Chapter 71: The Math Test
The table had quieted down after Connie and Jeff headed out. Mary was in the kitchen with the last of the dishes. Missy was drawing something at the far end of the table with focused, private intensity.
Georgie was pushing back his chair to leave when Coach George said, without particular urgency: "Before you go. Ms. Ingram sent me a note today."
Georgie stopped.
Something in his father's tone had the specific quality that caused teenagers to stop.
"She's giving a math assessment this Wednesday," George said. "Anyone on the football roster who doesn't pass gets held from next Monday's game."
Georgie stared at him.
"She can do that?" he said.
"UIL academic eligibility rules," George said, with the resigned patience of a man who had been on the wrong side of this particular policy before. "A teacher can flag a student for academic review before a competition. Principal Tom confirmed it this afternoon." He looked at his son steadily. "There's nothing I can do about it, Georgie. It's her call."
Georgie sat back down slowly, with the specific movement of someone whose legs had stopped cooperating.
"We just made the state top ten," he said. "We literally just—" He gestured at the general direction of the stadium. "Today happened."
"I know," George said.
"And now I might miss the next game because of a math test."
"That's correct."
Georgie looked at the ceiling with the expression of a young man having a private conversation with the universe about fairness.
From across the table, Sheldon looked up from the small notebook he'd been annotating.
"For context," Sheldon said, in the tone he used when he was offering information he considered useful and others considered unwelcome, "your statistical contribution to today's outcome was meaningful but not decisive. The team's win probability with or without your specific performance varied by roughly four percent in the models I've been running." He paused. "I say this not to diminish your contribution, but to point out that missing one game would not mathematically doom the program."
Georgie turned to look at his brother with an expression that had given up on words.
"Sheldon," Mike said, quietly.
"I'm providing accurate data," Sheldon said.
"You're providing accurate data at the wrong moment," Mike said. "Those are different things."
Sheldon considered this. Returned to his notebook.
Georgie looked at Mike. "Wide receivers matter," he said, with the slightly defensive energy of someone who had been told they didn't. "I know I don't have your numbers. But the routes I run create the coverage gaps you run through. That's how it works."
"That's exactly how it works," Mike said. "You're not wrong."
Georgie absorbed this. It helped, marginally.
"So what do I do?" he said, to the table generally, though the question was directed at his father.
George leaned back in his chair with the expression of a man who had already thought this through and was now presenting the conclusion. "You've got two days. And you've got two people at this table who could probably teach you more in two days than you've learned in two semesters." He looked between Sheldon and Mike. "The question is whether they're willing."
Sheldon looked up from his notebook.
He looked at Georgie.
He looked at the notebook.
He looked at Mike, who gave him the expression that meant: you know what the right answer is.
"Fine," Sheldon said, with the specific reluctance of someone who had decided and didn't want it to look like they'd decided easily. "But I have conditions."
"Name them," George said.
"One — we work on my schedule, not his. Two — he has to actually try. I'm not going to sit across from someone who's given up before we've started." Sheldon set his pen down. "And three — I want the new Lionel locomotive set. The one at Dale's with the full switching yard."
George blinked. "That's—"
"One hundred and forty dollars," Sheldon said. "I've looked it up."
George looked at Mary, who had appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Mary looked at Georgie.
Georgie looked at Sheldon with the expression of a brother recalibrating his entire understanding of a sibling.
"Deal," George said.
Sheldon reopened his notebook and began writing something at the top of a fresh page with the focused efficiency of someone who had just begun a project.
George turned to Mike. "And you — same deal. Whatever you want, name it."
"I'm good," Mike said. "Georgie stays on the roster, the team stays strong. That's the thing I want."
George looked at him with the expression he got when Mike said something that sounded straightforward and landed as something more.
"All right," he said. "But the offer stands. You think of something, you let me know."
Missy, who had been listening to all of this with the focused attention she gave things she was waiting to extract something from, slid along the bench until she was next to Mike.
"If you change your mind about the reward," she said, with the specific gravity of a nine-year-old making a business proposal, "I want the Barbie Dreamhouse Stacie set. The one with the pink convertible and the horse." She looked at him. "She's Barbie's little sister. She has a horse."
Mike looked at her. "How long have you been waiting to say that?"
"Since before Sheldon named his price," Missy said, without hesitation.
Mike looked at Missy's completely serious face and said, "If I take the reward, it's yours."
Missy sat back with the satisfied composure of someone who had closed a negotiation correctly.
"Great," she said. She looked at Georgie with sudden enthusiasm. "What are we waiting for? Let's study!"
Georgie stared at his nine-year-old sister.
"You are way too excited about this," he said.
"I'm the study supervisor," Missy said, with great dignity. "It's a responsibility."
"You're not—" Georgie stopped. Looked at his father.
George gestured vaguely: just let it happen.
Georgie pushed back from the table and went to find his backpack with the expression of a man accepting his circumstances.
Sheldon had already cleared a section of the table and was arranging his materials — pencils in order of sharpness, notebook open to the fresh page, the specific setup of someone who ran tutorials the same way he ran everything else, which was precisely and on his own terms.
"Sit down," he said to Georgie. "We'll start with what you actually know, which I expect will take approximately four minutes to cover."
"You know what—" Georgie started.
"Georgie," Mike said.
Georgie sat down.
Sheldon uncapped his pencil.
Missy climbed onto the chair beside Mike, pulled her drawing toward her, and wrote STUDY SUPERVISOR across the top of it in large letters.
Mike looked at the drawing.
She'd drawn a small figure with a whistle.
"Very official," he said.
"Thank you," she said seriously.
Across the table, Sheldon had already started writing an equation on the notebook page, and Georgie was leaning forward with the resigned, slightly panicked expression of someone who had two days and knew it.
Mike settled into his chair, pulled the notebook toward him to look at where Sheldon was starting, and got to work.
(End of Chapter 71)
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