Page 51 of Fair Catch
“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, dropping his pencil altogether and sitting back in this chair. He let out a long sigh, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s hard to explain. I just mix up words sometimes, get the letters in the wrong places. And then that messes with the whole sentence or paragraph. I have a hard time comprehending what I’m reading, in big part because it takes so much effort to read it correctly, let alone retain anything.”
I swallowed. “Jesus… that sounds…”
“Frustrating?” he finished for me. “It is. And now you understand why I avoid it at all costs.”
I nodded, thinking about how easy it was for me to just sit down with my laptop and study guide and get to work, how easy it was for me to follow along in lectures, how tests didn’t faze me.
I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes.
But there had to be a way. There had to be some sort of trick or hack to make it easier.
I made a mental note to do some research, but I knew that wouldn’t help in the meantime. And one look at Zeke’s defeated face made me want to do something.
So… I gave him a little motivation.
“What?” he asked suspiciously when he saw the mischievous gleam in my eyes.
“I have a proposition.”
“Oh, God.”
I laughed. “What if we quizzed each other?”
“Sounds thrilling.”
I smirked. “But with higher stakes.”
He arched a brow.
“If you get a question right, I take a piece of clothing off.”
His other brow snapped up to join the first, and he looked around like he was being pranked and there was a hidden camera somewhere.
“I mean, you see me in my boy shorts and sports bra all the time, anyway, so I don’t know that it’s much of a wager,” I added.
“Oh, trust me,” he said, cutting me off. “It’s wager enough.” He frowned then. “What’s your end game? There’s no way you’re offering this without wanting something in return.”
“Well, first of all, I’m not worried about taking more than my socks off,” I said, wiggling my toes to emphasize the point. “Because you won’t get more than one question right, if I had to guess.”
He feigned offense. “Now who is it of little faith?”
“And when I win and we get through this quiz without me being naked, you have to do my laundry.” I paused. “For a month.”
Zeke whistled. “Ouch. That’s harsh.”
“That’s the bet. Take it or leave it.”
“You’re all about bets lately, aren’t you?”
I just shrugged, waiting.
Zeke watched me for a long moment of debate, eyes flicking between me and his flashcards.
“What, you scared?”
“For a week,” he tried to argue.
“Well, now it’s for the rest of the semester,” I said, reaching out my hand for his flash cards. “And you get one chance to answer only.”
His lips curled up into a grin, and he handed me the cards, angling until we were facing each other head on instead of side by side.
And it was the first time in my life I’d seen Zeke look excited about anything school related.
“Alright,” I said, reading the scenario on the first card. When I finished, I moved on to the first question. “What kind of sampling design is this? Cluster, stratified, simple random, or systematic?”
Zeke looked at me like I had four heads.
I chuckled, but didn’t offer any help — not with our new arrangement.
He thought for a moment, chewing his bottom lip before he said, “Simple random?”
“Nope. Cluster.”
He cursed as I shuffled through to the next card.
“Okay. ‘Number of visits per week’ is what kind of data?”
“Quantitative-discrete.”
I’m pretty sure my jaw actually hit the floor with how fast he spouted that answer off, and Zeke smiled at my reaction.
“I got it right, didn’t I?”
I glared at him in lieu of answering, kicking my sneakers off under the table as he waggled his brows.
“In a survey, one question asks students whether they plan to attend this week’s football game. Fifty percent of them answer yes. That fifty percent is… A, a parameter. B, a statistic. C, a variable, or D, data?”
Zeke closed his eyes, pupils dashing this way and that under his lids like he was visualizing something. His fingers did little scoops in the air, and then…
“Um… B?”
My face flooded with heat, and I glared at his stupid smiling face again before peeling off one sock and hitting him in the face with it.
“Come on! I get at least two socks for that. You counted both shoes as one.”
I ripped the other one off and threw it at him, too.
He answered the next three questions in a row wrong, which gave me my confidence back, and I was teasing him until he got the next one right and I had to lose my hair tie. He tried to argue that that didn’t count, but I said since I was the one stripping, I got to make the rules.
