Ruby

14

The Mathletes

The sun rose and everything fell. Exhausted and angered, Jonah had managed to knock over half the chemistry lab equipment just as the sun rose, marking a new day in the embarrassing life of Jonah Miller. Not only would he have to face his teammates, but there would be no mercy from the entire school for the nerd who had spent the night in the chemistry lab with a hot beaker instead of a hot girl.
Losing the Mathletes competition the night before took all the energy left in Jonah’s body, which truthfully wasn’t a lot considering he was a sleep deprived teenager and the only one who stayed up doing homework instead of going to parties or playing video games. Unlike all his other teammates who had the courage to attend a party, Jonah found himself up all night in the lab going over every single mistake he had made because of his one distraction, which to no surprise was Alex, the other Mathlete team’s prettiest and by far, smartest girl of the group.
Jonah had organized a ‘mathletes run’ that took place every Friday afternoon, when the teammates would “run” a quarter of a mile while solving pre-algebra questions under pressure. Critics had called the quarter mile race ridiculously short, but what they didn’t seem to understand was that it took an extraordinary power of force to solve the pop up equations displayed on banners at various distances around the track while running.
His mother was so proud of him for coming up with the idea that she made him and his teammates ‘Mathlete’ jackets with their chosen names embroidered on the back. Jonah’s best-friend, Radar, was given the name Mr. X for ridding the world of one algebra problem at a time by posting all the homework he did online for the students to see. Noor, Jonah’s second in command, called himself Mr. Q, for, ‘question’ because of his ability to confuse the other team by asking the teacher an absurd amount of questions. Everyone would seem confident and ready to start their assignments, but by the time Noor finished asking his questions, everyone would forget what the problem was about… dun dun dun… Noor, (aka. Mr. Q).
Yarden, was named The B-Man. Yarden always received B’s in every subject, giving everyone the impression that he was a little bit dumber that his fellow teammates. What they didn’t know was that he was playing it down for a reason; tricking the other team into letting their guard down. All the while, the B-Man, stood for the The BrainMan!
The only girl on their team was Ademia. She called herself Miss Lucky Charm, for two reasons. One: If she didn’t know an answer she would guess the right one every time. Two: Since she was a diabetic, she needed her lucky charms by her side at all times.
And last, but definitely not least, Jonah… aka, The Mathnetic-Man. At any time, he could pull equations from his brain like a magnet, seizing the moment like a true super hero. All in all, they were one big tornado of nerdiness and they took the school by storm, except for an inevitable low point in the day, when each would have their head shoved down a toilet bowl or treated to the occasional wedgie.

Yesterday, his team, the Superletes, had faced off against their nemesis, The PiHighs, made up of the only other group of kids in the school socially challenged enough to take them on. No one on that team talked to Jonah except Alex. She was beautiful and easy to talk to, and she was the only girl who could listen to his insights on advanced calculus and not either call him a dork or walk away yawning. This time though, Alex had bested him. She was ready with every answer in a heartbeat, while Jonah, in a lovelorn fog, had completely forgotten the formula for the Pythagorean theorem. Child’s play! Yet Jonah had let his team down in the worst way, and now there was only a slim chance they’d even be able to score a tie. The sun was up, which meant the daily track meet was about to begin.

