Chapter 2: Chapter 1: The Missing Egg [2]

2.

The bell rings. The school day is finally over. Andre can go home. He grabs his bag, follows the stream of students downstairs, and hurries out the door into the pouring rain. He pulls the rucksack over his head, hoping to shield off as much rain as possible.

This sort of weather isn't an issue for most students. Normally they get a lift in a car, a Mercedes Benz or Jaguar, nothing too rich and nothing too poor; something that says their parents are doing well but aren't catching private jets across the states either. For Andre, he’s on the lower end of the wealth spectrum. His dad works nine-to-nine shifts pulling in standard rates for someone with fifteen years experience playing security. He makes enough for the family to get by, yes, but outside of that, there isn't much room for luxury vehicles.

His mom doesn’t drive, so he has to get the bus, and the bus is small, barely big enough to support his five-foot-eight frame. The terminal is just outside the school parking lot, but there's nowhere to sit down, and Andre would much prefer to look through some of the math problems from earlier while he waits. So he takes shelter under the pergola farther up from it, in front of an abandoned café – The Problem-Solver. At one point it was a chess parlour and a coffee bar. He never got the chance to check it out before it shut down a couple months ago, not that he had any interest in chess or coffee. He just liked the idea behind the place. It was unique.

He places his rucksack on the bench and sits over it. Although there's a silver awning overhead, the furniture is wet and dirty. He watches the cars zoom by. He spots Mora Whittaker in the school parking lot, stepping into her mother’s Bentley. He thinks her parents are rich folk with nice jobs. Something academic: doctors, professors, more than likely in the medical area knowing her. She wants to be a brain surgeon. That’s a complicated, tedious job. It’s one of those things where you can’t make any mistakes; otherwise you’ll have a fair number of complaints from the mortuary department.

He pulls out his math book and looks at the differential equations from earlier. Part of him hoped that Mr Bronson would have given him more problems to solve in his head, because looking at these, he’s confident he would have been able to. He even does a few, then checks the back to see if he’s correct. He does this for five minutes, then hears footsteps approaching from a distance. Heavy thumps. A large shadow looms over him.

‘So you are looking at this shit.’ It’s Mark. Andre doesn’t need to look up to recognise that baritone voice.

‘Just passing the time,’ Andre says. He checks another solution – right again.

‘How did you answer those questions so quick?’ Mark asks.

Andre gives him a cold stare. ‘Like you said, I have a lot of free time. Maybe if you weren’t so busy cheating your way into a high-level math class you wouldn’t be asking.’

Mark laughs. ‘You think you’re some genius or something?’

Andre shrugs. ‘To you, probably.’

A thin line replaces Mark’s grin. He steps forward and grabs his math book. ‘So is this why you rejected Zoey? Too busy making out with some numbers?’

Andre fixes his tie. ‘I get it, you're mad that someone actually has an interest in something that requires more than two brain cells. How did you end up in that math class anyway? Last time Mr Bronson handed out the tests, it was upside down. Doesn't take a genius to realise you're failing.’

‘You think you’re smarter than me, shithead?’ Mark tosses the book on the ground.

‘What’s eight times nine, Mark?’ Andre asks.

His face slowly hardens into a scowl. ‘You wanna fight or something? You’re talking a lot of shit for someone who might not wanna fight.’

‘There’s a greater chance of me playing basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers than there is of me beating you in a fight. I'm also more likely to end up dating Zoey, or any of your girlfriends.’

‘The fuck did you say about my girlfriend?’ he says, now more serious than before.

Andre groans and rubs his eyes. ‘Girlfriends, Mark. Female friends. Are you dumb?’ From the periphery of his vision, he sees a school bus pull around the corner. MIDDLETON AVENUE flashes at the front in bright orange characters. That’s it alright. The bus home. ‘And just so you know,’ he continues, ‘I have nothing against Mora – she’s actually really pretty – but she’s way out of your league. Astronomically out of your league. Like not even close.’ He bends down to pick up his textbook.

SLAM!

A loafer, large and heavy, stamps on his hand, causing an intense, buzzlike pain to shoot through his arm. Andre yells, curses, and pushes against Mark Stephenson’s leg. It doesn’t budge.

‘For a small guy you have a really big mouth,’ he says. ‘My dad says small guys get mad quicker than big guys. Small Man syndrome. Is that why you’re such a cunt to everyone, Xavier? Think you’re better than everyone and have to make up for your lack of size by wasting your time learning off answers from a math book?’

‘Fuck off!’ Andre pries his hand from Mark’s sole and gets on his feet. He stumbles and falls onto the bench. ‘Not my fault you’re dumber than a fourth grader, you fucking moron.’

Mark kicks Andre in the chest. Andre looks down and sees mud all over his button-down shirt and red tie. Another kick. Pain blasts through his body. Mark kicks again and Andre shields himself with his arms.

‘Shithead,’ Mark shouts. ‘You think you're so much smarter than everyone.’ The kicking stops, but when Andre looks up to see if he’s gone, a large fist swoops into his face and knocks him onto the other side of the bench table. ‘You probably rejected Zoey because you think you're superior to her. Freaks like you are all the same.’

Andre hears Mark stomp away from the pergola. After a moment, he picks himself up. His blazer and shirt are covered in mud, and pellets of rain sweep over his slacks, making them damp and heavy. Mark has some serious issues, and being a complete moron seems to be the biggest one. Andre didn’t expect him to react like that, especially since it might affect his spot on the basketball team if Mr Bronson were to find out. Although, now that he thinks about it, Mr Bronson probably won't give a damn so long as Mark is the top-scorer.

