Playing Keira Read Free Page B

pretty sure it’s the phone at the place I’m supposed to be at this moment. There are no calls from my father, and even though I left him a message about how I didn’t want him to contact me, I was kind of hoping he’d ignore the request.
    I’m careful not to let Garrett see that I have two cell phones. Not sure I can come up with a lie to explain that away.
    We listen to the guy on the phone wrap up his call, and the bus seems even more silent in its wake. Then Garrett turns to me and says, “You know what a Fibonacci sequence is, right?”
    “Of course,” I say, a little indignant. Has he been thinking all this time about another conversation topic? Is he testing that I really am a math major? “I thought you were a journalism guy.”
    He smiles, a mischievous spark in his eyes. “Who was also a high-school mathlete. Besides, writing and mathematics have more in common than you might think.”
    I know this, actually. I would never tell anyone, because of the acute nerdiness of it, but I’ve lain awake at night thinking about the connection. And thinking about how I can never tell my father these thoughts because it would make him too happy, and then thinking about why I can’t tell my father something that would make him too happy.
    Garrett takes my pause as a sign to continue. “Mathematics deals with patterns and symmetry, right? A good piece of writing has both, especially when you think about a poem or, for someone like me, a really tight, well-structured nonfiction piece. And then there are all those symbols in math. One thing stands for another. There are symbols in writing, too, but we don’t call them that; we call them metaphors and stuff.”
    I wonder if this was something my parents talked about, discussed in bed at night or at dinner with friends. I wonder if this was the thread they grabbed on to, delicately yet firmly, when everything else about them was so different.
    “I can see that,” I finally say to Garrett. Right now, it’s so much easier to let him think he’s introduced me to a whole new concept.
    “What’s your favorite example of the Fibonacci?” he presses gently, curiously.
    I glance out the window, as if the view of the Lamps Plus we’re now passing will help crystallize my thoughts. “Pineapples,” I say. In a Fibonacci, each number is the sum of the previous two, so it goes one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, etc. Count how many scales make up one diagonal row on a pineapple, then count them on a row going the other direction. Almost always, the first row will have thirteen scales and the second will have twenty-one. Fibonacci numbers, in sequence.
    “Mmm,” he says, and I’m not sure if he’s imagining the sequence or the taste of the actual fruit. “Nice. Why’s that your favorite?”
    “I don’t know. I guess with the pineapple, it’s an example of how something seems totally random, then mathematics shows you how it’s not random at all but was actually planned out carefully by something.” I think this is so amazing that occasionally, when nobody’s looking, I’ll stand in the produce section of the supermarket, running my fingers over the pineapples, and just count. “What about you?” I ask Garrett.
    “Well,” he says, looking down, almost ashamed, “it’s cliché, but I’m going to go with the spiral dimensions of a nautilus shell. The Fibonacci sequence is explaining the pattern that makes it beautiful. I wish all beauty could make such sense.”
    I stare at him, thinking, Who is this guy? He looks back at me and doesn’t glance away. It happens in a single electric flash, but something changes.
    “Sorry,” says Garrett, dropping his head back. “I know it’s way early in the morning for this kind of conversation.” I would like to tell him that it’s never too early for this kind of conversation, especially when you’ve been hoping to have this kind of conversation with someone for years, but instead I just say,