Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Devon
“Each group has been given three systems of equations. To date, you’ve all become masters at solving them—finding the point that makes both of the equations true—like genius detectives—”
“Or master thieves cracking the safe code!” Logan interrupts me. Not surprising.
“Yes, if you’d rather be sociopaths in this simile, by all means.” I give him a thumbs up while I circulate, a few well-read kids giggling to themselves at my joke. Normally that sound would fill me with that warm, gooey feeling, but it falls short. I’m much harder to fill these days.
“Anywho,” I continue. “You might run into something you’ve never seen before with these systems. Your job is to use your teammates, your brains, and any of the resources I’ve placed at your tables to figure out the answers to these three systems—if you can. Mwahaha.”
I steeple my fingers and do my best evil laugh. They just stare at me like I’m their mother wiping something off their chin.
Danielle’s hand goes up in the back. Her acrylics are filed to points. She looks badass. “Can we use the graph?” she asks.
“Is it at your table?” I ask back.
“Yes.”
I lift my brows and Danielle nods. Inference making skills. Check.
“Alright, are you ready, teams?”
A chorus of yeses smacks me from all angles. And one hell yes. I shake my head at the latter.
“Go!”
Twenty-five heads bend toward their task. Four stay still and stare at my X-men poster across the room. I’ll take that percentage.
I head for my desk and set the timer on my phone, barely resisting the temptation to read Jeff’s texts about being in the area last Saturday for the hundredth time.
The dot dot dot had been like three quick shots to the heart.
Boom. Pow. Bang. And they’d lasted there for almost an hour before they disappeared.
What did he write that he never sent? I’d thought of every possible text.
I love you and I’m outside your window with a boombox.
Or, I’m moving my family and career to New Jersey to be with you.
My imagination could be so selfish. I’ve reread those six bubbles a thousand times; touched the screen like I could feel him through it.
Thank goodness for school and my students.
They are the only thing left distracting me from this awful gaping hole in my gut.
I picture it as Miss Pac-Man swallowing all the little balls of joy that she can get her greedy lips around.
“Eight minutes, sleuths and thieves,” I announce, holding up my phone screen.
I love team discovery math. They are always so engaged, excited to arrive at the knowledge. The scratching of pencils on notebook paper soothes me for a moment before it gets gobbled up.
I’ve been texting with Jenny—a dangerous pastime, I know, based on my desperate need to escape all things Jeffish. But my dumdum heart has to check in on his mother and Sammy. And indirectly, Jeff.
It seems things are moving along as expected. They have paid off everything they needed to. And Jeff is starting his new position at Chicago Central. Life is moving on for them. Moving forward. Making progress.
Sydney will be flying out at the end of January and staying with his family.
When she told me what Jeff did for her, I cried.
There was joy in those tears—excitement for her incredible future—and so much pride.
After everything that girl has been through, she’s not tethered by her past or her self-doubt. She’s a goddamned trailblazer.
But there was also something else inside me when I pictured the Harrison’s home, Sammy sitting on the ginormous couch with her little feet out on the worn leather ottoman, the fire in front of her crackling beneath her family’s laughter.
Nostalgia, maybe? Or envy? As embarrassing as that is to admit.
None of it lasted for long. All of the emotions were swallowed whole before I had a good chance to look too closely.
“Four minutes, my people!”
“That’s a lifetime!” Savannah says looking up at me.
I wink. Usually I turn off timers for her because she has anxiety.
But we’ve been working on her saying something positive every time her brain starts to become overwhelmed by the clock.
She still sounds sarcastic every time she blurts out the positive thought, but at least it gets her through the panic.
My phone vibrates in my hand. Another text from Meredith.
I swipe the alert up and off the screen.
If it’s not Meredith, it’s Tara—not Tara, it’s Kev and so on and so forth.
The lot of them have been up my ass like they’re teaming up to give me a colonoscopy.
