The second Mr. Kaye sets Sadie’s math paper down before her, he glances over, faster than Sadie can hide her score.
97 percent.
“Not bad,” he tells Sadie, impressed despite himself. Their final math test was undoubtedly the hardest one they’ve taken all year, and he heard that the year level’s average was only 63 percent.
“Don’t say anything until you get your score,” Sadie warns him, but there’s a small smile on her lips, the anticipation of victory.
He meets her gaze as steadily as he can, though he feels his pulse picking up. He knows for certain he’s lost at least one mark—it was that cursed challenge question at the end, which he recalculated as soon as he got home after the test. A disgusting blunder. But as long as he didn’t miss anything else, there’s still a chance he could beat her. Hehasto beat her. He already has the perfect US trip planned out for her—
“Well done, Julius,” Mr. Kaye says, sliding his paper over.
He flips it to the first page right away, blood pounding in his eardrums as he finds the score, almost afraid to see it …
96 percent.
“No,” he whispers, a physical reaction more than a verbal one. Automatic.
“Yes,”comes Sadie’s delighted response. “Oh my god, this is great—you have to honor the bet, okay?”
“Wait,” he says, shaking his head. He goes through all the questions he lost a mark on: three in total. He refuses to believe it. There must be something he can do, something to salvage this—
“It was a close match,” Sadie says happily, and she’s so exuberant, so pleased with herself, that he almost drops the matter. He would drop anything just to keep her smiling like that. “It’s okay if you need some time to accept your defeat. Whileyoudo that, I’m going to finish outlining the itinerary.”
But then he finds it. The third question. The teacher didn’t give him any marks for it, yet he’s sure his answer is right. “Can I see what you wrote for this one?” he asks Sadie.
“Sure,” she says, sliding her paper toward him. “If you need me to explain it—”
“We literally wrote the same answer, look,” he says, pointing down at the number like it’s a groundbreaking scientific discovery. “How did you get marks if I didn’t?”
Sadie studies the two tests for a minute. “Because you didn’t show your working out.”
“Because I didn’tneedto show my working out,” he says, and can’t help adding a little smugly, “I did it in my head.”
Sadie offers him an indulgent sort of smile. “Good job.”
“The teacher clearly doesn’t think so.”
“Well, the teacher needs to see all the steps—”
“Those extra steps were unnecessary,” he insists. “It would have taken more effort to write it all down than to simply solve it—”
“But it’s about theprocess—”
“Does it really matter what the process is if I got the result?”
“See—morally, philosophically—you understand how that kind of thinking would be a problem, right?”
Julius rolls his eyes. “But this isn’t philosophy class. It’smath—”
“Is there a problem here?” Mr. Kaye asks, circling around to their desk again. Julius thought he and Sadie were discussing their tests in quiet, reasonable tones, but only now does he realize the whole class has stopped what they’re doing to watch them.
He forces his voice back down into a normal volume and offers the teacher his best smile. “I wouldn’t say there’s aproblem, Mr. Kaye. But I am somewhat confused about the grading of this question—you see, I had written the right answer, but I wasn’t awarded any marks for it.”
“You have the answer, yes, but I wasn’t able to see how you had reached it,” Mr. Kaye explains, lowering himself to peer over at the paper in that awkward semi-squatting position teachers do, like he doesn’t want to commit to lingering any longer than needed. “Sadie’s working out is a perfect example of what I was looking for. It’s neat, it’s logical, and you can follow exactly how she went from step A to step B.”
“See,” Sadie whispers into his ear, not even concealing her glee.
“But people might approach the problem differently,” Julius presses. “I saw the question, and my mind provided me with the answer right away. I don’t know how I’m expected to convey that.”
