"You two—jealous, is that it?"
The class president planted himself in front of us, hands on his hips.
"If you can't even follow college-level material, maybe keep your mouths shut, yeah?"
"Right, learn to understand it before you start yapping."
"What, it takes you all day to work out what they get in two lines, and now you're rattled?"
Norman and I laughed, the kind of laugh that comes from pure disbelief.
"Look how touchy they are."
"Whole face just changed color."
"That's the sad little ego of a couple of grind-kings for you."
I'd had enough.
"Not every piece of college math actually works here. Before you go reaching for a Monte Carlo transform, how about checking your boundary conditions first?"
"Vivienne, since you're so worked up, why don't we make a bet?"
Percival shoved the class president aside.
"A bet on what?"
A flyer for the mathematical modeling competition slapped down onto the desk.
"The National Mathematical Modeling Competition. High schoolers can enter too. You game?"
Norman and I traded a glance.
"We're game. What's the wager?"
"Whoever wins the higher award. The losers give up college admissions."
Percival and Winston Simmons laid their exam registration slips on the desk.
"You in?"
"Mathematical modeling?
"Oh man, you have to write code for this! Percy, Winston, you guys can code too? Is this... C language?"
"No, we usually use MATLAB."
"Mattress? Like a store?"
Percival and Winston looked at each other.
Then burst out laughing.
"Forget it. The software you need for modeling—you wouldn't get it even if we told you."
"Man, what do Vivienne and Norman even have to bring to this?"
"Two grind-kings, what's there to compare? They're big shots at school, sure, but against Percy and Winston they don't stand a chance!"
Norman and I looked at each other.
We each took out our exam registration.
"Then it's settled. The losers give up college admissions."
Word got out that the four of us were entering the modeling competition.
The whole school went wild.
Given the four of us and where we stood academically.
And since some colleges counted an award like this toward admissions.
The school didn't step in.
A modeling team was three people to a group.
Everyone was clawing to get onto Percival and Winston's team.
Nobody needed to be told what admissions credit meant.
But when it came to Norman and me.
Not a single person was willing to round us out into a three-person team.
In the end I had to strong-arm a humanities-track girl from the class next door into joining us.
"How about we call our team Everstride? What do you think!"
"Whoa—as in surpassing Norman Gilbert and Vivienne Larkin! I can already see those two rising to greatness!"
Percival and Winston high-fived.
Then arched an eyebrow at Norman and me.
I really couldn't take it.
"Hey, Norman, let's put the old stuff aside for now. If we can't beat them this time, the two of us are in for some serious humiliation!"
"Relax."
Norman slung on his backpack, the one far heavier than mine.
"Just don't drag me down and we're fine."
The competition started soon after.
The school cleared out a computer lab specifically for us.
At Percival and Winston's request.
Spectators were allowed in.
And it was livestreamed to the entire student body to watch and learn from.
The humanities girl on our team stared at the dense wall of problem text.
Then looked up, ready to cry.
"What do I do? I'm a humanities student, I can't make heads or tails of these giant blocks of text."
"Heh. Quantitative stock market analysis."
Across from us.
Winston let out a scornful little laugh.
He shot me a glance.
Then yanked his keyboard over and started coding.
