Friendship, As Easy As Pi

Disclaimer: I don't own Numb3rs, CBS, Charlie Eppes or any other of the Numb3rs characters. I do own the plot, Tyler-Jasmine Steele and any other original characters that may appear in the course of my fanfiction. This fiction was written for fun not profit, and I don't mean to infringe on any copyright laws.

This girl's photo: www(dot)oshawacameraclub(dot)ca/images/2006salon/Miss Green Eyes-Don Wotton.jpg inspired Tyler's appearance.

So here is my first Numb3rs fiction. I hope you like it. :)

Chapter One: Old Fears, New Friends

Charlie straightened his tie in the mirror for tenth time, only succeeding in making it messier.

"But what if I mess up and bore those poor middle-schoolers to death? What if they laugh at me?" he whined, trying desperately to flatten his hair.

"You'll do fine, stop obsessing!" said Amita, fixing his tie and grabbing his hands, pulling them away from his hair. "You've given tons of lectures before."

Charlie sighed and let his arms drop to his side in defeat. "Not in front of children," he muttered, and Amita rolled her eyes.

"Children are just like adults... only smaller," said Amita. She gave him a peck on the cheek. "Now go, or you'll miss your bus."

Charlie took on last look in the mirror then rushed off to catch his bus to a middle school across town.

XXX

Charlie took one look at the school and was remind of his own school experiences. He shivered as memories of the bullying, taunting and ridiculing he endured came to mind. It was one of the reasons he still hated middle schools.

"Professor Eppes!" Charlie turned toward the source of the voice, a short, portly man with large round glasses and a bald spot of the back of his head.

"I'm principal Easton, but feel free to call me Freddie, everybody does," he said with a smile. Charlie extended his hand.

"Call me Charlie, then. I'm still getting used to 'Professor', and 'Mr. Eppes' makes me look around for my dad."

"Sure. Whatever makes your comfortable, Professor Ep...? I mean, Charlie." Charlie smiled.

"So, where are the little monsters?" Freddie Easton made a face.



"You might not want to let them hear you calling them monsters," he warned, "Fifth graders can be pretty vicious."

The expression on Charlie's face showed that he wasn't too happy with that prospect. Freddie noticed this, so he added, "But you don't have anything to worry about, of course." For some reason his statement did nothing to calm Charlie's nerves.

XXX

The auditorium was big, he noticed as he peeked from behind the curtains of the stage. Luckily he was only speaking to the fifth graders. There were about sixty of them, already seated in the auditorium. He didn't know if he could handle many more than that. As Freddie had said, fifth graders are vicious.

"They're only eleven," he said quietly to himself, "I can handle talking to sixty eleven-year-olds. How hard can it be?" He took a deep breath and walked to the podium that Freddie had set up for him in the center of the stage. He was aware that all eyes were on him, scrutinizing him. He slowly put down the papers full of math notes he had in his hands on the podium, then cleared his throat loudly.

"Okay, uh, hi," he started, unsure of where to begin. "My name is Charlie Eppes, and your principal has asked me to come down here today to talk to you about math."

A few eyes (no, more than a few. A lot) began to wander when he said the word 'math'. A few mouths began to whisper, and the focus on Charlie was lessoned, which he was surprisingly grateful for. He could give his speech and leave without embarrassing himself.

"There are many uses for math," he explained, happy that now very few of the students were actually listening to him. "Sometimes it even helps the FBI and the police catch criminals."

Charlie's eyes scanned the children's faces, eventually stopping on one.

She was small for her age, he could tell even though she was sitting. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and piercing green eyes that were watching him intently. In her lap was a notebook, and she was taking notes on every word he said.

He had been told that if you were nervous, to pick one person in the audience and give the speech to that person, pretending everyone else was gone. He decided to give his speech to her, because she seemed like the only one that was actually paying attention.

"My brother, Don, is in the FBI, and, more often than you'd think, math helps them find the bad guys."

