Alchemy and Algebra

Chapter 9

At lunchtime the following day, Kennedy arrived at the coffee shop ten minutes early, enjoying the blast of warm air and the smell of coffee and sweet starches the greeted her as she walked in the door. She carried her ever-present backpack and was wearing tan cords and a blue turtleneck that darkened her pale blue eyes.

Despite insisting that Charlie had no hold over her, she'd picked something to wear that said 'student in the autumn' rather than 'girl on a date.' Either this wasn't something serious, and she didn't want to make the mistake of moving too fast again, or she was going on this little date because there was potential for a relationship, in which case she still didn't want to send off signals that she wanted a physical relationship right away.

Kennedy scanned the coffee shop, crowded with the noon rush, in case Todd had arrived even earlier than she had. Both relieved and disappointed not to see him, she stood in line to order her lunch. She'd just gotten her order -- a coffee with two creams and one sugar, and a turkey wrap -- when she felt a light tap on her shoulder.

"Todd, hi!"

"K-Kennedy, nice to see you again."

"I'll find us a seat while you order, okay?"

He nodded, and after giving him a friendly smile, she wandered into the crowd. She spotted a couple of people just leaving a table for two in the back corner, and nabbed it as soon as they'd moved away.

Kennedy nibbled on her wrap, her nerves starting to get the better of her. Maybe she was jumping from one guy to the next too quickly. A relationship was significantly more likely to fail if sufficient time hadn't passed since the previous one. When she finished her degree and found a stable job, Kennedy planned to start looking for a serious, rest-of-her-life relationship. What if she started looking early? She'd always been the type to hand in her assignments before the deadline whenever possible.

What if this guy was THE guy and she'd just ruined their chances together by having a fling with Charlie? What if she spend the rest of her life regretting not making things work with Todd? Kennedy was on the verge of dumping her lunch in the trash and making a run for it when Todd sat down with a bowl of soup and a plastic cup of soda.

"How far d-did you get in that book? I've been d-dying to talk to someone about it, but my friend who started reading it refused to go on after ch-chapter seven."

With conversation on a topic that was neutral, yet interesting to Kennedy, her nerves settled and she was surprised to find herself quite comfortable with Todd. He was a touch bashful about his stutter, but it came less often as he got going, and was hardly noticeable once she'd gotten used to it. It bothered her that he was ashamed, ducking his head whenever he got stuck on a sound. It wasn't something that he could control, like swearing, and she didn't think he had anything to be embarrassed about. He certainly didn't have the same air of self-confidence that Charlie did.

In fact, while Todd was a pleasant enough lunch companion, everything about him seemed flat and ordinary compared to Charlie. He was nice-looking and had good manners and good taste in books, but there wasn't a tenth of the spark that she'd experienced recently.

When they'd finished their lunches, Todd offered to buy them some dessert, but Kennedy refused, saying that she had an appointment to do some research for her thesis. While it was technically true, she had two hours to make a ten-minute drive. She said goodbye to Todd with a vague promise to talk soon and headed to her sanctuary: the post-grad study room in the math department.

Though it looked like any other study area, with its industrial carpeting and row after row of desks with cubicle-style dividers, it had two features that Kennedy particularly loved. First, the post-grad room was strictly for the use of students working on their PhDs, which meant that everyone there took their studies extremely seriously. There was little to no risk of being distracted by gossiping, loud music leaking from cheap headphones, or couples trying to sneak a quick make-out session in a dark corner of the library. Second, each desk had a locker-style bookshelf along the back wall of the divider for storing books, notes, favorite pens, and treasured calculators too old to stand long trips in the bottom of a backpack.

Kennedy decided to use her time before her appointment with Madame Mystoire -- cue eyeroll -- to move yesterday's longhand notes into her spreadsheet. She generally left her laptop at home for fear it would be crushed to death by her textbooks if her backpack ever accidentally tipped over. Instead, she entered the numbers into the spreadsheet app on her phone, and would send the data to her computer when she got home.

Yesterday's tarot reading had gone well enough that she had actual data to enter this time. The psychic she'd seen the day before that had answered one question, then, despite Kennedy explaining herself over the phone, finally understood Kennedy's intent for the first time, and refused to continue. Kennedy would need to wait a few days to find out how accurate yesterday's reading was.

She'd already analyzed some of Charlie's predictions, as well as those of another reader. So far Charlie was in the lead with an accuracy rate of sixty-four percent, beating the other reader by seven percentage points. He had, however, been bang-on with his prediction for the Sargents game. They had won by four to two.

He'd clearly only made his predictions at the ball park after hearing Kennedy's own, which were based on sound statistical evidence based on the team's past performance. Still, he'd made a convincing argument at the time.

Kennedy shook off the desire to drop into her memories of Charlie and instead opened a textbook and worked on reading the chapters for her upcoming week of classes. Sinking into the fascinating minutiae of her field of study always made the time fly, and before she knew it, the alarm on her phone was chiming and it was time to meet with the next psychic.