He was watching her face for the version of disappointment he knew best. Emily did not give it to him. She felt, instead, a pride so quiet it was almost private, a pride that did not need him to be exceptional in the way the gym rewarded. She set the water down.
“A fourteen with a checked remainder is a clean piece of work,” she said. “The fountain will still be there later, and it will still be a liar. Rates are liars. They smile while they switch. You’ll catch the next one because you caught the feeling of having done it backward. That’s how the craft actually accumulates. Not by winning the gym.”
Denise exhaled. “I told him you would not perform a funeral,” she said. “He did not entirely believe me. He has experience with adults who treat second place as a kind of injury to themselves. I am trying not to be that adult. I had a moment in the parking lot. I would like that moment noted and then retired. I said, at least the math one, and he said the whole thing is the math one, Mom. He was right. I bought him lunch so I would have a formal setting in which to be right less often.”
“Fries,” Caleb said, hopeful again, and this time without a test inside it.