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SEPTEMBER
The next month was an awesome combination of euphoria and perfection.
Freshman year is goingsomuch better than it was before. I have straight As in all of my classes right now. I’ve been placing at the scrimmage meets. Jake’s been helping me study for my coding class becauseoh my gosh.We have coding projects due every week, and they’ve been getting progressively harder. Jake has no experience in coding whatsoever, but I’m thankful for his help.
Lately...it feels nice. I never thought I’d ever be in a platonic relationship with Jake Larson. But it feels nice. He’s super helpful and supportive. Even now, as I’m figuring out the slope of a parabolic function.
“Math is ass,” I blurt out, getting frustrated that I keep getting dinged on the math software for having the wrong answer. Jake’s sitting on the floor, eating Skittles, trying to not laugh. “What’s so funny,Jacob?” This makes him laugh harder.The bastard.
“Nothing at all, doll. But we really need a crash course on how to curse properly.”
Now he’s making fun of how I curse. I try to hide my smile as I face down on my bed and groan into my pillow.
“Whatever. I was so gifted in high school with math. Now I feel like I’m trying to calculate how to catapult a grapefruit to Venus.” He chokes on a Skittle. “It’s only slope...why am I having a hard time figuring it out?” I’m getting genuinely frustrated. It doesn’t make sense.
Jake’s sigh is the last thing I hear before I feel a dip in my bed.
“Allie, sit up.” I shake my head, and he laughs again. “Lift your head, doll. Face your problems head on.” I hate when he’s right. Sighing, I get up and sit against the bedframe with my arms crossed. I’m sure I look like a toddler right now, but I don’t care. “Now, what’s the issue? Are you having trouble finding slope? Or are you doing calculations manually?”
“I’m doing it manually! I have the formula for slope, but for some reason, it’s giving me the wrong answer when I substitute numbers in for the formula. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
He holds out his hand for my notebook, and I hand it over to him. He looks through the pages, and I watch him expectantly. It takes a full five minutes before he lifts his head, nodding.
“I know what you’re doing wrong here,” he says with a serious face. I wait for him to tell me, but he just hands me the notebook back.
“Well? What am I doing wrong?”
He just smiles at me and shakes his head.
“Nope. You’re gonna figure it out on your own. Look over your work.”
You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me.“Jake—”
“Look at your work again, Allie.”
Sighing, I look down at the question again:
Find the equation of the line.
(-96,0)(100,147)
I just stare at it. “Make a graph, babydoll.” I roll my eyes and silently mock him.
“Make a graph, babydoll,”I mutter.
He just laughs and scolds me. “Don’t be a brat. Put the points in the formula and calculate. You got this.” I give him an annoyed look, and he just winks at me. If I weren’t annoyed, I’d think that was cute. But I look back down at my notebook. Sighing, I draw out a graph. Looking back up at Jake, I see that he’s still watching me. “Now plot some points.” I roll my eyes again and continue.
I plot the two points and input them in the formula. I do the math required to get to the slope, and I’m still getting the same answer. Jake senses my frustration as I look up at him.
He takes the notebook from me again and points to the error. Shit. Ignoring the second minus symbol.Rookie mistake. I freaking hate Jake for not just saying that before. It would’ve saved me the stress.
“Why couldn’t you point that out before? Instead of putting me through stress.”
He smiles at me again. “I didn’t mean to stress you out. I just want you to get into the habit of facing your problems head on and figuring out how to fix them. Never run away from a problem.”
I just stare at him. What message is he trying to send me? Is this about math? He just gives me a small smile.
