A different angle

She didn't know how many hours she spent in his kitchen trying to use some guy named Pythagoras' theorem to figure out some strange angle. Long enough for Paj to start asking where she went every day, since she wasn't hanging out in the garage now. Long enough to know that, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he had a boy named Stephen who came to learn algebra, and on Wednesdays it was a girl named Christine who needed help with Trig-who Cat thought looked like one of those kewpie dolls you win at a county fair. On Mondays and Fridays, thought, David was all hers.

On those days, after the books were thankfully closed, she would linger as long as she could, eyeing his shelves, picking up his trinkets. He seemed to be collecting more of them, odd things, small statues, strange metal objects, and she liked exploring his house, her fingertips brushing the perimeters, as if testing the boundaries every time she came. And he always watched her. He would sit quietly in the large black easy chair, or on the soft leather sofa, and just watch her wander around the room. He looked casual, his arm across the chair or sofa back, his leg crossed the way guys do, his ankle resting on a knee, but his eyes were like beams that followed her wherever she went.

And they would talk. In fact, she tried to keep talking, or keep him talking, just so the time would pass, hoping he wouldn't notice her lingering. She told him about her mother and stepfather and the pressure of getting ready for college.

She told him about Stuie, and Paj, and even hesitantly revealed her dream of becoming a race car driver. She had expected him to laugh, like everyone else did, but he hadn't. He'd just nodded appreciatively and probed a little more. She loved him for that.

And then she hated him. That was a Friday, and she stayed quite late, until it was actually growing dark. The doorbell rang and their eyes met quickly, furtively, as if they had been caught doing something secret. David made some comment, she couldn't hear what, but it was a woman-a very tall, very blonde, very beautiful woman-at the door. He had apparently forgotten he had a date-

Cat took some pride in that, she wanted to believe she'd distracted him- but she found herself rushed out the door with a brief "see you next week" and a wave.

She stood at the end of his street in the orange fluorescent haloed glow of a streetlamp and watched them get into her car filled with a feeling she didn't quite recognize, something that burned her eyes and her throat. She watched the blonde laugh, lean over and touch his thigh. When she put her hand on the back of his neck and fingered the hair there, a familiar gesture, Cat seethed, surprising herself with the heat of her outrage.

And so she didn't go to his house on Monday. She told her stepfather that David couldn't meet her, but she hadn't counted on him calling to ask where she was. On Tuesday, because Ted insisted, she met David at the door, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. She refused tea and some new delectable treat-she later found out they were called scones-and just opened her book and pointed to the problems they were on. Pythagorean again. She hated that guy. Almost as much as she hated David as he sat with her and attempted, once again, to explain the reasoning behind the mathematical mysteries of the universe.

"Cat, you can tell me off the top of your head just exactly what Pythagorean's Theorem is, word for word, can't you?" David looked at her curiously. She managed to reach the tip of one of her dark brown curls to her mouth and sucked on it, concentrating hard on not looking at him. She just shrugged. "Well, tell me then."

"The sides of a right triangle are related by the equation a squared plus b squared equals c squared, where a and b represent the lengths of the legs and c is the length of the hypotenuse," she muttered, turning her right shoulder toward the opposite wall, away from him.

"Right." David shook his head, thoughtful. "I don't understand… you're so smart…

"Well obviously I'm an idiot when it comes to geometry, ok?" Cat stood up fast, the chair clattering over behind her. "Just put a dunce cap on me and put me in a corner, all right? There is no point to any of this! I'm done with geometry!

I'm done with Pythagorean's Theorem…and I am most especially done with you, David Slater!"

She kicked the chair as she passed it, heading for the front door-no books, no coat- tears making the world fill with sudden prisms. David caught her arm, and she tried to jerk away, but he was too strong. She stood there, head down, tears falling onto the hardwood floor between them. David saw them, and tilted her chin up. When she met his eyes, his quiet, watchful eyes, she simply burst into tears.

"Catherine, Catherine…" He folded her into his arms and held her, rocking with her. "Beautiful Catherine…you are so bright, please don't ever believe I don't think the world of you." He murmured into her hair, words and more words-