Memory Lane

Chapter Eighteen

"Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men especially so." -Robert Frost

Memory Lane: Chapter Eighteen

Allen and Kendall have been staying after school every day for the past week to prepare for their Math Team Competition. Mount Anthony High School and the surrounding schools hold these math competitions during the school day twice a month at the hosting school, and they allow teachers that opt in to bring their classes during their last period to watch. This way, they provide the math team with an audience.

The way Kendall described it to me is that the School Board Office doesn't want the 'brains' to feel like their 'sport' is any less of a competition than the football, hockey, or baseball teams, etc. that actually have an audience. They want to increase the popularity of academic teams.

It's not the worst plan I've ever heard. Actually, it's kind of great. Kendall and Allen are the only two on the math team that also participate in sports, so for the others this is a great way to show the school's support and get them used to being in front of a crowd. Quinn told me that the crowd actually gets into it, too.

My last class of the day is math, hence why Ms. Yearwood was so open to opting in for our class to attend the math team tournament. No one from my class is on the team. Despite being in the same year, Allen and Kendall are in much more advanced math classes than I am.

What can I say? I'm a poet. I prefer my smarts to be with words, not numbers. Math has never come easy to me, so the highest math class I'll ever take is this year's pre-calc. Meanwhile, Allen and Kendall are both in Advanced Calculus II.

Needless to say, this competition is going to sound much like gibberish to me. Ms. Yearwood has asked each of us to pay close attention and attempt at least one of the problems presented today.

Yeah, right. Let me just solve for the sum of all integer solutions of the inequality with nothing but my phone and a scrap piece of paper and no support to write on aside from my lap. I don't even know what equation I just created in my head.

Thankfully, I'm not in pre-calculus alone. Quinn and Jesse are both smart enough to be in Calculus I, but Steven is just as numbers challenged as I am and we are in the same class. Actually, he and I are typically paired up for classwork. So, we are walking together to the auditorium where the competition will be held.

Fortunately, Quinn's last class of the day, chemistry, also opted to join and watch the competition. There is lots of math involved in science, so her teacher, Mr. Lawrence saw it fit for her class to attend. Figures every teacher would try to put an educational spin on missing one class one day out of the entire month.

I follow the rest of the class, with Steven by my side, as we walk down the hallways of Mount Anthony and come up on the auditorium in the center of the school.

"They renovated the auditorium about five years ago and they spared no expense," Steven explains as he holds the door open for me. "They got lots of funding and, seeing as our sports teams are all already well stocked with uniforms and great fields, the money went towards the arts program. The Theater Department was thrilled."

I chuckle as I walk through the open door and past Steven's outstretched arm, getting a blast of his cinnamon body spray just like I did a few weeks ago when we were playing pool. Like last time, it's barely covering up his small amount of deodorant. One thing about Allen and Uncle Tim that I appreciate since I live with them: they both understand that deodorant and cologne are not interchangeable. 

As I step into the auditorium, somehow never having seen it in the month I've been attending Mount Anthony, I realize that Steven was not lying. They really spared no expense.