Chapter 19
Remi
A bridge of silence, wide and still;
I toss my words, they sink at will.
My patience hums, a quiet art,
To learn the language of a guarded heart.
I’ve bargained with gods for lesser quests,
But never one so strange as this—
A child’s trust, sealed tight as fate,
Won’t open just because I wait.
After the door closed behind Amir, I shifted my weight back and forth. Making pancakes wasn’t a stimulating enough activity when the place was eerily quiet, especially considering there was a child having a bit of a meltdown on the couch.
Why was she having a meltdown? Over math? I mean, I could sympathize to a degree.
I set everything down and went over to the island, then I spun the paper toward me and read the problems. It would be a lot neater if she used a pencil, considering there were so many scratch-outs that it was difficult to follow what was going on.
Tapping the pen on the counter, I hummed.
She seemed to mix up the order of things often, but judging by how far she took the problems, she didn’t realize until she’d spent a lot of time on it.
I could see how that would piss her off.
There were some other ways it went wrong, like mixing up her twos and fives, but that was the biggest one.
Glancing over at the couch, I found her peering over the top of it. Once I met her eyes, she dropped down again, hiding herself away.
I grabbed the paper and quickly swiped some things from my bag in the room, then walked over to the couch and looked over it. She was lying on her back, rotating her head from right to left rhythmically. When she noticed me, she turned onto her side and rocked a little.
“Math sucks, huh?”
She didn’t respond, which wasn’t a surprise at this point. I’d been trying to get her to talk to me all morning, and I’d become more annoying about it once Avery went to take a shower. Since we were alone again, I decided to take another swing.
I came around to the front of the couch and sat crisscross on the floor. “Let’s review.” I tapped the pen on my temple, matching the rhythm of her movements. “You keep ignoring these parentheses. Why is that?”
Nada.
“Oh, silence, you wretched beast,” I lamented loudly.
She made a sort of grunt and covered her ears.
Dropping my voice to a normal volume, I continued.
“You mock my sums, refuse to cease. Parentheses, those crooked liars, have burned more men than old Roman fires.” I glanced at her and found her watching me.
“Pretty sure Pythagoras would’ve quit by now, too, Little Valkyrie. ”
She rolled her eyes, which was more of a reaction than usual. Scooting closer, I moved the pen across the back of her hand. She stiffened and watched with a tight expression as I drew a smiley face with vampire fangs.
“If I help you master this feat, will you promise to no longer call me a cheat? I’ve battled math before, you see, and won each round spectacularly.”
“You’re annoying.”
“Hey!” I said triumphantly. “She speaks. She’s alive.”
With a grunt, she held her hand out. I passed her the pen, and she started to spin it around as if she’d practiced it for a long time.
“I might be annoying,” I told her, “but I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t want you to like me.”
“No point.”
“Sure there is.”
Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “Not real.”
“What?”
She gestured at me but didn’t respond. I sat there, trying to work out her meaning. I was attempting to connect with her, sure, but I wasn’t being fake. Did I come off as some shitty caricature?
After a minute, she stopped spinning the pen. “You. Him.”
“Sorry, I’m not really sure what you’re getting at, Mal.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
With a thoughtful hum, I leaned my elbows on my thighs. “What do you think you know? Oh, don’t go silent on me now. You’ve already opened your mouth, so there’s no point getting shy again.”
“I’m not shy.”
“No? So you just don’t like me, huh?”
“You’re not boyfriends.”
I pursed my lips, then clicked my tongue on the roof of my mouth. “Why do you think that?”
“He looks at you like my mom looks at my dad. Like he isn’t allowed to love you.”
“Ah damn, kid.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “That’s . . . fuck.”
“Swearing means you owe me money.”
“Send the bill to your dad.”
“You can’t have his money.”
This time, I laughed. “You think I’m an asshole who wants to use him?”
“Don’t know.”
“I’m not with him for his money, you little shit. Yeah, yeah. Start making a tab. I have a terrible mouth.”
She went silent again, and I continued to look at the blank expression on her face. Swiping the pen from her, I set the worksheet on the coffee table and flipped it to the other side, then I took a minute to write down all of the problems.
“Here, let’s look at this another way. You like words, right?” Going by her silence, I figured that was a nuanced answer. “Tell me the order of operations.”
She shrugged.
“Don’t be lazy.”
Her nostrils flared, but her expression remained mostly blank. Dragging the coffee table over to the couch, I angled the paper so she could see it, even in her self-imposed time-out.
“Your dad’s too soft on you. How about I confine you to this couch until you’re finished?” I didn’t expect a response, and I didn’t get one. “PEMDAS. Tell me what it stands for and I’ll give this back.” Reaching into my hoodie pocket, I pulled out one of the cars she’d brought with her.
She tried to grab it immediately, but I closed my hand and tutted at her.
