Prime

Ryan set the alarm clock back on the shelf as the noise went dead. Between Christy, the elevator and now this he couldn’t get his mind to settle down. It kept looping the conversation over and over again. Was he going crazy? He’d gotten enough sleep. He’d brushed his teeth. He’d gone through his morning ritual like he always did every day.

I need to stop thinking about it. Reaching behind him, he picked up his book bag. Homework, he would do homework. Math would salve all of these problems.

Yanking out a textbook that could have doubled for a club, he started doing his homework. A notebook laid across his lap, he started sketching down the first problem. Variables splayed out on the page, he tried to make sense of them.

Dude, she's cheating on you.

His pencil stopped on the page. Somewhere along the way he’d made a mistake and now variables weren’t making any sense. Flipping his pencil over, he furiously erased what he’d written. He kept erasing until he wiped the lines away from the page, wearing the paper thin.
And he started again. Working through the problem step by step, switching through trig laws and derivations and integrals, his pencil scratched along the page.

Don't get angry.

The pencil tore through the page. “Darn it.” he muttered, tearing away the page. Starting the problem again, the symbols looked foreign. “Come on. Just focus on the problem. You’re just imagining things.” And now he was talking to himself.

Sucking in breath through his teeth, Ryan closed his eyes. Math had never failed him before, it wasn’t going to now. All he had to do was open his eyes and the follow the formulae. All he needed to do was take it a step at a time.

Opening his eyes slowly, he stared at the wall for a minute. He followed the pattern of the acoustic tile on the wall. The darker tiles made a diagonal traveling to the ceiling, six tiles up. Six was a good number, divisible by two or three. Two and three were good numbers too. Both of them prime and only divisble by themselves and one. Prime. He was prime, indivisible and unshakable.

And when he looked down at that paper he would be able to work through that problem like he’d worked through so many others. Why? Because Math was his life.

He lowered his eyes to the page.

He looked up and shook his head. Tearing the piece of paper out of the notebook without looking down at it again. His fingers shaking as he pulled it against the rings. He didn’t need to see that.
Because when he looked down at the paper, all he’d seen of his problem was a single line: Ryan divided by Alice equals one.