CHAPTER -e^(i π)
"Equa=tions"
Bigg
Sometimes I wish people were as easy to get as numbers were.
1+1=2
6/2=3
7-9= -2
Those I got. Those I understood. Those were easy to figure out. All you needed was a calculator (not for these ones, obviously), time and a little bit of comprehension skills.
But people? Oh, boy. People were different. I'd try to solve people a number of times, with varying degrees of success.
Example:
Answer the following questions involving: Todd Fields, Price Bigg's eighth grade crush. Bold your answer.
1. Todd Fields' middle name was: (2 pts)
a) Abram
b) Carlos
c) Destiny
d) Eric
ANS: C
Correct! (2 pts)
2. Todd Fields' smile was: (2 pts)
a) The Light of Price Bigg's world
b) The cure for at least 3 types of cancer
c) The Single Greatest Thing Ever. So Great That Every Word Of This Choice Has To Be Capitalized for Emphasis.
d) All of The Above
ANS: D
Correct! (2pts)
3. Todd Fields says to Price Bigg "I like your new braces, Price". This is followed by what statement: (96pts)
a) You wanna go get a smoothie and talk about which circle theorem is your favorite?
b) I was thinking of getting a pair, because they look so good on you
c) I have loved you since forever and would like to read a few books with you and quote lovey dovey phrases while staring up into the stars.
d) All Of The Above
Ans: None. This was a trick question. He actually laughed and pointed with several other people while shouting "Nerd! Nerd! Nerd!"
Score 4/100 - F
If people were as easy to understand as numbers were, maybe I'd be a bit more inclined to go to teenage parties and jumping of roof tops into tubs filled with pudding and drinking cocaine or whatever the new method was.
But humans were strange creatures. They weren't as easy to find as angles on an equilateral. I couldn't cross multiply smiles and words to come to the correct emotions. Which is why I have decided to keep my teenage friends, in the physical form, to a single digit. That single digit being one.
"Do you think that Mrs. M sucked out her husband's brains herself or do you think she had already been replaced?"
I shifted my gaze from my math homework and allowed my eyes to rest of Jeremy's bare back.
He was standing at the window. His fingers on the blinds, pressing down two and peeking out through the veil with a set of tiny binoculars.
"No," I entertained. I always entertained Jeremy and his idiotic questions, if not just out of sheer boredom, then so he could shut up.
Jeremy assumed that my next door neighbors, the Mooners, were acting strange as of late. Mrs. Mooner had become very distant; she would stand on her porch for minutes at a time, just looking out into the dark blue street. Mr. Mooner acted just as strange. He'd started walking the cat with a leash.
They were aliens was his conclusion. Naturally. Replaced by exact replicas and were sent to survey us human life forms for world domination or whatever. I usually stop listening to him when he started up with his alien nonsense.
"I think you've been watching a little too much Orphan Black," I said. "Though, they aren't exactly aliens."
"That sentence if fallacious," he quipped, and released the blinds. "There is no such thing as too much Orphan Black."
I was pretty sure he was using that term wrong.
He moved one of his hands and ran it through his curly, brown hair that mirrored stringy spaghetti. "I think we should just ask them a few questions to actually see if they are the real Mooners." He paused and allowed the binoculars to slip from his grip. "Just to be on the safe side. You don't want to wake up with a probe in your ass."
"How about we do our math homework instead?"
He hissed. "Math is for people with futures in boring jobs. Like accounting or economics."
I blinked at the back of his head. "So, people who are important to the general stability of our country? Whom without, we would crumble in exactly three-point-six seconds?"
Jeremy giggled. He did that. He spun around. "Me no speaky nerdy," he laughed. He leaned against the blinds. "Blah Blah Blah, is all I'm hearing, man."
I threw the comic book that he brought with him. But Jeremy being on the swim team, he was naturally quick, and ducked. And right before I could savor the sound of book edge hitting empty skull.
"How is our young little prodigy doing?" he asked, pointing down at the homework Mrs. Newton (yes, Newton) gave us over the easter break to complete.
"I hate it when you call me that," I said. "It packs on too much unnecessary pressure."
Jeremy cocked his head, and the soggy ramen noodles he called hair strands, shifted and covered up most of his face. Only his little pinks lips, curved upward into a semicircular smile was clearly visible. I shifted my eyes back to the white piece of paper in front of me.
"What did I tell you to do when you get nervous?"
I rolled my eyes. "I don't think singing a Spice Girls song in my head actually works for this particular problem."
"No one can be nervous while seeing a Spice Girls song," he chuckled. That chuckle broke apart at the end into a grunt. He had bounced his back off of the blinds and by the sound of something slithering across the carpet, he was shimmying over in his gray jogging pants, that looked snug in very predictable places.
He leaned over my shoulder, the chain he wore, silver and rusting, rested its hip onto the paper. He smelled like cinnamon and community pools. Predictable.
"Which one are you on?" he asked.
I pointed.
He read it.
Silence.
A grunt.
Longer silence.
Four MMHMMs.
Six UGHs
Eight, HUH?s.
"Jeremy, you know you can't help me with this stuff," I said. "You suck at anything Mathematical."
"That's not true," he huffed.
"Jeremy." He never knew when to give up, seriously. He was practically allergic to math. He got hives just thinking about what derivatives were.
"I can help, man," he said, and then sneezed. "What kind of best friend can't help his best bud out of sticky situations?" he asked. "A bad one," he answered before I got the chance to say one who knows his limits and isn't willing to make situations any worse.
