* * *
—
When I get home from school, Mom calls me into the living room. (She stopped picking me up at the bus stop.) Then she sits me down on the couch for a big explanation.
The reason my mom came home with a bandage last week is that the doctor had actually taken off the funny-looking spot right then and there. Then they sent a sample to a lab, where someone looked at it under a microscope. And that should have been the end of it.
“It looks as if they found something,” Mom begins.
I’m confused. Isn’t finding something supposed to be good? Like that time I thought I’d lost my house key, but it was just buried at the bottom of my backpack wrapped up in an old tissue. But it’s pretty clear from Mom’s voice that this is not the kind of something you want to find.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” she says with a face that doesn’t match her words. “I did a little research, and ninety-six percent of these cases end up perfectly fine.”
We haven’t gotten to percentages in math yet, but it doesn’t take a genius to do the subtraction. What about the other 4 percent? I want to ask. But Mom keeps on talking. It’s like she has to get everything off her list, and then she’ll be taking questions.
“Next week I’ll go back so the doctor can remove a little more,” Mom explains. “Just to make sure they got it all.”
For someone who usually makes a point of “attending to precision,” my mom is being pretty vague. How much is a little more? Exactly how big a deal is this?
“I don’t have to stay overnight or anything,” she says. “They do it first thing in the morning, and I’ll be home by noon.” She tells me all of this with a smile on her face, but it’s one of those fake, tight parent smiles. Then she hugs me for way too long.
I could use whole minutes to measure the length of that hug. And any hug on a regular school day that lasts for more than a full minute for no apparent reason is just plain weird.
“Jeannie will pick me up around seven,” Mom says.
Jeannie is my mom’s best friend, even if they are total opposites. My mom is an accountant; Jeannie is an actress. Jeannie says Mom is too predictable; Mom says Jeannie is too unpredictable. The only thing they both agree on is that if they hadn’t been stuck together as roommates in college, they never would have become friends. They probably never would have even met.
Mom continues with the plan. “We’ll be gone before you have to leave for the bus. So see? You do get to stay home by yourself.” She says this like it’s a huge honor and I’m supposed to be super-duper excited about it. But I know that she knows that staying home by yourself first thing in the morning is not what I was talking about.
Plus, if Jeannie picks my mom up at seven and I leave for the bus at 7:15, that’s only fifteen minutes of elapsed home-alone time.
“Think of it like a bad spot on a peach,” Mom says. “They just cut it out, and then the peach is as good as new.”
Except the peach has a big hole in it, I think. But I don’t say it out loud.
Math Journal Entry #5
Think of something, anything, that can be measured.
Describe what unit of measurement you would use to measure it and why.
Explain your thinking using words, numbers, and/or pictures.
I try to find Ella at lunch to see if I can borrow her phone. You’re not supposed to have phones in school, even though just about everybody does, except me, of course.
“Whom do you really need to call?” Mom says whenever I ask for one. She always gives an extra-long eye roll when she says the really part.
But the person I really need to call is her. I want to make sure she’s home. The main office has a strict “emergency only” phone policy, and Mom assured me this morning that this procedure was in no way an emergency. Still, I just want to know that she’s home and that everything went fine and that everything is back to normal.
I don’t see Ella in the cafeteria, so I quickly eat my lunch and head outside. I spot her by the soccer field with the Onesies.
Today, they are wearing blue jeans and purple shirts. As I get closer, I can hear them cracking up like someone just told the funniest joke ever in the history of the universe. I decide to forget about borrowing Ella’s phone.
I don’t want to go back to the cafeteria, so I head to math early. The door is open.
“Hey, Mika,” I hear from the back of the room.
It’s Dee Dee. She’s sitting at her desk, reading some big encyclopedia-looking book. She sets the book down and gives me a little wave. Her T-shirt today says: Think like a proton. Stay positive.
“Oh, hi,” I say. “I like your shirt.”
“Thanks,” she says, and gives me a thumbs-up.
I sit down at my desk and take out my math journal. I open it to the latest math journal investigation.
I used the formula to draw the cube. It’s easy. You draw a square. Then you put your pencil in the center of that square to start another square. Then you draw diagonal lines to connect the corners of one square to the corners of the other. Voilà. Perfect cube every time.
But I guess I can work on it a little more, add some shading, try to get more of the three dimensions.
* * *
—
“Who measured what?” Mr. Vann asks when he appears at the door at exactly seven minutes after one. He goes to his desk and starts rummaging through the top drawer. He takes out a flashlight, turns it on and off a few times, and puts it back.
