VIII

You are a mathematician. At least, that is what logic tells you is the only viable reason for which you shouldn't do your algebra homework, and you don't have it. But the realization of your pent-up arithmetic genius does nothing to vitalize the morning. Cynically, you open your notebook, purple with MUSIC THEOR Y scribbled across its face, and scratch in dull pencil the equation asked of you and your classmates.

y = ^[(x * x) - 16]

It's a hyperbole. You know this because you are a mathematician. You know all things that are math; an omnipotent being in a world of numbers. A term of the same name comes to mind, from eight grade English class. A word that means "to inflate or exaggerate." You wonder why a true mathematician would use such a word, when clearly the only inflating going on is that of the graph's importance.

You awaken, rather abruptly, to "algebra aerobics."

Hell no.

As you slump, forehead to desk, the twenty-one students who are not you bounce in place, jumping jacks, lifting and letting fall their arms with flailing miscalculation, attempting to demonstrate and memorize the characteristics of positive and negative coefficients, alternately.

You leave. You're always leaving. Last night at jonathan's, the night before that at webster, a week ago at Starbucks, before that, the girl. Every time inside and outside your collective memory you are leaving some place. Not once have you been headed somewhere for some purpose other than to not be somewhere else.

Reflecting with disdain on this rather depressing fact, you push open a door to the outside, and wonder where to spend the hour before your next class.