Chapter 5
Manning gazed out the classroom window as his precalculus teacher’s voice droned on and on, explaining complex mathematical theorems that failed to hold Manning’s attention. Since leaving the house that morning, he’d been unable to concentrate on anything other than the conversation—argument?—he’d had with his father.
Something was going on between his parents.
Something bad.
Last night when Manning crept downstairs to get a drink of water, he’d found his father sleeping on the living room sofa. And it wasn’t the first time, either. When it happened last month, his dad told him that he’d fallen asleep watching a late football game. But over breakfast that morning, Manning had sensed some tension between his parents. They’d hardly spoken to each other, and whenever their eyes met across the table, they couldn’t seem to look away fast enough.
So when Manning saw his father on the sofa last night, he knew something was wrong. His suspicions were confirmed when he caught his dad outright lying about his phone conversation.
Why did he lie about who he was talking to? Manning wondered apprehensively. What is he hiding?
Manning was afraid to find out, because he didn’t want to end up like his cousins Michael and Marcus, whose parents had recently gotten divorced. Poor Marcus hadn’t been the same ever since he’d caught his mother making out with another man. The last time Manning spoke to Mike on the phone, Mike told him that Marcus still had nightmares and often cried himself to sleep at night. Even though Mike tried to act all tough and brave, Manning knew that he was hurting just as much as Marcus. They missed their mom, and they didn’t understand how she could abandon them the way she’d done. Manning didn’t understand, either.
He loved his parents more than anything. He didn’t want to be forced to choose between them if they got divorced. If his dad returned to Atlanta, he wouldn’t want to be left behind, nor would his brothers. On the other hand, Manning couldn’t bear the thought of his mother living alone in that big ol’ house. She’d be sad and lonely, and Manning would miss the hell out of her.
“Am I boring you, Mr. Wolf?”
Snapped out of his reverie, Manning turned from the window to meet the reproachful glare of his teacher, a middle-aged white dude with shaggy brown hair that matched his corduroy slacks and Hush Puppies.
Manning eyed him blankly. “Huh?”
As his classmates snickered, Mr. Langenkamp frowned with displeasure. “I asked whether I was boring you, since you’d obviously rather daydream than pay attention to the lesson.”
“I wasn’t daydreaming,” Manning objected.
“No?” Mr. Langenkamp challenged, raising a bushy brow. “Then you heard my explanation for how to solve the equation on the board?”
Manning hesitated for a moment, darting a glance around the room. While most of his classmates gave him better-you-than-me looks, one bespectacled girl smiled encouragingly at him. Something about her smile tugged at Manning, and he stared at her until she blushed and dropped her eyes.
“Mr. Wolf?”
Glancing away from the girl, Manning met his teacher’s stern gaze. “Yeah, I heard your explanation.”
“Oh, really?” Mr. Langenkamp countered skeptically. “In that case, why don’t you tell us the answer.”
“Sir?”
Mr. Langenkamp gestured to the chalkboard. “Prove that you were paying attention. Solve the problem.”
A hushed silence swept over the room. Manning could sense the other kids holding their collective breath, waiting to witness the outcome of this showdown between him and the teacher who struck fear in the hearts of every student unlucky enough to be assigned to his class.
Mr. Langenkamp smirked at Manning. “Any day now, Mr. Wolf.”
Taking a deep breath, Manning rose from his chair and walked to the front of the classroom. Lips pursed, eyes narrowed in concentration, he studied the quadratic equation scrawled across the chalkboard.
3x3 = –13x2 + 10x
After several moments, he picked up a piece of chalk and went about solving the problem.
When he’d finished, he set the chalk down and turned to face Mr. Langenkamp.
Dude looked stunned.
“Sir?” Manning prompted. “Is this correct?”
Mr. Langenkamp blinked rapidly and glanced around at the shocked faces of his other students, then nodded grudgingly.
“Explain how you reached the solution,” he instructed tersely.
“Okay, check this out.” Pointing to the chalkboard, Manning rattled off the steps he’d taken. “Using the factoring method, I moved the non-zero terms to the left side of the equation, setting the polynomial equal to zero. Next I factored the quadratic and set each factor equal to zero to solve the smaller equations. After that I plugged each answer into the original equation to make sure the quadratic equation was true and—Shazam!—problem solved.”
