Laura hadn’t heard that in a while. “Thank you.” She smiled. “I’m tryin’ hard.”
“I know you are, sweetie.” Her voice trailed off. “Okay, I need to go. Your daddy is lookin’ like a lost little puppy in search of food. A woman’s work is never done, I tell ya.”
“K, I love you both,” Laura said, sitting up.
“Love you!” She tapped END CALL and jumped off the bed with a renewed energy. She knew she and Brian had a long road ahead of them, but Laura finally felt like they were on the same journey. He had quit drinking, was actually making money with the online poker, and together, they were getting closer to the possibility of surgery every day. It had been a struggle, sure, but Laura was beginning to feel proud of herself for everything she had been doing. For the first time in weeks, things were finally looking up.
? ? ?
“A ‘D’?!” LAURA huffed under her breath. The red ink in the top right corner of her quiz looked like a nonsensical squiggle.
Vince leaned over and saw her grade. “Everyone has those days,” he said sympathetically.
Over the past few months, Vince had become her only friend at school. After Laura had heard Riley, Rory, and Emma talking about her in the bathroom, she’d confronted them, and told them she didn’t need their friendship if that was how they really felt about her. Unfortunately, that led to the cheer girls initiating an unspoken ban against her at all of their social functions and the cafeteria table, which made school a lonely place.
Vince, who couldn’t care less about his social status, despite being a star on the football team, had stepped into their place, at least between the hours of seven thirty and three fifteen. But even though they’d become friendly, she could never quite get what he’d said to her in the library out of her head: “You’re obviously smart. Why’d you drop out?”
“What’d you get?” she asked, not really sure she wanted to know the answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, shoving the paper in his bag.
“Yes, it does!” she said, her competitive side coming out in full force. “Give it!”
The two fought over the paper for a second. Laura’s giggles stopped abruptly when she finally got hold of it.
“An ‘A’? You nerd!” she whispered, flashing a bright smile to hide her jealousy.
Mr. Leblanc had finished passing out the papers and was now back at the front of the room. “If you were less than happy with your pop quiz results,” he said to the class, “I have good news. You have a whole week to study for the test next Tuesday.”
Laura stifled a groan and resisted the urge to face-plant on her desk. Vince scribbled something down on a sheet of paper, folded it up, and passed it to her discreetly.
The note read: “I’ll help you study.”
Laura stared at the missive. It felt a little weird that he was swooping in with a “Don’t worry, babe” attitude. It’s not like she was his girlfriend. But that red D stood out like an ugly zit on her quiz, and she had to admit she needed help. Who else would do it? Brian? Ha.
“OK,” she scribbled, and passed the note back to him.
After the bell rang, Vince walked with her to the south wing, where she had English with Mrs. Baldwin.
“So, when do you want to study?” he asked, fist-bumping a fellow football player as they passed each other. For a second, Laura felt like the clock had rewound to last year and she was walking with Brian again.
They stopped in front of her classroom, and she hugged her books to her chest. “Can we do today? I have to work the next two nights.”
“Yeah, we can do it at my house.” He rubbed his jaw. “Does that work?”
Laura nodded, even though she secretly felt a little uncomfortable going over to another guy’s house. Whatever. She brushed it off. We’re just studying math.
? ? ?
THE SMELL OF Hot Pockets wafted through the kitchen as Vince took the snacks out of the microwave. He put them on a plate and brought them over to the dining room table, where Laura sat surrounded by textbooks, notebooks, calculators, and pencils.
“My favorite!” Laura exclaimed. “Wait—” She glanced at the intricately patterned blue and white dish. “Is this your mom’s nice china?”
Vince shrugged. “All of the other dishes are dirty.”
Laura laughed. “Way to class it up.”
He grinned and took a bite of his Hot Pocket. “Okay, let’s get down to it. What’d you get wrong on the test? Maybe we can start there.”
Laura took out the piece of paper, feeling somewhat embarrassed to show him all the red ink. He studied it for a second and nodded his head.
“Okay, it looks like you got the mean down, you’re just getting messed up on the variance, and that’s ruining your standard deviation results.” He looked up at her with his gorgeous hazel eyes. “So, like, let’s say you were trying to calculate the standard deviation of the bitchiness levels of girls like Riley, Emma, and Rory. . . .” He muffled a laugh and started scribbling down numbers on his notebook. “Riley’s a ten, Emma’s a seven, and Rory’s a four.”
“Hmm . . . I would have thought the numbers would have been much higher,” Laura said, trying to sound serious, although cracking a smile. “But do continue.”
“Well, for the purposes of this exercise, we’re doing it on a scale of one to ten, because I don’t want to use numbers that reach into the thousands.” He tapped his pencil on the paper.
Laura twisted her hair and laughed.
“Okay, so you know the mean is seven, that’s easy,” he said, writing the equation down. “To find the variance, we square the group’s total level of bitchiness, then square them individually and subtract that number from this one.” He pointed his pencil to his scribble and looked up at her. Their faces were so close, she could feel the heat of his breath as he talked. He looked back down and continued. “Then subtract one from your data set, and divide these two numbers.” She realized she was still staring at his face.
She shook her head to refocus her attention back on the paper. “Okay,” she said, punching numbers into her calculator. “Eighteen divided by two is nine.” On the paper it looked so hard, but all of a sudden she got it—it was so simple!
“Awesome!” Vince said, giving her a high five. “So, now just take the square root of that number and you’ll have your standard deviation.”
She didn’t even need a calculator for this one. “Three!” Laura shouted the number out with excitement, sounding like a contestant on The Price Is Right. “The standard deviation of the bitchiness of Riley, Emma, and Rory is three!”
“Ding ding ding!” Vince raised his arms and shimmied a little. Laura blushed.
“Here,” he said, pointing his pencil to a problem in his textbook. “Try this one.”
Laura started entering numbers into her calculator. Minutes passed as they both tried to figure out the problem, scribbling digits into their notebooks. Sure, she could figure out a small number equation, but this had five numbers, all in the thousands. That D on the quiz had shaken her confidence.