A Close Second

Twelfth

Whatever fear I had when I read what Jacob had texted me, it all went away when I finally saw him.

It was Tuesday nang pumasok siya next, and I had to admit—I was a bit happy that his face could in no way be read that he was in a great happy mood.

People actually were afraid to approach him.

Jacob always had a smile on his face that made people just gravitate on around him and made him very approachable to everyone.

To see him scowling and almost glaring at anything made him look a lot dangerous.

"The paper didn't do anything bad to you, did it?"

Naglapag ako ng isang platito ng turon sa may tapat ni Jake na nakaupo at nagtatapos ng essay niya. We're the only ones since the lower years still had had their classes and the 12th Graders had an ongoing final exams.

The one that this guy had just gotten from was Basic Calculus and all graduating students was given three hours to finish the 150 item exam. That was, if you really can finish it. Katakot takot na memorization ang pagdadaanan mo, and I know because even though I'm in the General Acad Strand, I had Calculus as my elective. I've been lucky to get everything done, hopefully correct in an hour and a half, hopefully correct—but I was only the third.

The math whiz infront of me, who is currently doing his Gen Physics assignment infront of me, was the first who finished the exam—with a record of 44 minutes and 53 seconds.

Yes, that's accurate.

I even borrowed Conrad's sportwatch so I could set it on stopwatch mode and see if Jacob had broken his own personal record, which was 56 minutes and 23 seconds, which he got a 95 from dahil nakalimutan niyang i-box ahat ng sagot niya sa last part ng exam.

This cocky bastard's entirely aware that he still got the highest for the exam. Bwisit.

"The observation deck of a tall skyscrape is 370m above the street. Determine the time required for a coin to freefall from the deck to the street below." He reads. "What the hell is this."

I thought about it for a minute. It seemed simple enough.

"Well, you have to calculate the time. You have the distance, and then you have a = 9.8 m/s2 for gravity towards the earth."
He looks at me. "Speak english or tagalog. Pick one, Beatrice."

Well, he may be a math whiz, but Physics is his kryptonite. I don't know how he doesn't get it, since his brain can process advanced Calculus but he's lost when it comes to velocity and acceleration.

It was funny and shocking at the same time.

Hinila ko yung papel niya, just seeing his messy scrawl on the paper. I smiled inwardly seeing all the scratched solutions.

"It's just simple substitution, Jacob. So d=v times t plus 0.5 times a times t squared." I explain. "You substitute, that's -370 meters equals 0 times t plus 0.5 times -9.8 meter per second times t squared... -370 meters equals zero plus negative 4.9 meter per second squared times t squared. Then after that you take negative 4.9 meter per second squared and then transfer it sa kabila leaving t squared. That's... negative 370 meters times negative 4.9 meter squared equal to t squared. You have 75.5 seconds squared equal t squared. Get the root... You have..."
"8.96 seconds as time." He says slowly, looking at the paper before looking at me. "Why aren't you on the STEM with us?"

I chuckled, taking the paper and then scanning his other works, correcting some and making some annotations para maintindihan niya. He just sat there, quietly watching.