As laughter erupted around the room, Mr. Langenkamp scowled.
Smothering a triumphant grin, Manning asked innocently, “Would you like me to demonstrate how to solve the equation using the quadratic formula? Or by completing the square?”
“Ah, no, that won’t be necessary. Please have a seat, Manning.” Mr. Langenkamp paused, then added gruffly, “And stop daydreaming in my class. I won’t go so easy on you next time.”
“Yes, sir,” Manning said with mock solemnity.
As he sauntered back to his desk, his classmates stared at him with varying degrees of admiration, amusement and envy. A pretty blonde seated near the front winked flirtatiously at him. Even as Manning smiled back, his gaze was already skipping past her to rest on the girl with the thick eyeglasses. But her head was bent as she scribbled furiously in her notebook.
When the dismissal bell rang, the teacher asked Manning to stay behind.
As the other students filed noisily out of the classroom, Mr. Langenkamp leaned a hip against the corner of his desk and folded his arms across his chest. “You set me up, Mr. Wolf.”
Manning eyed him blankly. “What do you mean?”
“You were never worried about not being able to solve the equation. But you pretended you were so the joke would be on me.”
Manning gave him a look of exaggerated innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Langenkamp.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.” The man smiled wryly at Manning. “Do you know how rare it is for ninth graders to take precalculus? You and Miss Chastain are the only freshmen enrolled in precalculus in the entire school. We’ve barely started the unit on quadratic equations, and you already know all the methods for solving them. How do you explain that?”
Manning shrugged. “Every summer my mom makes me and my brothers read a certain number of books, and she gives us math and science lessons to get us prepared for each new school year.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Mr. Langenkamp mused, shaking his head. “Your mother’s the youngest superintendent we’ve ever had. Of course her children are wunderkinds.”
Recognizing the term, Manning chuckled. “I wouldn’t say all that.”
“You don’t have to. Everyone else will.” Mr. Langenkamp smiled. “On that note, have you ever considered becoming a math tutor? For a few hours a week after school, you could earn some extra cash and help your less fortunate peers who weren’t gifted with your mathematical brilliance.”
Manning thought about the conversation he’d just had with his mother about him and his brothers getting involved in various activities. He knew she’d be pleased with him becoming a math tutor, even if he wasn’t exactly sold on the idea.
“What do you say?” his teacher prodded.
“I’ll think about it,” Manning said, making no promises.
“Please do.”
After leaving Mr. Langenkamp’s classroom, Manning headed down the noisy hallway toward his locker, sidestepping a group of rowdy freshmen who were tossing wads of paper at one another. Not for the first time, Manning wished he were back in Atlanta attending high school with Mike, Quentin Reddick and the rest of the crew from their neighborhood. Although Manning had made a few good friends here, none of them could replace the homeboys he’d left behind.
“Nice work in class.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Manning saw the nerdy-looking girl from precalculus. The girl with the beautiful smile.
“Thanks,” he told her.
“I knew you could do it,” she stated, falling in step beside him.
Manning cocked a brow at her. “How’d you know that?”
“You’re smart. Gifted.”
Manning shook his head with a grimace. “That word gets thrown around too much.”
She eyed him knowingly. “If you weren’t gifted, how else could you have spaced out for most of class and still come up with the right answer to the equation?”
Manning smiled at her. “I got lucky.” When he noticed that she was struggling to keep pace with his long-legged stride, he automatically slowed down. “What’s your name, shorty?”
She smiled shyly. “Taylor Chastain.”
He shook her small, proffered hand. “Manning—”
“Wolf. I know.” She laughed. “Mr. Langenkamp must have called your name a hundred times today. He probably regrets that now.”
Manning chuckled, discreetly checking out Taylor’s appearance. She wore a baggy beige sweater over a plaid wool skirt that fell past her knees. The frumpy outfit was topped off by ugly wooden clogs that made an annoying clip-clop sound as she walked. Her dark hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and black horn-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of her nose. On the plus side, her skin was smooth, without a trace of the acne that plagued many of their peers. The color reminded Manning of his great-grandmother’s brown sugar pecan pie.
