Page 4 of Letting it Ride

“And how many footballs does the other team have while you’re in possession?”

“Uhhh… zero?” He blinks, and I think I see the pieces starting to come together.

“That’s right. So you can’t have one ball and zero balls, right? They’re different.”

Rudy nods slowly.

I hand him the pencil I’m holding and push the paper toward him. “Why don’t you work through this same one, just the way we did together? And then we can tackle another one.”

I stand up from the desk to let him puzzle his way through the proof while I dig my phone out of my purse that I keep hidden in my bottom desk drawer. There are about a million emails, all of which I ignore, and one text from my brother, Maddox.

He’s busy with wedding planning—I’ve heard all the details from his fiancée, Holly. I can’t wait to have her as a sister. I love my older sister, Josie, but she’s so much older than me that she’s in a different place in her life than I am. She’s married and living in Boston with her wife and newborn twins, a world away from my single-and-struggling lifestyle.

My brother is older than me too, so I love having Holly around. She’s my age. She’s also technically already my stepsister, but that’s a whole other story.

Maddox

When’s your spring break? If it’s the week of April 14, any interest in a cheap cruise? Or free. I’m desperate, I’ll cover it for you.

I just accidentally booked nonrefundable plane tickets for our honeymoon and realized I said I’d do this cruise. Please? Holly is going to cut off my balls if I fuck up our honeymoon.

My future sister-in-law threatening my brother’s manhood is not an image I want to entertain. Maddox knows I’m almost always willing to help out. It’s just who I am, ever since I was a kid.

Maybe it has something to do with being in the foster system before I was adopted, but it might just be how I’m wired. I’m a people pleaser. Plus, he had me atfree. I type out a reply while Rudy continues to scratch his head, my lips twisting in a grimace. Come on, Rudy. You’re so close.

We’re on spring break that week. Free cruise sounds sweet. Send me the details, and I’ll let you know.

I’m sure there’s a catch. There always is, right? But I’ve never been on a cruise, and I can’t exactlyafford to pay for a cruise on my own at this point, so this is probably my one chance. I’ll look through the information and hopefully there’s nothing too crazy. This might be as close to my dream Caribbean vacation as I’m going to get.

I drop my phone into my bag and walk back to where Rudy has written exactly two numbers, neither of them particularly legible. Or maybe they’re letters? Honestly, it could go either way. All I know is that whatever he’s written is nowhere close to solving this proof.

I tamp down my frustration, more so with myself than with Rudy. I need to do a better job of explaining this. For him, obviously, but I also need this job. Think of how many tacos I could buy with what his parents are paying me for tutoring. Or rent, or groceries. You know, important stuff.

Mom better pay me back for those avocados, now that I think about it. Because even though this thing with Rudy is taking longer than I anticipated, I know I’m going to stop by the grocery store on the way home to do that favor.

I slip into the seat next to him. “Okay, Rudy. Let’s go through this again.”

Rudy finally manages to show some understanding by the time we’re a half-hour past the official end of our session. I breathe a sigh of relief when he heads off to whatever the football team does during the off season. Weight training, maybe?

I love teaching math, and helping kids understand complex math is one of my favorite things. But every job has its drawbacks, and one of the biggest in this job—aside from the meager paycheck—is when students get passed along when they’re not ready. Rudy clearly needs some help to understand basic algebra, let alone pre-calculus.

I sit at my desk to finish grading the tests from third period honors calculus. The students in this class are highly motivated and, by and large, highly anxious, so I try my best to hand back tests as soon as possible so they don’t lose their minds.

My first year of teaching, I took two weeks to hand back the midterm exams. The number ofDear Miss Anderson, when will we get our tests back?emails drove me nearly insane. It also took a ton of time to respond to all of them, which made it take even longer to finish grading the tests.

Now I know better. Grade them the day you give them and ignore as many emails as you possibly can.

I pull out a red pen and go to work, adding correctionsand circling errors, although there aren’t many. They did well on this one. I tap the pen on the desk, considering whether doing well on a test as a class is a good enough reason for a pizza party or some other reward.

There has to be a better option than pizza. Taco party?

Four tests are graded—fifteen to go—when Annika materializes in my doorway, waltzing in on long legs without knocking. She teaches English on the floor below me, and we’ve been best friends since we started at this school as brand-new teachers. Her students are terrified of her.

I was too when I first started. She’s a straight shooter and loves confrontation—so basically, the exact opposite of me.No is a complete sentenceis her favorite mantra, especially when the administration starts asking us to use our precious free time to do something else they’re not going to pay us for.

“How was the tutoring?” she asks, sliding into one of the student desks. Annika crosses her legs gracefully at the ankle, the way she once told me princesses are supposed to, her pencil skirt smooth of wrinkles. She pats her blonde chignon, making sure not a single hair is out of place. Her sleek style is a direct contrast to mine as much as our personalities as opposites.Sometimes I look at her and wonder how we ended up as friends in the first place.

I look back down at my grading as I tuck an unruly strand of my long red hair behind my ear. I’ve never managed to get anything other than a messy bun to hold my hair in place. “It was good. I’m pretty sure Rudy understands that one and zero are different numbers now.”

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