I carefully watch the fake couple while absent-mindedly grading homework. Is it the most effective use of my time? Absolutely not. But I don’t usually grade during group study time anyways. Usually, I walk around the classroom answering questions… except when I need an excuse to spy on my students covertly from the comfort of my desk at the front of the room. 

As I suspected, Jason Mayer is relying too much on his fake girlfriend Lucy Roads. There is a pattern to their group work, a cyclical rhythm like a trigonometric function. At zero degrees, Lucy starts work on a problem, her pencil writing furiously, while Jason does nothing. Twiddling his pencil, texting below the desk, or whispering to a friend behind him, it’s clear his mind is not on precalculus. After a moment, Lucy taps his shoulder, then points at the homework assignment: ninety degrees. He furiously scribbles, while she continues writing, probably working on the next problem. Jason’s pencil slows once again to a halt: a hundred and eighty degrees. Frustrated, Lucy grabs his attention again with a frown on her face, bringing him back to, presumably, copying her work: two hundred and seventy degrees. But inevitably he becomes distracted again. Lucy shakes her head, sighing, resigned to continue working alone. Back to zero. 

A perfect sinusoidal function. Around and around they go. It’s only the first week, but our first quiz is tomorrow. It is entirely possible that Jason is bored by the class material. So far we’ve only covered the basics of complex numbers–the complex plane, distance and midpoints, conjugates and division of complex numbers–a review of Algebra II. It’s entirely possible he doesn’t have the mental energy to engage in the review, but… my instincts tell me that’s not the case. This material is clearly a review for Lucy, but I worry about how Jason will perform on tomorrow's quiz.

I could just wait to see his grade, but I’ve never been a “wait and see” kind of teacher. “Helicopter” I think was the term Mr. Wright used to describe me. Which is just so the pot calling the kettle black. I’ve caught him stopping the entire orchestra to call out a single student for being out of tune before. So, really, who’s the real busybody between the two of us? 

“Mr. Mayer,” I decide to call him over. “Could you please come here for a moment?”

The jock spins away from talking to his friend behind him, startled. “Oh sure,” I think I hear him mumble, but it’s difficult to hear over the din of conversation in the class. He straightens his letterman jacket as he stands and pushes his dark hair away from his forehead as he approaches my desk. 

I pull out a blank sheet of paper and scribble a division problem with my left hand while gesturing for him to sit in the empty chair beside me with my right. 

“Am I in trouble, Ms. Huang?” he asks nervously. 

“Not at all,” I say gently while I pass my paper to him. “I’ve just noticed you finish your homework quite quickly everyday. I would like to get a better sense of your capabilities, so I know whether I’m teaching the material too slow or…” I pause, looking right at him with as much softness in my eyes as I can muster, “too fast for you.”

He furrows his brow, but doesn’t look angry, so that’s a good sign. 

“Could you solve this problem for me?” 

He swallows, staring blankly at the page, but after a moment, accepts the pencil I offer him. To his credit, he does try. He writes out the conjugate of the denominator on both the top and bottom of the quotient, preparing to multiply both sides by the conjugate, but then stops. He stares at the significantly more complex looking problem he just wrote out, not sure what to do next. 

“Do you remember how to use the distributive property to multiply polynomials?” I ask. 

A light sparks behind his green eyes, confirming my suspicions. He’s not stupid, he just needs to be pointed in the right direction. Once I point out which tool he needs to use to solve the problem, he quickly figures out the rest, scribbling down the answer. 

“Good job,” I beam at him. For the briefest moment, a slight smile penetrates his usually indifferent aura, but then his lips turn down into a displeased frown. 

“You tricked me.”

I laugh at his pouting. “Heaven forbid I actually care about my students learning,” I joke. 

“You’re a weird teacher.”

“I’m glad we’ve established that early.” I smile even more when his frown deepens. “It will make things so much easier going forward now that you know. She your girlfriend?” I ask quietly tilting my head in the direction of Lucy, dutifully still working on her homework. 

He looks down to the ground, hiding his face from me, but nods. 

“How long you been together?”

“Forever,” he mutters with what I think may be the tiniest hint of bitterness. “We grew up together.”

“Let me guess? Your parents are friends with her parents?”

He furrows his brow. “Business partners,” he corrects, to my surprise. I half expected talking to him about this would be like pulling teeth. I certainly didn’t expect him to offer me anything so freely. Maybe he is more desperate to share than I thought. Poor kid.

Like watching a flower slowly bloom, this new information unfolds his inner world, relieving his center quite easily. Rich, white kid, based on those designer celine triomphe high-tops alone, with long-term, high-achieving girlfriend, daughter of the fiscally attractive. That’s why he isn’t out yet. He’s not afraid of backlash from his peers, but his conservative parents. 

“Well, sometimes that can work out. Childhood friends becoming partners.” My mind flashes involuntarily to old memories. “But some partnerships can’t give us what we really need.”

His eyes widen, his head jerking up to face me, confirming all my suspicions about him. 