I elbowed him in his gut. He flew back quickly, but came back chuckling. He rested his chin on my shoulder and surveyed the question some more.
"Come on, P," he exhaled, "Lemme help you out with something. I hate feeling useless." He pouted. "Don't make me the Michelle here. Let me be your Kelly. The Superman to your Lois Lane; the batman to your Robin. I am assuming that Batman and Robin were, at some point, in a homosexual relationship, of course."
"Of course." I fought the urge to smack him. "By the way, Michelle is my favorite member of that group, so...uncool. And, you can't do math. There is something physically stopping you from solving equations and understanding cross multiplying and rates of change."
"I like it when you talk math to me, P," he smirked. "But for realsy. I'm here to do maths." Jeremy backed up a bit and sat down at the cliff of my queen sized bed. I span around. He rose his left foot, and placed it in between my thighs. Uncovered by a sock and thus, smelling a tad (Jeremy will not believe anyone who says he has Toe Jam. Yes, those words had to be capitalized).
"By the way why am I Lois Lane is that analogy? Which is a Superman character, by the way. Why can't I be Batman and you be Lois Lane?"
"Because you're the raven haired woman of this duo, Price," he back-sassed. I threatened to knee him in the family jewels with my heel - sock covered - but he caught it and held it in place and laughed, sounding strained. "And I like being your dark knight." He paused. "But actually white knight, as in, like, skin tonally." He pushed it to the side. "And I shall continue to be this dark, but actually white knight, until you learn to socialize and get yourself a boyfriend. One Preferably named Leo."
"Why Leo?"
He shrugged his shoulders. Jeremy's shoulders were a bit broad, broad enough for a sixteen year old boy. And they were covered in freckles. I've always described Jeremy's freckles as Monday morning heavy traffic. They started on his shoulders; some turned right and went toward his chest, while others drove up his neck and parked on his cheeks.
They lifted up when he smiled. I assumed a drawbridge was somewhere there.
"Have you ever heard of someone bad named Leo?" he asked. He was smiling. So were his freckles. "Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo Baker from English Class who gives out free gum. I mean, come on, those guys can't be evil. It's in their DNA or something. But," he said, with a force of air, "it is worth remembering that none of these Leos have anything on Batman."
"I will never get your love for Batman. He's not even a real superhero."
He gasped, clenched his chest, grabbing a lump of skin and his right nipple. "Batman's superpower is being Batman, P."
"Also, he has a horrible record of saving the ones he loved."
He huffed. "Fine... Spiderman then."
"Uncle Ben, Gwen; Harry."
"Superman."
"Didn't his entire planet explode?"
Jeremy groaned. "You're not making this easy, you know."
"When have I ever been easy, Jer?"
He smirked. "Never. That's what I like about you," he admitted.
His voice was softer than usual. If this were a movie, or a book, this would be the moment when he confessed that he was in love with me. That did not happen.
You'd think knowing Jeremy for five odd years, I'd have figured him out. But the only thing I could tell you is that Jeremy was an expression, in mathematical terms. There wasn't any way to solve him; he just was. a+b+c is what I came up with. Simple, I know, but that was all I had so far.
A being his Athletic ability. He was Co-Captain of our swim team.
B being is Bright personality. He was usually the life of the room, bouncing off walls and making every guy feel at home and every girl feel as if she was some quirky heroine of some novel.
C being his Caring nature; the kid cared way too much about things.
Those were his three dominant traits.
I'm trying to make that expression into an equation, so it can be solved. If Math has taught me anything, it's that anything can be solved.
Humans may not be as simple as to calculate as numbers, but I think they can be figured out. There had to be a way to open and decode them. Some mathematical procedure had to explain Jeremy Smalle.
That brings up two very big questions that I know you're asking yourselves:
1. Why exactly am I so hell-bent on getting to know Jeremy's mathematical DNA?
Because we're best friends. And we're vastly different. Pi was the river that separated our personalities. Something had to explain this.
And to just be very clear at how different Jeremy and I was, here's a sample of things we believed in. Jeremy's list is ranked from most probable to most idiotic.
1. Guys With the name Leonardo were incapable of evil
2. Zombie Apocalyptic Scenarios
3. Death by Mentos & Coke Soda
4. A Higher Being
5. Aliens
6. Falling in love is smart
7. Crocs with Socks
8. World Peace! (hearts and rainbows and xoxoxo)
9. The Impossible, The Improbable and The Unattainable.
10. Fate
Here's a list of things I believed in:
1. Joseph Gordon Levitt is kind of attractive
2. Ovals are badly drawn circles
3. Math was the Holy Grail of the Sciences.
These lists beg a certain question. More specifically, question number two: why and how haven't I dumped my best friend into some vat of molten hot lava by now? How could I possibly stand to be near someone who didn't know the area of a triangle or who thought the rhombus was just a drunk square?
I will allow you to answer this question on your own by circling the correct answer below:
a) Bigg and Smalle were possibly the most ironic last names for a set of best friends ever; opportunity must not be wasted.
b) For the ship name PB&J (Price Bigg & Jeremy). Too good to pass up.
c) Someone was going to have to do Jeremy Smalle's finances for him.
d) Price Bigg was hopelessly and predictably in love with Jeremy Smalle.
Ans: All of the Above
Obviously.
(Pssst. Next chapter is tomorrow. Vote & Comment, if you enjoyed this little diddy.)