Finding X

Chapter One

I stared mournfully at my calendar, at the happy-sad little box that read the 14th. Happy because, hey, it’s Valentine’s Day, the lovey day with the chocolate. Sad because not all of my family are going to be enjoying it.

            Sighing, I turned away from the calendar, bent over my desk and listlessly scrawled numbers on a piece of paper with a sad little pencil. Algebra, I thought bitterly. The world’s curse. It was Saturday but I was working anyway because I was bored to death. However, with a problem much worse than this ridiculous two-variable equation weighing down my brain, it was impossible to concentrate. So I just wrinkled up the paper and tossed it in the direction of the overflowing garbage, but missing dreadfully.

            Resting my head on my folded arms, I worked out this dilemma in my head. Half of my brain was still submerged waist deep in algebra and I so was thinking about this as a math problem. Advance distribute, combine the like terms. If there was any subtraction involved, I’d have to use the addition of the opposite strategy. Reverse undo. Find X.

            X = how to give my sister the best Valentine’s Day ever.

            I was so good at this! How on earth did I get that big red C+ on my last test?

           Connie and Max have been married for almost two years and they are most definitely a picture-perfect match. Max had been a close friend of the family for forever. I don’t even remember much of how he and Connie had met. He owned a tow truck company called “Max’s Towing”. Ha. Creative, right? When Connie’s convertible blew a tire five years ago, and Max drove up in his tow truck, it all started. After that, we found out that he actually lived like, two blocks away. (That almost seemed too coincidental to be true). Since then he’s just been around and after a few years he and Connie started getting chummy, which was annoying because Connie and I used to be really close (as close as two sisters seven years apart could be.) I really hated Max for a long time for taking my sister away from me. I remembered how after he brought her home from a date, she would be in a daze for the rest of the night, not even listening when I talked to her. But then Max started playing the role of the big brother I never had. There were those trips to McDonald’s, the times he’d lament with me over the hopelessness of school, those long, absorbing talks about guys. (He gave such wonderful tips, I follow them even now.)

            And then they got married and I couldn’t have been happier for my sister.

            “A match made from heaven,” everyone was squealing amidst tears and hearty laughter.

            Unfortunately, that heavenly match had a fight two days ago and they weren’t speaking to each other. I didn’t even know what it was about. All I knew was that at ten o’clock at night, Connie appeared at our door after leaving her small house several blocks away. She had a bag filled with night stuff and she told us that she was sleeping in her old room. She had been wearing one of her favorite, sparkly dresses. Her eyes had been red and puffy but mostly she looked furious, her hands clenching and unclenching. I’d been worried she’d strangled Max.

            She had acted very childishly for a married woman of twenty-three. But I didn’t dare tell her that. She’d looked too worked up at that moment. The next morning she didn’t even go back to her house.

            Even now, as I sat at my desk, distributing my problem, she was in her room, doing whatever. On Facebook maybe. Possibly finding pictures of her old boyfriends and posting them, just to get under Max's skin. Her behavior made me kind of mad and I’ve told Mom this, though she’d just sighed and said, “Couples have their arguments. They’ll get over it eventually.” But I didn’t know how long “eventually” was going to be. It had already been over two days and I was starting to get anxious for Connie to get back to her own house. Not that I had a problem with her personally, but this was really starting to get over the top, especially since she refused to give out any details. My curiosity was a raging thing inside of me, and Connie was making it just about impossible to satisfy it.