“Ah, but wait. You know what? Let’s do this again. And for fun, let’s put some theory behind it. What are the chances I will land on tails again?” Pinching the coin between his thumb and finger, he twists it around in front of us so we can see both sides. “Mr. Jennings, what are your chances now? Can I land this on tails again?”
I stare in thought at the coin, not sure how to wrap my mind around his question. “Maybe,” I eventually say.
“But what are the chances? More? Less?”
His eyes bore into me waiting for my answer. I let my mouth hang open, mentally playing out the game and testing the odds in my own mind.
“Fifty percent. It’s exactly the same,” Hollis answers.
Mr. V’s smile gets bigger this time as he strolls backward, flipping the coin in the air again and catching it, finishing with a swift slap against his arm. He cups it in place, waiting until he returns to the front of the class, and before looking, grills me one more time.
“Is it the same? Or is it harder for you because now you’re trying to win a second time?”
I swallow, but his question makes sense, and that’s what I was thinking.
“Yeah, it is. I’ve already done it once, so the odds of doing it again, twice in a row, are smaller,” I say.
His smile lingers, but becomes stale. I sense that I’m not right.
Bringing his arm up in front of his eyes, he slowly un-cups the coin and shifts his focus to the emblem that landed on top.
“Tails again,” he says, smirking.
I breathe out and relax in my seat, suddenly aware of how tense my muscles were in anticipation.
“Looks like you were lucky,” he says, and I chuckle in agreement, completely hooked into his trap. “Or was it luck? I wonder.”
He tosses the coin in the air and it lands in his palm once again. He holds it out in his fist, staring at me.
“What are the odds?” His face is devoid of emotion, zero expectation. He looks at me as if he doesn’t know the exact answer. I take a guess, doing my own form of math by taking the three tosses and dividing them into thirds.
“Thirty-three percent,” I throw out with a shrug.
“You don’t seem certain.” His mouth is a flat line, and he maintains eye contact with me as he flops the coin on his arm once again. His gaze shifts to Hollis.
“It’s the same as the first time. It’s always the same. Every time you toss it there is a fifty-fifty shot that it will land on heads,” she says.
I sit forward wearing a grin that stretches into my cheeks because I think she’s wrong. But with the coin still covered under his palm, Dr. V stretches out a finger to point at her and winks.
“Exactly,” he says, uncovering the coin. Once again, it’s tails.
“Seems this experiment proves my point.” I fold my arms over my chest and lean back, one foot braced on the chair leg in front of me. Dr. V dips his chin and pulls in his brow.
“The sample size is too small,” Hollis says, again calling his attention to her.
“I could do this a thousand times. Every time, there is a fifty-fifty chance that the coin will land in Mr. Jennings’s favor. And to spare you all the pain of watching me do this nine hundred and ninety-seven more times . . .” He slides the digital screen back, switching to a slide that details some famous coin-flipping experiment. The chart shows dozens of trials with samples of thousands. The red color bars are nearly dead even with all of the blue ones. Fifty-fifty, I’m guessing.
“Okay, but baseball isn’t like that,” I argue. I can feel Hollis’s eyes on me to my right, but I ignore them, pushing ahead to dispute this experiment.
“How so?” Dr. V questions.
“Well, we aren’t coins. I’m not going out there and flipping to see which end I land on. I’m going out there to work,” I explain.
“Hollis? Do you go out there to work?” he queries her. I get the point he’s trying to make, but still, he has to see mine.
“Of course. Some might say I go out there and work harder.” Her snide tone draws my glare, and when our eyes meet she sneers at me, her feminist claws ready to take out my eyeballs.
I sigh.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there are variables that don’t work with the fifty-fifty method. You have my speed versus her speed. You have my weight and height, and then the natural differences between male and female athletes. I’m going to be stronger. It’s a fact.”
Anticipating Dr. V’s counterpoint, I hold up my palm.
“And yes, not all male athletes are going to be stronger than all female athletes, or faster or whatever. But on the average, those are the facts.” I finish my point with a slight head shake, my chest pounding with adrenaline. I’ve gotten worked up over statistics, and I have to give it to the guy—he made this interesting. Maybe he’s not my least favorite teacher.
The bell rings, but nobody leaves their seats. All eyes are on me and Hollis, waiting for more arguing, more coin flips, more . . . something. I swing my backpack around from between my knees and stand, initiating everyone else, but before the clamor becomes too distracting, Dr. V throws out one more morsel for me to chew on.
“Mr. Jennings, given everything you just learned, and your points in response, care to give me your best guess on the odds that you will have a female on the Allensville Public baseball team this season?”
He’s baiting me, not even looking at me after his question, instead turning his focus on erasing the whiteboard and prepping the room for his next class. There are variables I haven’t mentioned, namely that Hollis’s dad is the coach, which sort of takes odds right off the table. I’m pretty sure that argument won’t be popular with him, though, and I know how Hollis will feel about it. I’m pretty sure she regrets kissing me as much as I regret kissing her.
“It’s not fifty-fifty,” I say, tugging my bag up my shoulder.
“You sure about that?” he asks, glancing at me over his shoulder.
My eyes meet Hollis’s waiting gaze as I turn to my right, a steady tremor of anger brewing behind her sky-blue eyes. Her mouth is a tight line. She pulls the pencil from her hair, letting the twisted blonde waves fall around her face. Her nostrils flare.
Daddy’s girl.
“Yeah, pretty sure.”
Hollis’s eyes haze as her lips curve ever so slightly to meet my challenge. I’m sure to Dr. V my answer sounds like another cocky chauvinist pig out to tell girls what they can’t do. But the faint smile Hollis flashes me just before her eyes blink rapidly in disgust says she gets my real point, that this whole thing is rigged, and she’s a guarantee, no matter what the other variables are.
I’m going to have to get Zack in shape enough to force a fifty-fifty toss-up for playing time.
4
Hollis
I knew today would be hard. I didn’t think it’d actually suck. Cannon Jennings is an asshole. I’m sick and tired of assholes. We left a bunch behind in New York, and I hoped we wouldn’t get a new crop here. Worse yet, Cannon isn’t even a local. He’s an outsider too, he just doesn’t have tits. Such hypocrisy.
I’m used to being independent. Growing up in New York does that to a girl. You learn to ride trains young. Biking around city blocks to meet up with friends when you’re nine or ten is a basic rite of passage. And hanging out in front of the 7-11 until three in the morning with a bunch of teenagers is totally normal. Walking into a middle-America high school cafeteria without knowing a soul, though? Nothing normal about this.