I tap the precalculus problem he solved on his own. “Remember what I told you? People live like birds in the woods. When the time comes, each must…” 

“Take flight alone?” he finishes just as the bell rings, signaling the end of class. He looks back at Lucy nervously. “Can I go now, Ms. Huang?” he asks, his legs bouncing against my desk’s leg. 

“Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He scrambles out of the chair, rushing back to his seat to collect his belongings, but not before I say, “Oh, and, Mr. Mayers? I expect you’ll be ready for the quiz by then.”

If Jason Mayer’s and Lucy Roads’ friendship can be described as a sine function, Adan Riviera’s and Sirena Lynx’s friendship is a tangent function. Taking off into infinity quicker than even I expected. Their platonic chemistry is off the grid. 

“I would totally want the power to freeze time,” I overhear Sirena say to Adan during group study in sixth period. 

“Well, that’s a relief,” he jokes. “With that snowflake tattoo, I was worried you wanted to freeze people, not time.” His smile lifts his thick-frame glasses up to his eyebrows. Adorable.

“Shut up,” she shoves him playfully. “Well, what about you? What superpower would you want?”

Kids: they talk about the weirdest things. But their silly conversation warms the cockles of my heart, because it demonstrates their shared interests. I risk loitering near their desks for just a moment longer than socially acceptable, so I can continue to enjoy the teens’ bonding.

“Definitely telepathy. Professor X is my favorite superhero.” 

Sirena snorts loud enough that a few students look her way briefly, before returning to their own work. “Do you really want to know what people say about you behind your back? I only get to hear, like, 3% of what people are thinking, and I already hate almost everyone.”

From the corner of my eye, I spot the shy boy blushing deeply. “Yeah, well, maybe I could be, um… cooler… if I knew what people wanted.”

“Oh, Adan. You’re plenty cool enough. Trust me, telepathy is way overrated.”

Like I said: off the grid chemisty. And I love that Sirena is naturally boosting Adan’s confidence in subtle ways, just like I hoped she would. If I could give grades in meeting my expectations, this girl would get an A+ with extra credit. 

So, I’m more than a little surprised when I spot Adan walking alone in the hallways on Friday morning, his face in a book. He passes right by some lockers where Sirena is talking with a Polynesian kid from my seventh period, neither pausing to acknowledge each other. I’m pretty sure Adan didn’t even notice her, but Sirena definitely looked right at him without saying hello. 

Odd. 

Have they not started hanging outside of class yet? If so, they are more like a tangent function than I initially thought, going from zero to infinity in repeating cycles. Of course, it’s only the first week. Did I really think she would be inviting him to her house for a playdate after knowing him for five days? 

I could just “wait and see” what happens, give the friendship more time, but… well, maybe I am a busybody.

“Have a nice weekend, Miss Lynx,” I wave to her just before she exits my class on Friday. 

I’m not particularly surprised when she stops to talk to me at the slightest prompting, but I’m still quite proud. 

“You too, Ms. Huang! Got any plans?”

What kid asks a teacher about their plans for the weekend? What a gem! “Well, don’t tell anyone I told you, but us teachers usually go out for drinks on Friday,” I whisper conspiratorially, my gaze darting dramatically to my seventh period students trickling into the room. Opening up to her about this “scandalous secret” earns a grin from her, hopefully priming her to be as free with the information I desire as the alcohol will be tonight. “What about you? Hanging out with any of your friends?”

An instant blush colors her Irish skin. 

I’m immediately distracted away from my initial goal of talking to her about Adan. Friendship is great and all, but romance... “Oh, it looks like you have big plans,” I smirk. Her flush deepens to match her auburn hair. “Does this have to do with a certain young lady?”

“How did you know?” she asks, wide eyed, amazed. 

“Oh, I’ve got a sixth sense for these kinds of things.” She laughs like I’m joking. I’m really not. “So plans?”

“It’s really nothing special,” she mumbles, looking shy for the first time. “We’ve known each other forever and live… really close. So, um, with everyone going to the game tomorrow, we’re gonna have the whole house.”

I can’t quite wipe the smile off my face, not that I want to anyways. I love watching young romance flourish, even when I’m not directly involved in making it happen. She deserves to be blissfully in love. Plus, I feel a certain kinship with Miss Lynx. She sort of reminds me of a young me, if just a little bit braver than I was at her age. 

“Well isn’t that perfect? Tell me how it goes on Monday?”

My satisfied grin only broadens when she answers, “Sure thing, Teach.”

Guess breaking her out of this tangent function with Adan can wait till next week. I suspect I’ll need to disrupt Lucy and Jason’s own pattern a few more times anyways. Too bad it’s Friday. I really hate the weekends, particularly considering the commitment I made for Sunday dinner. 

At least I have tonight to work more on what is quickly becoming my most promising teacher match. I bite back a grin just thinking about the elusive orchestra teacher. He’s certainly someone I could never describe as predictable. No function to describe him, but that only makes solving his singleness problem all the more exciting. Watch out Thaddeus Wright: the match teacher has a new solution for you.