Trigo-no-metry

SOH
CAH
TOA.
Sine: Opposite over Hypotenuse
Cosine: Adjacent over Hypotenuse
Tangent: Opposite over Adjacent

This should be simple. This is basic tenth grade math. Aidan was a gods forsaken university student. Why was this so hard? Every time he thought he understood it, he never did. And then the teacher moves on and it just gets worse. And with the test coming up, he had no idea what he was going to do. He wouldn't even care if he didn't have to take a final in his university general math class. He didn't understand, maybe the universe decided to position itself just perfectly as to torture Aidan in a flurry of right triangles and ratios and lines? It would have been believable if he was even smart enough to pretend like this was all just too simple for him to understand, but it couldn't be that. He had always struggled in math. And the worst part was that he already learned this stuff back in London, but he was constantly failing that class. He had been happy to be free of trigonometric horror. He never thought he'd be thrown back into it. He would rather be in three musicals at once opening on the same night.

He was crouched over a math book near the center of the library, hoping to find some way to make this all so much easier. Weren't the ancient Greeks obsessed with triangles? It was one of those days where Aidan didn't spend much time on his appearance. He had his glasses on instead of contacts, a loose grey NYU sweatshirt, with red tracksuit pants. He almost went out with just his socks, but instead decided to wear his older white sneakers. He looked like he was going on a run. Or sit on the street with a hat of pennies. He just had study for these stupid tests and none of his friends even went into the library. If he saw them on the way back, screw them anyway. He barely slept. He didn't care. All he wanted was his mum's tea and to delete all triangles from the entire world.

Galena as in the library, of course, which seemed to be where she spent most of her time that wasn't hanging with Lee or in her cabin avoiding people. She was studying, because, well, school. She didn't particularly like having to do homework, but it had to be done. Just a few equations and she could go study something interesting. Like anything else. Maybe history. Or anything else.

She sat at her table and jotted some notes down, then sighed and pushed the books away for a second, rubbing her eyes. It was boring as heck. She wanted someone to talk to, or go cause trouble, or anything.

Aidan heard a sigh come from nearby and he brought his head up some. He didn't care who was around, especially not while looking the way he did. However, ripping his eyes from the text book was not all that difficult. He welcomed death distractions at that point. He looked over a few tables to see another girl who also seemed to be studying. He knew he recognized her from somewhere... Ah! She's the Athena kid from class! Truly the gods have been smiling down from Olympus onto this sad excuse for a student.

He excitedly gathered his book and paper into his arms and almost waddled over towards her. He set down his load into the seat next to hers and sat. "Heeeey, Galena....." He said, "Wanna help me with math, please? I'll even buy you dinner and a movie."

Galena looked up to see Aidan, one of the guys she was taking math with, come over with his own pile of math books. When he asked if she wanted to help with math, and then offered dinner and a movie she laughed quietly. "We get dinner here free, Aidan. I'll take the movie, though. Sit. What are you not getting about math?"

Aidan groaned and ran his hands through his messy caramel brown hair. "Everything. Mostly, the inverse stuff. I hate that." He pushed his glasses a bit higher up his nose and sighed not-so-subtly. "I don't think I can memorize stuff from the past two units." He picked up the pencil and began tapping on problem 12, the one he needed the most help with.

"Well that's your problem, friend, you don't memorize the questions. You learn the formulas." She said teasingly as she took the book and pulled it closer to her. "A big sticking point everyone seems to be having with inverse function is that -1 does not mean it's an exponent. It just means that it's an inverse function. You can avoid the confusion some if you use arccos and arcsin instead of the not-an-exponent. That's what I do.' Galena explained.

Aidan just stared at her, resisting the urge to whine loudly in frustration-- again. He was ready to give up. He would take the failing grade if it meant ending this. "Okay. Let's do this instead. We'll go out to a movie. Or, hell, we can go to my cabin and I have Finding Nemo on DVD. And I will pay you to let me cry on your shoulder. This is horrible, I've been here for hours."