None of the students, with the exception of the blonde girl, seemed to care about the many used of math. Freddie, the principal, was paying attention, but didn't seem to notice that the students weren't.



It was much easier to give the lecture once he picked a single person to give it to. He was on auto-run for most of the speech, barely looking at his notes.

By the end of the speech, Charlie was feeling much better and much more confident than before. Therefore, when he asked, "So, does anyone have any questions?" he was happily surprised when a lot of the kids raised their hands. He could feel himself grinning.

"You," he said, pointing to a red-headed boy in the second row. "What's your question?"

"You work with the FBI, right?" asked the boy eagerly, and Charlie nodded.

"Yeah, I help my brother solve cases using math all the time," he said confidently.

"So... do you get to carry a gun?" asked the same boy. This was followed by a series of 'yeah!'s and 'are you packing?'s.

Charlie closed his eyes for a second. Calm, he thought, so they don't care about math. Relate to them.

"Actually, I do have to carry a gun for protection sometimes. Not in public, but in the field? Yeah, sure I do. I had to take a course first, but that's just so I know how to use it properly."

There were some 'ooh's and 'ah's from the crowd of fifth graders. Charlie noticed the blonde girl's hand was in the air, and that she was patiently waiting for him to get to her.

"You, little blonde girl in the fuchsia blouse," he said, pointing to her, "You have a question?" She smiled shyly and nodded.

"Did you always want to work in math? Like, when did you realise you wanted to use math in your career?"

"I always liked math, and I was good at it, but I don't think I actually decided that it was the perfect career for me until, um... I was twelve, maybe? Closer to the end of high school."

The blonde girl nodded and made a note in her notebook. "Thanks," she said.

"Any other questions?" he asked. There were a few, but all of them were either about the FBI or what kind of gun her was allowed to carry.

When the presentation was finally over, Charlie was trying not to feel frustrated. He walked off the stage and automatically collapsed against the backstage wall. All the questions that had nothing to do with math left him feeling slightly drained and slight used.

None of those kids cared about what he had to say; he knew that giving a lecture to eleven-year-olds was a bad idea. Who had thought this could be beneficial to them somehow? They hadn't learned anything!



He put his index fingers to his temples and began to rub small circles on them. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the backstage wall, still messaging his temples. A few minutes passed like this.

"Ahem, Charlie?" Charlie opened his eyes and looked toward Freddie, removing his fingers from the temples and putting his hands on the floor beside him.

"Freddie," said Charlie. He pushed himself off the floor and stood, rubbing his hands on the front of his dark coloured jeans. "I was just—" Freddie put up a hand to silence him.

"No need to explain. Fifth graders can be tiring. I was just wondering if you could handle, err, one more." Charlie's eyebrows shot up under his curly hair.

"No offence, Freddie, but I don't think I can do another presentation like that; the kids weren't really..." Freddie chuckled.

"I didn't mean another presentation, Charlie. I meant... I mean, if you're willing, one of the students want to talk to you for a few minutes. She's the one who introduced me to your book and suggested I get you for the presentation in the first place."

Charlie relaxed. He had a feeling said student was the blonde girl. He smiled.

"Sure. What's this student's name?"

"Tyler Steele," said Freddie, "But most people call her TJ. She skipped a grade, so she's only ten... but she's the most intelligent ten-year-old I've ever met."

Charlie nodded. This 'Tyler' girl sounded a lot like him at that age. Though the name 'Tyler' automatically made him think of a boy, Freddie had said people call her TJ.

"Sure, I have time." Freddie nodded and motioned toward the partially open door to the hallway. Tyler poked her nose around the door, then opened it fully and stepped hesitantly toward them.

"Hi, Tyler," said Charlie, bending down to her level and extending his hand.

"Hello, Professor Eppes," she said shyly back, tucking her notebook and another book safely under one arm and shaking his hand with her free one. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I read your book... it was really, really good. I learned a lot." She pulled a well-read looking copy of his book, 'Friendship, As Easy As Pi' from under her arm and showed it to him.