Tara with her well-intentioned reminders that she’ll see me over spring break and Meredith with her absurd attempts to get me out of the house.
Your mother called. They are professionally cleaning the house so you can’t go home.
The chickens got into the fridge and there’s bird shit everywhere.
Airborne Salmonella and E.coli. This one says My photographer friend from South Street is doing a naked educator shoot.
He wants you at his apartment by noon on Saturday.
It’ll be tasteful, I promise. She’s relentless and ridiculous. But appreciated.
“This is the final countdown. Duna-na-na-na. Duna-na-na-na!” I sing.
The kids take over, continuing the duna-na-na’s while the clock ticks away the last minute. How I wish I could be in their desks, occupying my mind with six linear equations, discovering the answers to the unknown instead of knowing.
“Ok. Pencils up or down or whatever,” I say as I turn off the awful beeping alarm. “Who wants to start?”
They look at each other. Some nudge a person in their group. Some are still staring at the X-men poster.
“I will.” Danielle strums her badass nails on the desk. “Can I hang up these graphs?”
“My board es tu board,” I tell her. “Magnets are in the bin over there by Jimmy.”
Jimmy looks away from the poster wall.
“What?” he asks.
Kid’s either stoned or stayed up all night playing video games. I point to the magnets behind him and he hands them to Danielle. She tells him thanks then whips her dark ponytail back around so she can focus on hanging up the graphs.
“Alright, so my group chose to graph these linear equations to try to get a picture of what we were dealing with.”
I squint at their work. I’ve had these graphs blown up with my own money because there’s never enough room in the budget, but I still need to get pretty close. The y-intercept is off on one of the lines, but it won’t matter. They’ll still be able to get to the right conclusion.
Danielle uses an expo marker and whacks the first graph so that all the heads in the classroom turn toward her. She’s a goddamned natural.
“This graph shows that the two lines intersect. Which is what we’ve been seeing with all of the systems we’ve solved so far.
So, they have one point in common. One x and y value that works in both of the equations.
One solution.” She smiles at her friend from her group then slides to the next graph.
“Butttttt, this one was weird. Because when you graph the lines, they are exactly the same.” She runs her expo marker over the single line on the graph.
“So, they share every point—every x and y value. This must be infinite solutions.”
A few ahhs and ohhs sound from the crowd. I won’t even have to teach anything if Danielle keeps going at this rate.
“And what about that last one, Danielle? What did your group find?” I ask, sliding beside Jimmy to block his view of the recycling bin that he’s zoning out on.
“Oh, this graph is sad,” Danielle starts, pushing her bottom lip out. “These lines never meet. They are like two soulmates who will never end up together. They share nothing. There is no solution.”
Two soulmates who will never end up together.
Danielle has struck a nerve. No. All the nerves. And I’m vibrating from the blow.
“Ms. G?”
She steps toward me and I try to swallow, but my throat is so thick.
This is silly. Pull yourself together. I give myself a mental bitch slap, but it barely tingles. My mind keeps returning to that graph.
It doesn’t matter how long those lines go on for. They could stretch off the graph in both directions, up and down over that wall where they hang, out and away into the sky—into the universe and deep into the Earth’s crust. Nothing could change their course. Nothing.
Even a thirteen-year-old can see there is no solution.
“Are you ok?”
I shake my head, then recover with a slow clap that the other students immediately jump upon. Young adults cannot resist a slow clap.
“I’m just awestruck. Well done Danielle’s group!” I say over the noise.
The bell rings and they forget all about the slow clap as they stampede toward the door.
I yell goodbye to them and start to straighten the desks into rows for tomorrow, nice and neat and orderly, unlike my insides.
My eye catches on something hot pink in the back of the room and I make my way toward it, bend and pluck the post-it off the floor between my fingertips.
I turn it over and read what’s clearly a child’s handwriting.
Shadow Daddy
And just like that, my own Ms. Pacman is swallowed whole by Jessica’s pain.