Page 20

Drake

I ’ve faced down blitzing linebackers, two-minute drills, press conferences full of reporters waiting to tear me apart and, earlier today, a dinosaur-obsessed three-year-old with too much energy.

None of that prepared me for this.

LJ sits across from me at a table in the Play It Forward lounge, his math textbook open, pencil spinning between his fingers like he’s seconds away from losing all faith in humanity—or at least in me.

“So,” I say, leaning forward, trying to look like I know what I’m doing. “What are we working on?”

LJ gives me a flat look, then taps the page with his pencil. “Algebra.”

Algebra. Great.

I glance at the problem he’s pointing to. It’s a mess of numbers, letters, and weird symbols that might as well be in ancient Greek.

(Wait, is it in ancient Greek?)

“Right,” I say, nodding like I totally understand. “Yeah. Easy.”

LJ squints at me. “You have no idea what you’re looking at, do you?”

“Of course I do,” I lie. I tap the equation, hoping my confidence will somehow solve it for me. “This is . . . classic. A classic case of, uh . . . ” I trail off, hoping the numbers will start making sense.

They do not.

LJ exhales. “Unbelievable. You play pro football, but you can’t do ninth-grade algebra?”

“First of all,” I say, holding up a finger, “I did not play football because of my math skills.”

“Clearly.”

“Second,” I continue, ignoring his smirk, “I did pass algebra in high school.”

“ How ?”

I give him a mock frown. “That feels like an accusation.”

LJ crosses his arms. “I’m just saying, if you actually took algebra, you should at least remember what this means.” He points at an ‘x’ in the middle of the equation.

I nod. “Right. X. Obviously. That’s . . . you know. X.”

“X is the variable.”

“Right. Variable. That’s what I was going to say.”

LJ stares at me for a long second, then leans back in his chair. “Why don’t you just leave me alone so I can figure this out?”

“Whoa. Okay. First of all, rude.”

He shrugs, flipping his notebook closed. “You’re not helping.”

“Yeah, well . . .” I sigh, because he’s right. I don’t know how to help. I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. “Let’s see what the internet has to say about this X disaster.”

LJ stares at me like I just robbed a bank. “You’re seriously Googling it?”

“What, like you weren’t about to?” I type how to solve algebra equations with x into the search bar and start scrolling. “See, this is why they invented smartphones. Back in the day, I had to just guess and hope for the best.”

LJ snorts. “No wonder you suck at math.”

“Hey, watch it,” I warn playfully, clicking on a very colorful, very enthusiastic tutorial video. I turn the phone so he can see. “Look, some guy named Mr. Math Genius is gonna walk us through this.”

LJ eyes the screen warily, like he doesn’t want to admit this might actually work. But he doesn’t protest, and after a second, he shifts a little closer.

I let the video play.

LJ doesn’t smile, doesn’t act like he’s suddenly okay with me being here. But when I look over, he’s still watching.

It’s not much.

But it’s a start.