The bus took him closer into town, and from there he walked the streets, stopping at any grocery store, restaurant, fast-foot joint, and local shop that had a “hiring” sign in the window. Many of the bigger chains had switched to online-applications, but he was still able to get a good stack of paper forms to fill out, as well, deciding to take them back to campus so he would have more time to tackle the tough questions. He even had time to check in again with some of the places he had already applied, which the managers on duty seemed to appreciate. It took the better part of the day, but he was determined to make the most of his day off. He stayed out until the growling in his stomach became too distracting to continue, at which point he grabbed a quick bite at a local fast-food place, then made his way back to the campus library to start filling out the applications he had acquired.
He reached the top floor of the library and scanned the group of study tables available to him. People were spread out, some alone and some in groups, all either working silently or whispering to each other, heads crowded over books and poster boards.
“Damn it!” a woman’s voice pierced through the silence, followed by a loudly aggravated sigh.
Everybody’s eyes turned toward the sound, most of them squinting in offended glares at the interruption.
Jenna peeked up at the faces all turned her way and cringed. “Sorry,” she whispered, furiously scrubbing her eraser across the page in front of her.
People rolled their eyes and shook their heads, but Jacob chuckled under his breath.
She peeked up again to see if anyone was still watching her, and as she scanned the room, her eyes landing on Jacob. He smiled and lifted his hand in a wave. She gave him a timid wave in response, and turned her attention back to her book.
All the tables in the study area were occupied by at least one or two people, so he decided if he wasn’t going to sit alone, he might as well be with a familiar face.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked as he approached her table.
“Sure,” she said, pulling her books closer to herself to give him room on the opposite side of the table.
She was gnawing on her bottom lip, focusing hard on her textbook. She kept pushing her long bangs out of her eyes, only to have them fall back again, and he could see her patience with them beginning to wane. He took out a pen and got started on his applications.
All was going well until the questions moved from “FIRST NAME” to “REFERENCES.” The anxiety in his chest rose as he scanned through the first application, looking for anything he wouldn’t have to leave blank. He chuckled darkly at the irony as he came across the one question he wished he could leave blank.
Have you ever been convicted of a felony? If yes, please explain.
He glanced up at Jenna, but she was still staring intently at her notebook, scrawling numbers and symbols on the page and paying him no attention. He quickly checked the “yes” box, but skipped over the lines for explanation. Maybe he would figure out a way to phrase that explanation later, when he could go through each application and fill them in all at once, repeating the same words over and over enough times until he would – he hoped – become immune to their sting.
He had gotten through a few applications when Jenna slammed her pencil down on the table and said “mother!” At the last second, however, she remembered to use her inside voice, and the curse faded into a low snarl that only he could have heard. Her eyes were closed and she took in a deep, centering breath through her nose, her jaw clenched too tightly to allow for air intake.
He was almost afraid to ask, but he did anyway. “Everything okay?”
She rubbed her temples as she continued to breathe deeply with her eyes closed. She put on a serene voice, speaking each word slowly and deliberately. “I have the question. I have the answer. I have the equation,” the irritation began to seep back into her voice. “And I’m doing every damn thing the damn equation says to do, and for some damn reason it’s just not freaking… ugh!” she growled, dropping her head on top of her textbook.
He stifled his chuckle at her dramatics. “I could take a look at it, if you want,” he offered.
She glanced up from the table, peeking at him through her messy bangs. “You’ve taken this class?”
“Well… no,” he admitted, peeking at the title of the textbook. “But I took AP Calculus in high school.”
She stared at him through narrowed eyes that questioned his sanity, and with a tone that dripped with mild disgust she asked, “Why?”
He laughed. “I like math,” he shrugged. “And I’m good at it.”
She raised an eyebrow at the foreign concept. “Huh,” she muttered. “Well, have at it, then,” she pushed her study materials toward him.
He flipped the book around and scanned the page to get a brief overview of the subject at hand.
“Although, I’ve been staring at that thing for twenty freaking minutes now, and I still have no idea what I’m doing wrong.”
The formula came back to him quickly, like riding a bike. He looked over her scribbled writings in her notebook, and his eyebrows pulled together, because she was right. She completed every step of the equation exactly as he would have done it, but her answer was nowhere close to the four options to choose from in the book.
“Huh,” he muttered, going over it again, and Jenna sighed in defeat when he was unable to immediately pinpoint the issue.
After two more times reading over the equation in the book and the one copied into Jenna’s notebook, the mistake jumped out at him.
“Oh,” he said, shaking his head at himself for taking so long to see such a simple blunder. “Right here you added when you were supposed to subtract,” he showed her, pointing with the end of his pen. “Threw the rest of the equation out of whack.”
Jenna eagerly pulled her notebook back to see for herself, and she stared at the page in disbelief for a long moment. “You’re kidding me,” she said.
“It’s actually a good thing,” Jacob encouraged. “I mean, technically you got the process right. It was just a clerical error. Even the best mathematicians make clerical errors.”
She shook her head at the page. After a moment, she couldn’t help but laugh, and with a sarcastic tone she replied, “Even you?”
He looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. “Who, me? Never,” he said with a cocky grin.
She laughed again, shoulders relaxing. “Thanks for that. I was about to go insane.”
“About to?” Jacob teased and she smirked.
“Anyway,” she said as she re-wrote the equation correctly in her notebook and began going through the steps again. “What are you working on? Anything I can help with, return the favor?”
“Nah, it’s just job applications,” Jacob answered, flipping through the loose pages in front of him. He had already filled out everything he could. Turns out, when you have no references or previous employers, applications are pretty quick.
He sighed at the stack, already hopeless about his prospects. “Do you need help with anything else?” he deflected, eager to take his mind off of his own problems.
Jenna finished the equation in her notebook and bit her lip as she glanced over at her stack of textbooks and assignments. “Well… I mean, I don’t want to distract you from your work,” she said.