1 - 2cos² α = tan α - cot α
sin α cos α
"Verify the identity." The professor's voice boomed from above her.
Mavis looked up to see the balding man give her a dour glare over the rim of his oval glasses as he pointedly walked away.
Soren was in AP calculus and so was Dileini, so she couldn't copy off them. Only Persephone shared this class with her, but she was about as useful as a fork for eating soup.
Mavis copied the equation and stared at it hard, scratching borders around it. Hopefully the identity would verify itself.
She didn't understand what she was doing in this class. Where would such things come in handy? It would've been better if they taught them how to do taxes or survive post graduation instead.
"Pst hey, did you figure it out?" Persephone peered at Mavis's blank paper.
"Did you try to solve it?" Mavis whispered back, throwing discreet glances at her friend's paper in turn.
Persephone only sorted.
With a sigh, Mavis returned her attention to the identity. She solved a few of the initial steps then hit a wall.
"Alright, who's going to come up here and solve?" Mr. Lambert plopped onto the seat at his desk.
A few hands raised and the professor scanned his options. Instead of opting for volunteers, he targeted Mavis.
"Up Charpentier."
She remained seated, looking around at her classmates for help. She should've known camaraderie wouldn't be a common virtue in juvie.
Mavis wended her way among the desks to the board. Mr.Lambert didn't at all look phased by her procrastination. In fact he seemed rather amused by the scowl on her face.
A fight or flight response went off in her head when he stood. Though she wasn't any shorter than he was, Mavis took a step back but held his stare. The professor was approximately the same age as her father, not particularly burly but with a belly full of beer.
"The time wasn't enough for me to solve it." She announced, chin up.
"Then you'll have to pick up where you left off on the board." He smiled at her.
Embarrassment was no novice to her. She'd dealt with ostracism and nasty looks and whispers her whole existence, proving herself to be a fool in-front of a class full of delinquents was insouciant. So Mavis wrote what she knew, and dusted the remnants of chalk off her fingers.
"Good now continue." Mr. Lambert leaned back onto the desk.
"I don't know how to." She said with a shrug. A few whispers arose behind her, but she payed them no mind.
"Sure you do, just-..."
His words faded off like some distant echo and Mavis suddenly felt a void.
There she was, standing in front of the board, face utterly blank, palms sweaty, a sort of vacancy to her.
She felt like her soul slipped out of her body and she was watching herself from the side. Everything fell silent and she felt a static numbing to her.
What happened next she had no clue.
_
Soren walked out of Dr. MJ's office irritated as always. Though the visits became less often, the counselor still sought him out once or twice a week. Since she'd taken back the keys from the underground gym from him, he'd spend the entirety of their sessions silent. She claimed there were others who needed that gym more than he did, and there were only a limited amount of keys to give out.
He didn't get why she still bothered. Why she insisted he visit if he made it perfectly clear she wouldn't get any word out of him. He'd made the mistake once of blabbing when he got angry and he wouldn't repeat it. There was nothing wrong with him except perhaps the inconvenient need to keep things clean and orderly.
In this moment though, he wasn't particularly fond of the idea.
Detention here was different from back at school. Detention meant labor, and today he was assigned to do the dishes after lunch in the cafeteria kitchen.
At least scrubbing burnt pots and pans was more merciful than cleaning the bathrooms.
Upon his arrival he was handed an apron and ushered to two sinks overflowing with dirty kitchenware.
By the time Mavis arrived to the kitchen, Soren had gone through more than half of the utensils in the first basin.
She wasted no time in putting on an apron over her patchwork sweater and immediately got to drying off what Soren cleaned off.
"Sorry for the hold up." She spoke up as she rubbed dry a stand mixer's bowl and spatula.
"Is everything alright?" He asked, puzzled by the distant look in her eyes. She zoned off while receiving cleaned kitchenware from him, like her body and mind were two separate entities.
She blinked, turning to face him. She'd only once seen Soren look so casual, and that was on halloween when they'd played basketball with his and Callum's friends. But witnessing the Soren Masalis, sleeves rolled up, stained apron on, washing dishes, was something else.
"I don't remember, but I think so." She admits to both their surprise. She was trying to remember what happened before she ended up in her room but there were some gaps in her memory of today. Things went hazy during math class, like she was emerging in and out of consciousness.
"What do you mean you don't remember?"
She shrugs, but the action is anything but nonchalante. Her fingers reached up to her eyebrow and she started tearing at the hairs while staring off into the floor.
Soren could tell she was struggling to hold herself together, but in a moment's notice, the anxious demeanor fell into calm. Like she remembered she wasn't alone.
"I think my insomniac nights are finally catching up to me." She laughed, he had no doubt it was forced, but she did one hell of a good job making it sound earnest.
He was suddenly taken back to all those months ago. When they'd first been transferred here and he'd seen her files when Dr. MJ ran after Mavis to give back her room key.
Depression, dissociation, anorexia.
He wasn't exactly familiar with anything to do with psychology, but he had a suspicion what she experienced could have been dissociation.
"I can finish off myself. You wouldn't have been in detention if you didn't decide to step in for me. Get some rest." He offered the only form of comfort he could think of in that moment.
"Don't be silly." Mavis flicked the wet towel his way. "You wouldn't have been in juvie all together if you'd let me fend for myself."
After a moment of hesitation Soren went back to washing the dishes and they fell back into silent work.
It was only an hour later, after the cooks had rushed them and they'd finished off cleaning utensils and wiping surfaces, that they were dismissed.
Soren grabbed some snacks on their way out of the cafeteria and they headed up to the dorm rooms.
They sank into one of the hallway couches near the phones, legs tangling as they tried to get comfortable.
The sun was finally starting to glow golden after a gray winter. A cold breeze still slinked through the cracks in windows, but it was no longer as bone chilling as the stormy gales that faded away with the snow.
As Soren opened the bag of nuts and dried fruits he'd grabbed back at the canteen, Mavis shuffled around until she lay her head on his lap.
He stiffened beneath her, watching her lace her fingers together over her stomach so she took up a corpse's position.
She looked up at him, incertitude gleaming in her awing eyes then opened her mouth.
It took Soren a moment to register what it meant before he dropped a cashew nut and a few cranberries into her waiting mouth.
His fingers softly brushed over her lips, and his stiff movements made Mavis question if she'd made him uncomfortable. But then the hand holding the little bag rested against her, the warmth of his arm seeping into her stomach and chest, and he plopped some kernels into his own mouth.
And they sat like that in comfortable silence, until Mavis's eyes grew heavy and she was starting to feel her body slip into unconsciousness. So Soren lead her to her room where he placed a gentle kiss to her head before letting her close the door behind her.
That night she fell into a slumber so deep, not even Persephone's early morning ruckus woke her up the next day.