"Please, call me Charlie," he said, feeling a blush creep into his cheeks. He didn't really like it when people recognized him for his book; it was an eleventh grade paper that he revised and then had published, he had only been twelve when he wrote it.

Tyler shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot before saying anything else. "Listen, would it be horrible for me to ask you to sign my copy of your book? I mean, I'd understand if you said no, but 

you're my hero and..." she trailed off, looking at her little pink running shoes. Charlie shook his head with wonder. He couldn't help but think, Him? Her hero? Hardly.

"Sure, I'll sign your book. It would be an honour." He gently took the book from her with one hand while digging through his pocket for a pen with the other. "I'm sure I have a pen here somewhere..."

Tyler reached into the pocket of her jeans and offered him a sleek black pen. He smiled and took it from her, then flipped open the cover of her book. He had never signed a book for anyone before. Larry occasionally had him sign his name on the inside of covers so that he could 'give them to friends of his', but Charlie knew he was really selling them on E-Bay. He had just signed his name then, but this had to be more personal. He had no clue what to write.

"Err, what do you want me to write?" Tyler shrugged. "Okay... how about 'To my newest and cutest little friend, Tyler, from Charlie Eppes'? Would that be okay?" Tyler nodded eagerly and Charlie quickly wrote the message down, then handed her back the book and the pen.

"Thank you, sir! You're the best!" she said excitedly. The next thing he knew, she had flung her arms around his chest in a big hug. He smiled and gave her a little pat on the back.

He looked up and realized that during the time he had been talking to his 'newest and cutest little fan' Freddie Easton had disappeared. Tyler let go at him and took a step back, grinning.

"Professor Eppes?" Charlie redirected his attention to the ten-year-old.

"Please, call me Charlie. Calling me 'professor' makes me feel all old and stuff." Tyler giggled.

"Okay, Charlie. You're nice. What's your favourite colour?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I don't really have one... why?" She grinned at him.

"I'm writing a paper on you for school. I got a lot of good facts about you from the internet, but convincing Mr. Easton to have you come here was the best idea I ever got! He said I could interview you after your presentation, if you were willing."

Charlie smiled. She was writing a paper on him? How cute! "Sure, you can ask me whatever you want. Wait, what do you know about me already?" She offered him her notebook, and he took it from her, flipping to the first page.

My Hero: Professor Charles Eppes, by Tyler-Jasmine Steele, was written in messy printing on the first line. He smiled and shook his head.

"Mind if I read what you have so far?" he asked and Tyler's grin increased.

"Oh, please do!" she said. "I'll get you a chair; you look so uncomfortable crouching like that." Charlie smiled and straightened his back so he was no longer crouching as she ran off. It had been getting a little painful the stand that way.



Professor Eppes is a teacher at the California Institute of Science, better known as CalSci, and teaches applied mathematics. Charlie felt himself smile. This kid was smart.

Tyler returned with a chair under each arm. She put on down beside him, and then the other one facing it. She sat down in her own chair and began swinging her feet back and forth because they didn't reach the ground.

Charlie sat in the chair she brought for him. "Thanks," he said, and continued reading.

He is also the best-selling author of my favourite book, Friendship, As Easy As Pi, and many notable papers. He graduated from high school at the age of thirteen, and published his first mathematical treatise in the American Journal of Mathematics at fourteen, earning him the title of the youngest person to write a paper of importance, EVER.

Charlie grinned. The word 'ever' was in capitals and had been gone over so many times it was approximately 3.27 times as dark as the rest of the writing.

But it was his paper on the Eppes Convergence that concerned asymptotics of Hermitian random matrices which made him a star in his field.

Following his five-year studies on random matrices, Mr. Eppes worked on sequences with orthogonal symmetry. He has also provided insights for possibly solving the PNP problem and published works on H-infinity Control of Non-Linear Systems and computational fluid dynamics, while his current research is in cognitive emergence theory.

