Anxiety Attack

Chapter 8

Finley’s P.O.V.

Eli glanced around my room and set his backpack on the ground uncertainly. I bit my lip, feeling awkward. I don’t know why I was the one feeling awkward, this was my room, after all, but something about having a boy in my room made me nervous.

“Nice room,” Eli said finally.

“T-Thanks,” I said quietly. “You c-can just sit in t-that chair.” Eli sank into the chair I pointed at and I sat across from him on my bed. “So w-what are you h-having trouble with?”

“Math,” Eli sighed. “Numbers and equations and formulas… they just get jumbled up in my head and I have no idea what to do with all of them.”

Aww, poor Eli. He must have been really confused in class.

“A-And what are you d-doing in math right n-now?” I questioned.

“Honestly?” at my nod, Eli went on. “No idea. Something with a grid…”

I wrinkled my brow in confusion. From the look on Eli’s textbook, he was taking Algebra, which I took in 8th grade, and I didn’t even remember learning about grids. I had already known what they were.

At my confused expression, Eli went on. “But they’re different, they’re like… well, I’m not exactly sure what they’re like, but they have a cross in the middle and we draw them on grip paper and we count up numbers and have to use rulers and stuff…”

My expression cleared. “Coordinate grids?”

Eli snapped. “That’s it!”

“Oh,” I said, feeling relieved I had known what he was talking about.

I had learned about coordinate grids over my years, and honestly I hated them. You had to do them an exact way, and when they taught you to do it a certain way, they taught you to do it five other ways.  It was bloody confusing.

“Okay, l-let me see your t-textbook,” I said, holding my hand out.

Eli deposited his textbook in my hand like he was dropping a gigantic slug. I flipped through the pages, finding his assignment and sighed in relief when I saw that they were simply just finding the slope of the line.  

“Okay, so you just need to count the squares, see?” I said, already lecturing. “The slope is rise over run, so you count up how many squares on the paper until the next spot where the line intersects with the line on the grid paper,” I said, demonstrating. “So the line goes up one square-that’s your rise. Then you count over to see how many squares the run is, which is two. So you’re slope is ½, got it?” I looked up and peered at Eli.

He was already looking at me, but nodded quickly. “Um, yeah, kinda. Can you go over another problem?”

“Sure,” I nodded and started talking again.

About fifteen minutes later, I had helped Eli struggle through about half of his homework before he stretched, yawned, and said “You know what we need?”

“What?” I asked.

“Sustenance,” Eli grinned, standing up and holding out his hand.

“Sustenance?” I asked dubiously.

“Yup,” Eli said, pulling me off of the bed.

“But-” I started to protest.

“No ifs, ands, or buts about it,” Eli said firmly, already heading down the stairs while I hovered uncertainly at the top. “We’re going to go get food.”