I nodded. “So long as you have your notes, we probably won’t need the textbook.”
“I tried to write down more stuff in class this week,” he said. He scratched the back of his head. “I mean, I tried.”
“That’s okay,” I said. I smiled at him. He was like a little boy begging for approval, and I had to admit, it melted me a little. “So long as you’re trying, you’re bound to improve.”
Olly swallowed hard and nodded, sitting down on the edge of his bed. After a moment, I got up and joined him.
It felt weird to be sitting on the other side of the room. Almost forbidden, like there was a line down the center I wasn’t supposed to cross. But here I was.
On Olly’s bed.
And that was a thought I really, really didn’t need to be having.
“So, we looked at the graphs again and started going over interest,” Olly said. “That was what really confused me. I think I get the thing with the graphs now. Interest is a whole other thing.”
I nodded. “It can get pretty complicated, from what I understand. Do you have some exercises?”
Olly showed me his notebook. His spidery handwriting scrawled across the page, not quite respecting the lines. I stifled a smile. “These are the examples he gave. He had people randomly answer them on the spot in class. They came up with them pretty quick. But I can’t make them work.”
“Let me see…” I paused for a moment, going over the sums he had written on the page. They were straightforward examples, even if the sums themselves were complex. The professor had apparently started out using a sum of $1000 as an example, to make it easier to do the math.
Only…
Something didn’t add up.
“Are you sure this is the answer they gave?” I asked, pointing to one of the sums.
“I wrote it down as fast as I could,” Olly said, his forehead creasing. “Why?”
I looked up at him. He was sitting so close to me. I shifted slightly and cleared my throat, reminding myself to focus on the math. “It doesn’t add up. The actual answer is – well, actually, I think you’ve swapped two of the digits around.”
“Oh,” Olly said. He looked tired. “I do that sometimes.”
“You do?”
He looked at me sharply. “I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were!” I said, raising my hands in a defensive gesture. For a moment, I thought I saw a glimpse of the Olly he used to be. The one I was scared of.
And then it was gone.
“Sorry.” He sighed.
I bit my lip. Should I say something, I wondered?
I’d been thinking about it since last time. He’d struggled a bit with some of the numbers he’d shown me before. It wasn’t that they were difficult – maybe a bit more difficult than simple high school math. The lecturer was really doing them a favor by dumbing it down to simple sums first and then using real-world business examples. Many professors might have assumed all his class were at the same level and given them much harder math from the off.
But Olly was struggling with stuff he should have learned years ago – and I was starting to have an impression of why.
Despite his tough exterior, right now, he almost looked like he wanted to cry. Something about that expression touched me.
He wasn’t the same as he used to be, and if what I suspected was right, he might be able to get some real help.
I opened my mouth, hoping I wasn’t going to regret it later. “Have you considered that you might struggle with numbers a bit more than most people?” I asked cautiously.
“I’m not stupid!” he exclaimed again.
I swallowed. “Do people say that to you? Or have they, in the past?”