You are reading story Everything is Nothing at novel35.com

Andre wipes his face, curses under his breath, and makes his way around the pergola table to grab his textbook. Some of the pages are torn while others are completely drenched. He stuffs it in his backpack and makes for the bus. He sees that the last students have already stepped aboard and the front door is now closing. He yells for the driver to wait up. The bus takes off, driving along the Milwaukee River. By the time he makes it to the sidewalk, it’s already rolling across the bridge towards the business district. He runs his fingers through his afro.

Mark made me miss the fucking bus!

Not only that, but he completely destroyed his clothes and math book. He regrets ever opening his mouth to him in the first place, and he thinks maybe he should have waited until after class to tell Zoey that he simply wasn't interested. That way he could have avoided the whole altercation. Although, realistically, Mark being his stupid self would have shown up to cause trouble anyway.

Asshole.

Andre pulls out his phone and tries calling his dad, but he doesn’t have any credit, so he decides to head into the school’s reception area and get one of the secretaries to phone him. The lady behind the counter (God knows what her name is) has no issue doing that. She asks how Andre ended up in such a mess in the first place, and he tells her he slipped over by the terminal. Anyone with half a brain would have understood boot that marks don't just appear on someone's shirt after falling – and anyone with a quarter of a brain would have come up with a better explanation – but his story worked regardless. 

Andre waits in the seating area in the foyer of the school, watching some of the senior students stroll into the assembly hall for their after-school study period. Why can’t these students study at home? He’s not sure, but his best guess is that they don’t like their parents all that much, or maybe they like the godawful coffee smell in the assembly hall, or maybe they have travel issues that can’t be resolved by the school's basic bus system.

The lady behind the counter comes to tell Andre that his father is on his way to pick him up. Andre’s happy to hear that, but he’s not sure his dad is, not if he’s missing precious working hours from his nine-to-nine.

Andre waits for what feels like a very long time, maybe minutes, maybe hours. He does his best to mend his math book, but despite trying to wipe away the stains from the pages, they fall out. Even the solutions at the back have turned to pasty mush. Not knowing what else to do, he looks through the other differential equations, sees them being applied to modern-day problems, and solves them in his head. At least, he thinks he solves them. How can he be sure without the solutions page after all? He moves on to more problems, college-level difficulty.

They must be college-level if they’re requiring more than three seconds of thought. 

He finds something unique: The Missing Egg Problem.

At the top of a page is a picture of a machine with electric circuits flowing around it, almost like a maze, with both positive and negative charges in different areas. All of these wires lead to three boxes labelled A, B, and C. The aim of the game is simple: Using differentiation, find which box the missing egg is in. Use the flow of electricity in the image given above.

Andre sits puzzled, unsure of how to even approach this. It must be one of those problems that has to be written out on a piece of paper first. He tries different ideas – maybe this, maybe that – but eventually gives up and reaches for his backpack to pull out his pen and copybook. He needs a better mental image; everything is hazy with numbers and equations and his brain can’t keep up with the complexity. He starts scribbling equations down on the notebook, taking things one step at a time. The first step to solving any complex problem is to figure out which equation to use. He knows it requires implicit differentiation, not because the question implies it, but because calculating the flow of electricity, especially in multiple wires, is done through ordinary differential equations.

He explores concepts he’s picked up from more abstract videos on YouTube, remembering the Falling Plane Problem which combines an intense level of trigonometry and differentiation.

That was easy, but this… this is much more complicated.

Complicated or not, he’s destined to figure it out. After all, how difficult can a high-school math book be?

He scribbles equations until his hand aches, then chalks off more than half of them. Just when he’s about to toss in the towel, he thinks of an idea, that maybe the problem is not meant to be solved by conventional means but instead by quantum mechanics.

Something comes to mind. He tightens his grip on his pen and begins to write one final equation:

‘The answer’s A,’ he says. ‘It can’t be anything else.’

Surely not. 2 and 3 only result in an error. “A” equals 1, because the arrangement of mathematical constants demands it. He goes to check the back of the book for the solution, but remembers that the pages turned to mush, although things have dried up considerably since then. They're sticky now.

Andre looks up from his copybook. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes – the answer is A – and opens them. He checks the time on his phone and sees that an hour has gone by. Where’s Dad? Why is he taking so long? The security company isn’t too far from Willingbor High, only about half an hour. Did he forget about him? Surely not.

Andre gets up from his seat and strolls over to the reception desk, expecting to see the sweet lady behind the counter, instead finding no one at all. In fact, this entire foyer – assembly included – is completely silent, which strikes him as bizarre. He turns and looks into the assembly hall, now expecting to see a hundred or so students sitting at their desks and doing their homework, but once again, everything is empty. Bags are left unaccompanied at each chair, and there’s no teacher or supervisor to be seen.

Andre turns back to the counter. ‘Excuse me, Miss?’ he yells.

Silence. The rain pounds on the roof like jazz percussion.

Gain early access to chapters by subscribing to my . Or don't.

You can find story with these keywords: Everything is Nothing, Read Everything is Nothing, Everything is Nothing novel, Everything is Nothing book, Everything is Nothing story, Everything is Nothing full, Everything is Nothing Latest Chapter