Mr. Eppes is also a recipient of the Milton Prize, which is really cool. He has presented seminars on harmonic analysis and the zeros of random orthogonal polynomials and given lectures on group theory and Kac–Moody algebras. He has taught courses on calculus, chaos theory, fluid dynamics, game theory and probability at CalSci in addition to giving guest lectures on applied probability. The lecture in which he converted the classroom into a miniature casino for analyzing probabilities is considered an "Eppes Classic".

He looked up from the notebook. "You found all this on the internet?" he asked, shocked. It was practically a summary of his life. Tyler nodded happily.

"I found lots at the CalSci website, and Google sites, of course. I also made a few inquiries—" Charlie had to stop himself from laughing as the ten-year-old used the word 'inquiry'. "—at your fan-club's website and they gave me a lot of information as to what you're currently working on and such."

Charlie handed the notebook back to her and shook his head in almost awe. "What else do you need to know? You seem to have everything about me pretty much already..."

"I'm supposed to know, uh..." She flipped a few pages forward in her notebook. "My hero's favourite colour, a brief biography, which I have, a short description, but I already know what you look 

like, their favourite pastimes, family relations, friends and other random facts," she said, holding up the notebook and showing him a list.

"Okay. I don't really have a favourite colour, but if I had to choose I'd say... blue. My favourite pastimes... I do math for fun, really. And hanging out with family and friends, of course. Oh, and I play basketball." Tyler was busy scribbling what he was saying down quickly, not wanting to miss anything.

"Family and friends?" she said hopefully, looking up at him with the biggest, more adorable green eyes he had ever seen.

"I have a brother named Don who works for the FBI," said Charlie. Tyler nodded.

"I knew that. You said so in your speech. What does he do?"

"Can't tell you, or I'd have to kill you," he said with a serious look on his face. She stared at him in awe for a moment before scribbling that down, too. He groaned. "Don't write that down, it was a joke!"

She looked up at him to see if he was serious, then quickly scratched that last line out. "Okay."

"My best friend's name is Lawrence Fleinhardt, but we call him Larry, my girlfriend's name is Amita Ramanujan, and my dad's name is Alan Eppes." Tyler nodded and wrote all that down, too.

Charlie was actually enjoying talking to this little girl. She seemed intelligent beyond her years; much like he was at her age. Freddie had said she skipped a grade, so he and she weren't really that different. Plus, she idolised him for reasons he couldn't fathom.

"How do you spell 'Ramanujan'?" asked Tyler. Charlie's eyebrows met in the middle as he thought.

"Ugh. Spelling is my worst subject." Tyler smiled.

"Mine too!" She made a quick note in her notebook.

"Okay. Ramanujan. R-A-M-A-N-U..." He stopped and thought for a moment, trying to remember what it said on her office door. "J-A-N. Ramanujan."

Tyler mouthed the letters and she wrote down Amita's last name.

"Anything else?" asked Charlie warmly. He was starting to like this kid. She was a lot like him.

"I don't think so..."

"TJ!" Both Charlie and Tyler jumped and looked toward the door, where a short, brown-haired boy stood. "Mr. Easton says you have to get back to class now." Tyler rolled her eyes but stood up anyway. Charlie did the same.



"Thank you for your time, Charlie," she said, extending her hand. He shook it. She turned and skipped out the door with the brown-haired boy.

Charlie shook his head then left also, running into Freddie Easton in the front lobby of the school.

"Charlie, I hope you had a nice time today," he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. "I know the kids did." Charlie smiled.

"Of course. See you around."

He left the building and took out his cell phone to call his dad to pick him up, as was arranged. Surprisingly, he actually had had a good time. Talking to Tyler had been enjoyable, and the lecture hadn't gone that badly.

He was still baffled by the fact that he was a ten-year-old girl's hero. Him, the math geek from California. It was mind-blowing. Yet, strangely, almost humbling.