I have a childhood friend I purely, wholeheartedly hate.
The moment the other one scored higher than me, my whole body felt wrong.
To defend our respective spots at number one, the two of us had been at war since grade school.
He grinds through ten practice tests a day, so I do twenty.
He spends gym class hunched over a little notebook memorizing IELTS vocab.
So I put in my earbuds and drill TOEFL.
Then two show-offs transferred into our class.
Every day they never opened a textbook, treating college-level calculus like light bedtime reading.
They stood in front of the grade rankings, looking at my name and Norman's.
"Time we gave these two bookworms a little shock."
"Bro, you beat this girl by thirty points, I'll beat this guy by fifty. Deal?"
"Please. I'll beat this girl by sixty. You beat this guy by ten and I'll call it a win for you."
Norman and I exchanged one look.
Good.
Civil war, suspended.
United against the outsiders.
...
"This math test was hard. That last multiple-choice problem, only five people in the whole class got it right."
The math teacher looked at the chubby boy sitting in the corner.
"Clive Finch, tell us how you did it."
Clive stood up.
Scratched his head and grinned.
"I guessed it..."
The class burst out laughing.
The teacher gave a helpless smile too.
He waved Clive back into his seat.
"Aside from this very lucky young man, one of the rest is our class's former number one and number two.
"Norman Gilbert and Vivienne Larkin.
"And the other two are our new transfer students.
"Percival Dickerson and Winston Simmons!"
A collective gasp went through the class as everyone turned to look at the two boys in the back row.
Percival and Winston looked at Norman and me in the front row.
Then scoffed.
"Textbook cram-champion seats, huh."
Norman and I gritted our teeth at the same time.
"It's over~ These two big shots are the real deal. Norman and Vivienne, our two grind kings, are about to get smacked flat on the beach~"
Percival glanced at the test.
Gave a low laugh.
"Can't even get a test this easy right. Looks like there aren't many worth fighting at this school."
The teacher smiled and looked at me. "Vivienne, how did you do the last one? Come up and walk everyone through it."
I nodded.
Picked up the chalk.
"First, construct a trigonometric identity to get equation one, then substitute the values of A and B, and we get R equals one-half x.
"Plug equation one into equation two to find coefficient c, take the derivative..."
Line after line, the working filled half the board.
The class watched and rushed to copy my work off the board onto their tests.
"So in the end we get G equals 0.5."
"Oh my god, her thinking's so fast, I can't keep up copying!"
"Weird thing is, it's all stuff we've learned. But how did she think to use it like that?"
"That construction step is so slick. Why didn't I think of it?"
I looked at the teacher. "Done, sir."
The teacher smiled and turned to Norman. "And you? Same approach?"
"Same as her, sir."
A scoff came from the back row.
The teacher looked at the two transfer students. "Way too much work."
Percival walked straight up.
Took the chalk out of my hand.
With one stroke he crossed out half a board of my derivation.
Drew an equals sign under the original problem's expression.
Wrote three words above it:
【Fourier transform】
Then produced a single expression.
Above that he wrote another word: 【L'Hôpital】.
And landed straight on the answer.
"There. One step and you're done."
