the top spot I’d been clinging to for years meant nothing. I was no better than a kid who slept through class every day and turned in their homework late. The grades and hard work and dedication I’d prided myself in were now useless.
It left me panicked, untethered in darkness and unable to find steady ground. Without the valedictorian label, would colleges even notice me in a sea of seniors? Without a ranking system, how would colleges know which students to focus on? Which students to give scholarships to?
Given the state of my college fund—depleted due to sibling inequality and parental unfairness—I was desperate to stand out. Desperate for those scholarships.
With a lump in my throat, I brought my math book out of my satchel, spreading it wide on the table. Quickly, I fell into the mix of numbers and sentences, letting it fill all the sad spaces in my brain. Integral functions and derivatives, things that made my little math-loving heart happy. And the worksheet on the lunch table in front of me was absolutely full of them.
Name the integral function of f(x) = sin 2x. I read the problem in my head, and the answer blinked like a neon light in my mind, a yellow and brightpick me, pick me!
My pencil worked in overtime scribbling the formula down.(-1/2) cos 2x + C. Duh. What else would it be?
Finding the right answer felt like searching for treasure—I couldn’t stop until I found it. How most people got an endorphin rush after exercising, I got one from working through equations. And the numbers now, after the crushing disappointment of Principal Oliphant’s rejection, made the world a smidge lighter.
“Earth to Maisie?”
The sudden voice, so close to my ear, caused me to jump badly enough that I drew a line of graphite across my paper. It effectively cut through the answer I’d written down, nearly hard enough to go through and mark the table. I looked up at the chairs that had been filled since I’d fallen under my hypotenuse hypnosis.
“Us” being my boyfriend, Alex Newman, who sat beside me and my two other friends, Rachel Manning and Ava Jenson, who sat on the other side of the table. Rachel had her lunch tray in front of her, the bright blue plastic with a gold pawprint on it that represented the Brentwood Bobcats. Ava packed her lunch like she did every day, and her pink fabric lunch bag had been deconstructed in front of her. PB&J, a bag of ranch-flavored potato chips, and a red pop can, like clockwork.
Alex looked at me calmly in the way he always did.
“I didn’t realize you’d sat down,” I muttered, glancing around. Cafeteria B had filled up since I’d lost myself in the worksheet. It wasn’t nearly as full as Cafeteria A had to be—which mostly consisted of freshmen and sophomores due to the proximity to their classes—but there was enough noise to fill the room. Now that I’d noticed the chatter, there was no hope of falling back into my blissful bubble of silence. “I was working on my math.”
I scooted the worksheet closer to me, though, half-embarrassed I’d lost track of time.
“It’s not homework,” Ava said, but she grinned knowingly at me. She held her cell phone in one hand and the screen was lit up. “I bet you already have next week’s homework finished. It’s extra credit, isn’t it?”
“Don’t interrupt the Brain while she works,” Rachel said affectionately while dragging a plastic fork through her mountain of spaghetti. The sauce didn’t stick to the greasy noodles but rather slid off to pool underneath them, the oil-spill less than appetizing. Even though she sat across from me, the health hazard was too close. “It’s not like we were talking about anything newsworthy, anyway.”
I put my pencil down, smirking a little at the nickname. “It’s too late. She’s already been interrupted.”
Alex reached over and patted my arm. “You know you don’t need to worry about extra credit, Maisie. School started literally a week ago.”
“Might as well boost the grade now.”
Not that it really mattered anymore.