As he headed out to the track for his team’s warm up, Jonah summoned the courage to speak. “I’m sorry guys,” Jonah said, “I failed all of you.”
“You didn’t fail us Mathnetic-Man,” Noor said, “you helped us get here,” he pointed to the big Q, sewn on his shirt.
“I’m a loser though, everyone will hate us now.” Jonah whined, as he began running alongside his teammates.
“Jonah,” Radar laughed, “everyone already hates us… The masks don’t fool anyone. They all hate us. Yesterday I was in gym with the basketball team and they used me like a human shield.”
Ademia half sighed, half wheezed, as she tried to keep up, “Yea, I heard all the girls call us the suicide club, because of how much they want to kill us.”
“Dude,” Yarden huffed, “my Mom thinks I’m a loser cause I wear my mask to bed.”
“But guys, they don’t know it’s us… we wear masks… we’re hidden from the human eye.”
“They do know it’s us, everyone does,” Ademia ripped off her mask.
Everyone stopped running and gasped. Nobody on the team was allowed to show their true identity.
“Oh calm down,” she spat.
“We just need a plan…” Jonah said.
“And better masks,” Ademia said, “I can’t breathe through this. It’s really bad for my asthma. People have started calling me Darth Vader, because I have asthma attacks when I’m wearing this thing and I sound like an old smoker.”
“Oh calm down,” Radar mimicked her voice.
“Shut up asshole,” she yelled.
“Guys, guys,” Jonah said, “come on, we need to work together to create a plan-,”
They all heard shouts of students and suddenly a boom came from the lab.
“It sounded as if something exploded,” Radar said.
“No duh stupid,” Ademia remarked, “when you hear a ‘boom’ sound, that probably means something exploded.”
Jonah looked at his watch, it was 2:30pm. “Alex is in that class. She’s in there!”
All the guys looked at him and patted him on the back.
“Dude that’s really creepy that you know her class schedule,” Yarden said quietly.
“I can tell your imaginary relationship with Alex meant a lot to you,” Radar laughed.
“Shut up Radar,” Jonah said, “she could be hurt! I have to save her.”
“You do know we’re not actually superheroes,” Radar reminded him.
“I am very aware of that,” Jonah put on his mask that was tucked into the back of his pants, “I’m going to save my girl.”
Jonah dashed into the school and ran up the flight of stairs. In the rush out of the building the kids were pushing him backward and he almost toppled down the stairs. He charged on until he got to the door of the chemistry lab. It was locked for some strange reason, maybe the heat had melted the metal…but just like he had learned from ‘Star Wars’, he needed to use ‘The Force’. He backed up to get some distance, and then ran hard, slamming into the door and breaking it open. He knew that it might be dangerous, maybe even deadly, but he was willing to risk everything for this girl. Everyone else had run for their lives. There was no sign of Alex anywhere. The fire extinguisher was too far across the room and his feet felt planted to the floor. Jonah used his other worldly skills of parkour to skip from table to table. He opened the windows and the let the clouds of smoke disperse. From the top of the lab counter he was standing on, Jonah saw her.
“Alex!” Jonah yelled, “Alex, are you okay?”
“Jonah?” she cried from the floor. It was Alex’s voice.
“I’m here Alex. You’re all right now.”
She was on the floor, a scratch across her face. Even with the broken glass in her hair, she still looked beautiful, like a glass sculpture.
“You’re all right now. I’m here,” Jonah swooped up Alex and she smiled gratefully. He carried her out of the room into the light……

Jonah’s eyes slowly opened and he realized his feet were not touching the ground. He had saved Alex… or had he? He looked up into the eyes of a boy he recognized. The only person Jonah had ever hated, Alex’s one and only ex-boyfriend.
“Kyle?” Jonah asked groggily. The Mathletes team were following beside him as the nurse’s room came in to view. To Jonah, Kyle looked like a Hawaiian surfer dude, who had been exposed to so much sun that he now resembled a grape that had rotted into a raisin. Except for the fact that on the weekends he worked part time as a male model for a very expensive underwear line.
“Jonah, you were running, and I think you had a panic attack or like you had heat exhaustion and you passed out, or something,” Noor said, “luckily Kyle saw you and he’s taking you to the nurse’s office.”
Jonah cringed as he became aware of people laughing at him in the hallway as they passed. This was the lowest of the low. Jonah was the epitome of a loser. He was sure if he typed ‘loser’ into his search engine, his name would come up as the very first example, all in CAPS. Kyle laid him down on the nurse’s bed and Jonah smiled pathetically just as Alex ran in.
“Jonah, I heard what happened, are you okay?”
“Yea I’m fine.”
She smiled and wrapped her arms around Kyle’s waist. “He’s my hero of the day. Before you passed out there was an explosion in the lab and he helped me out before I could get hurt,” she kissed Kyle, and now more than ever Jonah wished he had died on that track.
“I’m glad you’re okay Jonah,” she leaned her back against the wall.
“Well, it was all thanks to Kyle. The hero of the day,” Jonah managed a sarcastic smile, and gave Kyle a very awkward high-five.
“I heard really high pitched screams coming from the track team and I figured someone was in trouble,” Kyle explained.
“Well, thanks again, man,” Jonah sighed.
Kyle took Alex’s hand, “Talking about the track, I hear the bleachers are very empty around this time.”
Jonah quietly moaned in anger. All he wanted to do was bang his head against the headrail of the nurse’s bed a few million times until he developed some sort of short term amnesia.
“I’ll meet you there. Let me just say goodbye to Jonah alone,” she whispered and Kyle left with a self satisfied grin.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” she said.
“Oh, don’t worry, I probably only have a minor concussion,” Jonah sarcastically remarked, and to his surprise Alex laughed.
“You’ll be okay,” she said.
“So… are you ready for bleacher time with Kyle?” oh my god had he really said that?
“Wow Jonah,” she laughed, “I didn’t realize how much of a nerd you are.”
“Yea I am literally the nerdiness person you will ever meet in your entire life,” Jonah laughed and snorted a bit.
Alex smiled, “I like nerdy,” Jonah gulped and a flicker of hope sparked inside of him. He didn’t want her to leave, not after she had said that, but that’s not how life worked for guys like Jonah. Think about it. On the one hand the handsome athlete, on the other, the Mathnetic Mathlete. It actually had a ring to it.
Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.