Between the bulky sweater Taylor wore and the books clutched to her chest, he couldn’t tell how big her breasts were. But he knew they couldn’t compare to Caitlyn’s bodacious boobs, which he’d ogled the entire ride to school that morning.
“So,” Taylor interrupted before his mind began to wander, “did Mr. Langenkamp ask you to be a math tutor?”
“Yeah.” Manning shot her a surprised look. “How’d you know?”
Taylor grinned mysteriously. “I know everything.”
Manning laughed. “I’m starting to believe that.”
Taylor’s grin widened. Looking at her, Manning had a sudden urge to pluck her glasses off her face so he could see her eyes better.
“I was just kidding,” she continued. “I knew because Mr. Langenkamp asked me the same thing before class started.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That I’d get back to him tomorrow.”
“You wanna be a tutor?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Beats babysitting my little brother after school every day.”
Manning pulled a wry face. “I know what you mean.”
“Really? Do you have any sib—” She broke off at the sight of three pretty cheerleaders coming toward them. As the girls drew near, Taylor smiled brightly. “Hey, Janelle. How’s it—”
Rudely ignoring Taylor’s greeting, Janelle beamed at Manning and cooed, “Hiii, Manning.”
He nodded briefly at her. “Wassup.”
Taylor looked crestfallen as Janelle and her giggling companions continued down the hallway without acknowledging her presence.
Manning eyed Taylor sympathetically. “Friend of yours?”
“Used to be,” she mumbled.
“What happened?”
A small, humorless smile twisted Taylor’s mouth. “She sprouted breasts and made the junior varsity cheerleading squad.”
“Ah.” Manning nodded understandingly. Deciding it was best to change the subject, he said curiously, “By the way, what were you writing in your notebook at the end of class?”
Taylor looked surprised. “You saw me?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” She hesitated, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Well, I was, um, copying your answer off the board.”
Now it was Manning’s turn to be surprised. “Why’d you do that?”
Taylor grinned sheepishly. “Turns out I don’t know everything.”
They both laughed.
As they reached Manning’s locker, he noticed a group of upperclassmen approaching from the other direction. As the boys sauntered past, one of them knocked Taylor’s books out of her arms.
“Hey!” she protested as the posse burst out laughing.
“Oops!” taunted the ringleader—a beefy, dark-haired white boy. “Guess you’d better be more careful next time, dweeb.”
As another wave of raucous laughter erupted, Manning’s temper flared. “Hey, asshole.”
The retreating boys froze in their tracks.
After exchanging startled glances, they turned slowly to stare at Manning. The ringleader looked stunned, as if he couldn’t believe that a lowly freshman had addressed him so disrespectfully.
He pointed to his chest. “Are you talking to me?”
“Hell, yeah, I’m talking to you,” Manning growled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The boy’s eyes widened incredulously. “Excuse me?”
“Yo, you got a hearing problem or something?” Manning pointed at Taylor’s fallen books. “You need to pick those up and apologize to the young lady.”
Huddled beside him, Taylor muttered nervously, “It’s okay, Manning.”
“Yeah, Manning,” the bully jeered mockingly. “You’d better listen to the little dweebette before someone gets hurt.”
Manning didn’t blink. “The only one who’s about to get hurt up in here is you, motherfucker.”
The boy’s face reddened as his friends exclaimed in angry protest. An excited buzz was sweeping through the hallway as other students crowded closer to watch the unfolding showdown.
The ringleader looked Manning over, sizing him up before he smirked at his friends. “Can you believe this little dipshit?”
Their answering grins were full of tense bravado as they watched Manning saunter toward them. One of the boys—the token Negro in the group—couldn’t even look Manning in the eye.
Stopping in front of his adversary, Manning warned through clenched teeth, “I’ma tell you one more time, asshole. Pick up those books and apologize to my friend.”
“Or what?” the bully challenged, sneering as he pushed his face into Manning’s. “Who’s gonna make me?”
Deciding they’d done enough talking, Manning threw a punch that connected with the boy’s jaw and rocked his head backward. Before the chump could recover, Manning was all over him.
The blows he landed felt damn good, but he knew there’d be hell to pay later.