Trading with the Boys

“Listen, unc…” I said, dropping a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe Rae’s right. It might do you some good to get out of here, at least for a while.” Over his shoulder, I winked at her again. “Maybe gather up some clothes and give it a shot?

Usually he had his haunches up, this man who’d practically raised me. But right now his shoulders were slung low. Not for lack of pride, or from defeat, or from anything like that. I tended to think that maybe, just maybe… he was finally realizing we were right.

“She’ll cook for you,” I said, leaning in and letting my voice go low. “She’ll clean for you…”

“To hell with that!” Rae sneered. “He can clean up after himself!”

“She’ll help you read the medicine bottles, that’s for sure,” I said with a laugh. “No more taking multivitamins in place of your blood pressure pills.”

My uncle chuckled gruffly. He’d done that and even worse, especially during the last couple of years when his eyesight was all but gone. The macular degeneration that rendered him legally blind absolutely sucked, and even worse it was probably hereditary. I hadn’t looked yet, but mostly because I was afraid to.

“But best of all she loves you,” I said, giving my uncle’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “God knows why, but I wouldn’t look that big of a gift horse in the mouth, if you know what I’m saying. Hell, maybe she’s as blind as you are.”

Rae’s lip curled in protest, but she bit back whatever she might’ve been about to say. The truth was, she really did love my uncle. Though they were constantly butting heads, they were somehow good together. Maybe because they were so damned alike.

I wondered if I’d have someone like her at his age, to look out for me in case I went blind. To pull me out of crashing in the back room of a garage for far too many years, when I’d apparently become immune to the scent of motor oil.

“Alright, maybe I’ll give it a few days,” my grand-uncle finally grumbled. He stared at his girlfriend and pointed. “Don’t get too excited, though. I’m sure as shit not leaving the toilet seat down or anything.”

They hugged in a rare show of affection, at least in front of me. And as I sat there firing my disgusting, pseudo banana-flavored Moon Pie into the break room’s garbage, one thing and one thing only came to mind:

Serena.

Twenty-Seven

JACOB

I pushed the pencil away, slumping my head to the table. It was the third time I’d tried to understand the workbook’s pages. It was the third time I’d failed.

Imaginary numbers aren’t real anyway.

It was a stupid joke, from an overly-awkward kid trying to show me the way. But I couldn’t complain. He’d met me a half dozen times in the library so far, and tutored me for free.

So much for that.

The whole thing was stupid, when you boiled it down. Calculus. For a criminal justice degree? It made about as much sense as a landscaper trying to do logarithms, or learn derivatives while daydreaming about a thousand other things.

Serena.

By now she was more than just a pleasant distraction, she was all I could think about. It was a double-edged sword, because I loved thinking about her! On the flip side however, she really took away from understanding the chain rule.

“Look,” Alex or Alan or Alphonse said. No matter how many times he told me, I never could nail his name. “You’re using this formula to find the derivative of a composition of functions.”

I tried focusing on the page again, on the ‘f’s and ‘g’s and ‘x’s scribbled across it. They might as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics.

“And remember, many of these functions are nested. They’re actually the compositions of two or more basic functions.”

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My eyes fluttered closed automatically. Immediately I saw Serena’s smiling face. That sexy, demure expression, as she winked at me over her shoulder.

“Jacob?”

I squeezed my eyes tight for a moment and tried again. This time I saw lawns. Flowerbeds. Mulch.

“Go on. Take the pencil again and try it.”

Serena was there now, up against the tree in her yard, surrounded by piles of grass-clippings. She tilted her chin to the sky, exposing her long, beautiful neck…