“You take this one everywhere. It must be your favorite, huh?” I opened two fingers to reveal half of it. It was a red Mustang, but I didn’t know a damn thing about it. I glanced at the balcony. “Do you think it’ll survive eleven stories?”
For the first time, I saw actual anger on her face. With a smirk, I set the car on the coffee table and kept a careful eye on her movements so she couldn’t steal it. She must’ve had enough sense to know I wasn’t playing around because she didn’t try.
“Parentheses,” she muttered. “Exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.”
“Ah, so you do know it. But you’re not following it.”
“Math is stupid.”
“Yeah, but if we didn’t have math, all of our houses would turn into the Tower of Babel after a year.
Don’t get me started on what the IRS will do if I get all my calculations wrong.
Once I lose my bar, I’ll be living on the street, my hair will start falling out, and I’ll definitely start talking to myself more than I already do. Ergo, math sucks, but it’s necessary.”
I wrote out the six words beside the first problem, numbering each of them in order. Next, I used the highlighters I’d gotten from my backpack to make each one a different color. I followed suit with the symbols in the equation, then snapped my fingers to get her attention.
“Tell me what I need to do first.”
Finally, she sat up, and her gaze moved across the page. “Parentheses.”
“Where?”
She put her finger on the spot. Moving the pen away from the equation itself, I wrote down what was inside the parentheses, then highlighted all the relevant symbols.
“From the beginning. What’s first?”
“Exponent.”
“Are there any?”
She shook her head. “Multiply. Blue.”
It was impossible not to smile as I wrote out the two numbers.
“Twenty-four,” she said before I could ask.
I rewrote the equation with the part that we’d solved and had her start the order over. It took a while, but eventually, we got to the last part.
“Three.”
I looked at the problem and frowned. “No. Nine minus three is . . .”
Immediately, she began to shut down. I quickly grabbed the pen and put a line beneath every nine.
Next to the order of operations, I added the corresponding symbols so she could associate them.
After a second, I changed the dots in the division sign to hearts, giving them a more noticeable shape.
On the multiplication symbol, I added a horizontal and vertical line so it became a star.
“You get them mixed up,” I noted. “It’s easy to do. That was my bad for not using the color.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You can if you do it like this. See, you’ve already got all the other parts figured out. If you messed this one up, it’s easy to go back one step because it’s so organized.”
When I held the pen out to her, she grudgingly took it from me and finished out the problem. Without being told, she moved on to the next. It was a slow process since she had to write so many things out, but when she reached the end of the equation, I smiled.
“Perfect.”
“It’s right?”
I nodded. “Exactly right.”
The corners of her lips pulled up, but she put her fists together and leaned her nose against them to conceal the lower part of her face. Her eyes were contemplative as she studied the last three problems.
“You should have some pancakes,” I suggested. “They’re to die for.”
“Dad’s are better.”
“You don’t know that until you try them.”
She grunted, then ignored me while she broke down the next equation. I felt proud as I returned to the kitchen and set out four plates.
The door opened, and to my surprise, Amir and Avery were both smiling as they talked. He looked over at me, his expression wavering a bit. I slid a plate across the island, and he started toward me, but he stopped suddenly when he noticed Mal on the couch.
“Don’t interrupt,” I said. “She’s got it down.”
“How?”
I lifted one shoulder. “I turned it into words and colors—two things she understands. Her next lesson might piss her off again, but—”
“Swear!” Mal called.
“Add it to my tab!” I shouted back.
Amir broke into a laugh. I sucked in a breath when he pulled me against him and wrapped his arms around me tightly. “Thank you.”
“It’s only math.”
He pulled back. “You have no idea how much more than that it is.”
“Has she always had trouble?”
“She has dyscalculia,” he explained quietly. “It makes math just about impossible.”
“Sounds like you’re a bad teacher.” With a wink, I poured syrup on my pancakes. “Somebody has to count the dead during Ragnarok. Might as well be her.”
“Hopefully there’s job security there.”
“Eh, not for the gods.” After taking a bite, I groaned. “I heard you make good pancakes.”
“I guess. They’re just pancakes.”
I pointed my fork at him. “Mine are better.”
“Oh yeah? Who says?”
“Me, but I’m happy to put it to the test.”
“How?”
“Pancake-off. We’ve got two perfectly good judges right here.”
“I’m supposed to be at practice in an hour,” he said, glancing at the clock, then at me. His eyes changed, though I wasn’t sure I’d seen what was in them before. “But maybe I’m sick today.”
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
“They can give me one day.”
“Well, well, well.” I set my phone on the counter and turned on my favorite playlist. Leonard Cohen came on, and I immediately felt excited about this. “I’ll have you know that I don’t fight fair.”
“We’re just making pancakes.”
“Think fast.” I grabbed the cinnamon container and jerked it in his direction, making a cloud of it dust up in front of his face. He coughed and waved his hand, and I took the chance to grab the little bottle of vanilla, then stuffed it into my pocket.
Let him try to make better pancakes without vanilla. It would never happen.