I don’t mean to. It just comes out that way.
“Well, you can’t sit here.” She’s not smiling anymore. “It’s almost lunch hour. You can’t take up a whole booth.”
I’m not sure if I’m still angry or sad or just dizzy, but I know I want to hide under my covers, except I’m still sitting here in this restaurant, with a grown-lady waitress looming over me. I want to curl in a ball, which I kind of try to do, but my knees knock into the underside of the table.
Wait, what?
No way.
But maybe.
Maybe?
There’s something stuck under here, and it’s not gum.
“I’m really sorry,” I say quickly.
I need to buy more time.
I am sorry for being rude, but mostly I don’t want to jinx the chances that someone might have been kind enough to leave Lukas’s first clue right here. Right where he left it. Right where I am sitting. I feel around with my hand.
“What are you doing?”
I probably look pretty strange right now, bent over and twisting around, trying to look like I’m not doing either of those things. Then my fingers land on what feels like a piece of paper, taped under the table. And I don’t want to let go. I want her to go away so I can get under the table and get a good look at what this is before I tug at it.
“I feel like I might be getting sick. Can I get a glass of water, maybe?” I grimace a little, for added effect.
“Okay, but after that, you have to order something or you’ll have to leave. Okay?”
My face is about two inches from the table, but I manage to nod. As soon as she’s gone, I slip down, ever so slowly, loosen the ends of the tape, and peel it back. I can feel little bits of fake wood coming off, too, but as quickly as I can, I unstick the paper, pull my hand out from under the table, and bolt for the door.
I’m sweating, walking up the hill from Vincent’s toward Angel’s Consignments, which is Thea’s shop, and suddenly remembering the night, last November, when Joy met me outside our buildings because I asked her to, because I needed to talk to her, because I was happy and sad about Rand leaving, and also because it was the Taurid meteor shower, so we were killing two birds with one stone. Maybe I’m thinking about that now because last time I walked past Thea’s, she had all those sparkling star lights hanging down in the window, like shooting stars.
* * *
“Fifty-fifty is the real answer,” Joy says excitedly. “I can’t believe I almost forgot to tell you, Lukas. And it even has a name. It’s called the birthday paradox.”
It’s chilly out, and pitch-dark, and Joy and me are lying side by side in an unzipped sleeping bag I brought down to keep us warm. We’re allowed to lie like this to watch the meteor shower, so long as we stay here, where her parents can see us from their window. The last one we watched together was the Perseids in August, but it was overcast, so we didn’t see much. But this night is crystal clear, and we can actually see the meteors zipping and arcing like magic lasers across the sky.
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you,” she says. “It’s a real thing. The birthday paradox. That first thing we were ever trying to figure out—in Mr. Carter’s class, remember?”
Of course I remember, the day with the cupcakes. But I don’t say that because maybe I don’t need her to know how I think about it so much. Not that I used to worry about stuff like that, but now it feels too weird, especially with us lying here close together, side by side.
Joy gets impatient, waiting for me to say something, though. She kicks her foot against mine. “Hey, Lukas,” she says, “you’re not even listening.”
She’s right and wrong. I am listening, obviously, but not completely. Not like I usually can. Because my mind is a little crazy tonight, probably because of the Rand stuff and, also, the super-bright white streak that’s zooming in an arc across the sky, which I’m pretty sure may be an actual fireball.
Where we are lying is on the slanted dirt mound near the swings. In spring, they plant a whole bunch of tall purple-and-yellow flowers with orange tongues that stick out here, because it’s right where the sign staked into the ground says DOLPHIN GARDEN APARTMENTS. But this time of year, it’s just dirt, and a slope that makes for a good stargazing position.
“Yes, I am,” I say. “The birthday paradox. I am, too, listening, Joy.”
“Okay, fine,” she answers. “So, it’s an actual famous paradox about sharing birthdays, of all things. Can you believe it? How did we not ever know that? Mrs. Roessing just told us all about it today.”
“What’s a paradox?” I ask, adding, “I forget what that is,” as if I knew just a few days ago.
“Oh, like a thing that sounds logically impossible, but then ends up being possible. Sort of, kind of,” she says. “Mrs. Roessing explained it a whole lot better than I can. Aren’t you doing logic problems in Spear’s class?”
Mrs. Roessing is her math teacher. Now that we’re in middle school, we have homeroom and a few other classes together, but math and social studies, we have different teachers. I have Spear, who kind of sucks, and she has Roessing, who is totally awesome. So, lots of days, we have to share the things the other person didn’t get to hear about during the day.
“So, how it goes,” she continues, “is that, in a room full of twenty-two people, there’s actually a fifty-fifty chance that two of the kids will share the same exact birthday. Fifty-fifty! And in a room of seventy-five people, those chances go up to ninety-nine percent. Remember how we thought it was really, really slim? Like twenty-three divided by twelve divided by something else, or something like that? Anyway, I’m not sure I understand it. I really needed you there to help. Actually, now that I’m trying to explain it, it doesn’t make too much sense at all.”
I nod, working to focus on the math stuff while also keeping my eye on the sky.
“It’s got to be a probability thing,” I say, to come up with some sort of answer. “Like the marbles worksheets Ms. Spear had us doing last week in groups. Did you do those?” I ask her. “Those marbles problems?” She shakes her head. “Okay, well, at first they were easy, but then they got more and more complicated. Like: ‘If you have a bag with twelve marbles, and seven are purple and three are red and two are green, then what is the probability you reach in and pull out a blue marble?’ And the answer is zero, obviously, and the probability that you reach in and pull out a purple marble gets higher, and so on. But there are ways to figure out more specific percentages, too. So, with your birthday paradox…” I’m trying to compare that to the marbles problems, but even as I’m saying it, it’s all turning to mush in my brain. “Okay, so, like, if there are twenty-three people, you’re comparing the first person to twenty-two other people, but then, when you’re comparing the next person, she’s already been compared to the first person as one of the other twenty-two, so that leaves only twenty-one comparisons, and so on. So your chances actually go up. Right?”