I Stressed for Months to Be With Them, They Were Never Planning to Be With Me novel · Chapter 6 of 16

Chapter 6: Margin

"Yes," I said.

I didn't even have to think about it.

"Then show me the idea."

I opened my bag and pulled out the sketchbook from junior year.

The calculus one.

Every page was a mess of arrows and boxes and little doodled creatures holding numbers.

Limits were a road that never quite reached the house.

Derivatives were a skateboarder on a ramp.

"This is how I study," I said. "I can't read a textbook. I have to draw it."

Malik turned the pages slowly.

"You did all of this?"

"Every chapter. I got a B plus."

"Could you do it for any class?"

"I think so."

He looked up.

"What if an app did the first draft? You take a picture of your notes, and it turns them into one of these. A map. Something you can actually look at."

"Then you fix it with your finger."

"And share it with the class."

We stared at each other.

"Margin," I said. "Because that's where I always drew."

He wrote it on the whiteboard in big block letters.

That was September.

By October, the lab was our whole life.

Malik and Brody built the engine that read the notes.

Kelsey wrote the pitch.

I drew everything else.

Every screen. Every button. A little paper crane who folded your notes into shapes.

I didn't draw a single owl.

I was also failing calculus again.

Bellgrave calc was not high school calc.

The first midterm came back with a 58 circled in red.

I sat on the floor of the lab at midnight with the test in my lap and my face in my knees.

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