Free Spell Check by Ariella Moon

O’Reilly!”
    I snapped my gaze from the back of Jordan’s head to the front of the classroom. Mr. Esenberg glared at me, a stub of white chalk clutched between his thumb and forefinger. He was well over six feet tall and as wiry as a chenille pipe cleaner.
    I sat up straighter, heat flooding my neck. “Yes, sir?”
    “Switch seats with Mr. Kent, please.”
    My heart bungee-jumped to my feet. I closed my biology notebook, horrified to find I had doodled hearts around the binder ring holes. A jock two rows over laughed and said, “What did you do now, Kent?”
    Jordan kept his mouth shut, closed his biology book, and whisked it up with his notebook.
    I reached down for my backpack. The pencil I had stuck above my ear and forgotten about clattered onto the scuffed linoleum. It rolled under Jordan’s chair. He retrieved it, rose, and with his back to Mr. Esenberg, winked as he handed it to me.
    “Sorry,” I mouthed. I slid into Jordan’s seat, quaking under Mr. Esenberg’s watchful eyes. Jordan’s body heat still clung to the wood. A fresh blush flamed toward my eyebrows as his warmth seeped through my jeans. I heard the soft thud of Jordan’s textbook landing on the desk behind me. My former chair creaked, and then I heard Jordan’s sneaker-shod feet slide toward me.
    “Perhaps you can see the board better now, Miss O’Reilly.” Mr. Esenberg almost kept the snarkiness out of his voice.
    I nodded, afraid to speak. The doomed feeling I get in math class oozed into me. I slumped low in my chair and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five minutes left. No way would I make it. My scalp prickled. I sensed Jordan’s stare and regretted not getting up early enough to wash my hair.
    Mr. Esenberg wrote on the chalkboard. Independent and Dependent Variables. It sounded like math. I tapped my pencil against my desk.
    Mr. Esenberg spun around and glared. My pencil stilled. Trapped in the second row, I caught a faint whiff of the salami Mr. Esenberg must have eaten for lunch.
    Somewhere off to the right, a cell phone beeped.
    “When we are given an equation for exponential population growth, there are several variables,” Mr. Esenberg explained. “We must distinguish between them in order to interpret the equation and graph it. Miss O’Reilly, given this equation” —he wrote G = rN on the board— “where G represents the growth of a population, N is the initial population size, and r is the intrinsic rate of increase, what do you predict the growth of the population will be when the intrinsic rate of increase is a large number as opposed to a smaller number?”
    My heart jackhammered and my eyes felt like overheated flashbulbs. Mind blank, I cleared my throat. “The population will increase more,” I ventured in a decibel barely audible to humans.
    “Ah. Class, please take a moment to write down your own predictions. Then we shall see if Miss O’Reilly’s prediction comes true.”
    The sounds of twenty-five pencils scratching across notebook paper filled the room, punctuated by the slow tick of the wall clock.
    “Well, class. I believe we have identified the correct answer. Can anyone guess what the definition of an independent and dependent variable is, and identify them in this equation?”
    My heart galloped. I thought a moment, then wrote in my notebook.
    “Miss O’Reilly. Since you seem to be on a roll today, please read your prediction to the class.”
    His voice sounded neutral, but I sensed a trap. The room grew so quiet I could hear the ends of my hair split. “The r is independent, and the G is dependent?”
    “Ah.” Mr. Esenberg’s tall, wiry frame bent into a question mark. “Would you mind telling us why?”
    “Because depending on how we define r, G changes?” I ventured.
    The desk behind me squeaked. “Way to go,” Jordan whispered.
    I exhaled. I glowed. Relief and happiness radiated from my every pore.
    Then Mr. Esenberg started talking about graphing our observations on an X-Y plane.