Donald Jimenez, a Lost Young Man

The buzz of my second alarm screams the failure of the first.

I shoot up to the tune of a **** metal band I can’t stand—perfect for my phone’s alarm—and stumble out of bed to go chase the noise. Rather than on my nightstand, the screaming little device has mysteriously found its way onto a pile of dirty clothes, almost as if I had chucked it across the room in response to the first alarm. Through crust in my wincing eyes, I stare at the screen and tap the alarm into silence, leaving me awake and… well, almost late for class.

I look to the door, undisturbed and solemn. Dad left for work without a word, as he’s prone to do. That’s fine: it’s only my 18th birthday, after all, so I guess I should be grateful he didn’t greet me with suitcases (as he oft threatened to do).

Grumbling, I go through my daily motions, phone in hand for half of it, as I prepare for a birthday Monday trapped in school. The mirror is dirty, but I can see myself plainly: light olive skin, a chestnut mess of wavy hair long overdue for a cut, green eyes that used to be brighter, and a body straddling the line between “not fit” and “overweight.” Thinking to all the fat kids in my year, I forgive my indulgences without a priest’s help and get ready to be one of the poorest kids at my private school.

But first: premium phone time.

My cell acts up a bit, and the internet’s a bit slower than usual, but overall I get what I need to start the day: some fresh posts on the porn subreddits, some affirmations from social media, and a numbing, pleasant sensation of fulfillment. Here in the boonies where my dad decided to bury mom, you can’t ask for much more before 9:00 A.M. or… ever.

Remembering mom darkened the mood. Time to shower off the melancholy in time to appease the sisters. But before that, some inspiration for a morning stroke as I browse back to those subreddits…

9:03 A.M.
Our Lady of the Rosary High School
Algebra 2

Sufficiently “relieved” and dressed, I was permitted to run to and enter the cramped little Catholic secondary school my father managed to put me in. How he pays for private school and still refuses to live in a nicer place baffles me, but I’m pretty sure it’s all thanks to my mom’s dying wishes. That’s probably also why I’m permitted to stay despite coming within hairs of declaring myself an atheist in front of the nuns.

“Are you paying attention, Mr. Jimenez?”

Speaking of nuns, I only half-get the internet’s fetish with them. Take Sister Jackson here: I mean yeah, she might have a decent body under the smock, and a pretty enough face with the color of milk chocolate on her cheeks and eyes so bright and brown that they glow when the sun catches them, and yeah, I’ve probably jacked off to some nun porn and… where was I going with this?

“Mr. Jimenez!”

“Y-Yes, Sister?”

“I hope your proofs are more attentive than you are.” Ever witty, Sister Jackson. To her credit, my math class is 70% girls and my face grows hot. “Now tell me: how do we begin to calculate for x now that an imaginary number has been added?” My phone vibrates in the middle of this inquisiton, but I ignore it.

I glance at the board and the new problem she scribbled onto it. This is pretty extra for high school algebra, but Sister Jackson is the sort to drive young adults hard to see how far they can go. She’s also a renowned mathematician who only took on the cowl after finding God late in life. A beautiful story of faith and success, Mother Superior Broadhill would call her, but then “Ol’ Broadside” never passed up a chance to celebrate someone falling short of what they could have been.

“Well, Mr. Jimenez?”

“You don’t.”

Only the dumbest in the class laugh at that, and to my credit, that’s almost half of them. My phone vibrates again.

“And why is that?” Sister asks with a knowing smile.

“Imaginary numbers aren’t real; they can’t be solved, so the best we can do is simplify the equation on one side. That’s x = 10i for that problem.”

“Very good, Mr. Jimenez, although I must correct you on the slightest technicality: imaginary numbers are theoretical. Perhaps more to your point, they cannot be proven, in mathematical terms, but nonetheless they are there, as real as the number one, with us always even if we cannot see or define them in earthly terms.”

She lets the statement hang, hoping the ham-fisted God injection into a math class lands for each of us. Still, I have to applaud that she tried; every other math sister sort of gave up-

My phone vibrates for the third time, and only now have the sister’s eyes returned to the board long enough so I can check it. What in the Hell is so important-?

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