Chelsea raises her hand.
“I used inches to measure the length of my notebook,” she says very clearly. “It is actually eleven inches long.” She holds up her notebook for everyone to see. “Actually, we did the same thing in fourth grade. My mom is actually concerned that this question was too easy.”
Mr. Vann often says why use a boring word when you can use a scintillating word? Chelsea seems to think that this means she should use the word actually as much as possible.
“I agree.” Mr. Vann nods. “But why not start with the easy questions? The difficult ones will be along soon enough.”
Mr. Vann wanders around the room as other kids share their journal entries.
“I used light-years to measure the distance to supernova SN 2014J,” Dee Dee shares. “Distance—eleven million five hundred thousand light-years, give or take.”
Mr. Vann stops behind me. I wonder if he’s looking over my shoulder and seeing what I drew. I wonder if he knows what it is.
* * *
—
When I get home from school, Mom is in her room lying down. No one talks about how the peach feels after they cut the bad spot out.
“You okay?” I ask from the doorway.
“Just a little sore,” she assures me. “Plus, I need to rest up for trick-or-treating.”
Now is probably not the time to tell her that I’m getting a little old for trick-or-treating with my mom. I was hoping maybe Ella and I could go by ourselves this year.
Mom pats the side of the bed. I walk over and carefully sit down. I don’t want to bump her. Then the phone rings.
I can tell it’s my dad, which is kind of weird. It’s not like my mom and dad hate each other, but it’s not like they talk on the phone every day, either.
Once when I asked Mom why she and my dad got divorced (after she assured me that “the decision was set in motion long before I was on the scene”), she said that they just didn’t have that much to talk about. But today, it seems like they have tons to talk about. My dad’s a doctor, and he loves to talk about doctor stuff.
Mom starts asking him a list of questions. I don’t understand much of it, but it sounds like the doctors want to do some kind of test. Then I hear Mom say a word that I don’t know.
I raise my hand like I’m at school trying to ask a question. But Mom just
holds up a finger, which is code for “Please wait, Mika. I’m on the phone.”
I get up and go to my mom’s office to use her laptop. If she asks, I’ll tell her it’s for homework.
Melanoma. That’s the word I heard her say to my dad. That’s the name of the thing they found in the spot on her leg. I say it out loud a few times. It sounds spooky.
When I Google it, a ton of websites come up—Wikipedia and Cancer.org and some place called the Mayo Clinic. That would be funny if things weren’t suddenly so definitely unfunny right now. (I mean, why do they need a whole clinic just for mayonnaise?)
There’s so much information on the screen, I don’t even know where to start. I read through the short descriptions next to each web address. Some of the sentences are super science-y and complicated. I wish I had Dee Dee here. She would probably understand a lot more than I do.
But some of the sentences are clear enough. Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer. Melanoma is life-threatening. Every hour, one person dies from it.
I shut the laptop. I don’t even “save and sleep” like I’m supposed to.
This is not the kind of math I want to think about. This is really not the kind of thing I want to measure.
Math Journal Entry #6: Multiple Personalities
Measure something, anything. Then give at least three alternate but equal measurements for that object. For example, Mr. Vann is 6 feet tall. Mr. Vann is 2 yards tall. Mr. Vann is 72 inches tall. Mr. Vann is approximately 1/1000 of a mile tall.
Explain your thinking using words, numbers, and/or pictures.
“One light-year is the same as five-point-eight trillion miles,” Dee Dee reads from her math journal. She’s dressed up as a Jedi from Star Wars. “That’s the same as nine-point-four-six trillion kilometers.”
“Twelve hundred bonus points for Dee Dee!” Mr. Vann shouts.
Today, Mr. Vann is actually wearing a cape and a top hat. He’s also carrying a pumpkin under his arm. The pumpkin has a silly face drawn on it with permanent marker. Whenever Mr. Vann goes to write something on the board, he has to put the pumpkin down. Then two minutes later, he can’t remember where he put it.
“I’ve lost my head!” he shouts for about the twentieth time.
“What are you supposed to be, anyway?” Dan asks. “The headless horseman?”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Vann says. “I am the mindless student.”
Dan is (surprise, surprise) a baseball player. At lunch he challenged Dee Dee to a duel—plastic light saber versus plastic baseball bat. Principal Mir quickly confiscated both.
I saw Ella across the cafeteria during the duel. She was with the Onesies. They had matching T-shirts and oversized-pacifier necklaces. I guess she’ll be trick-or-treating with them. Maybe I could ask Dee Dee what she’s doing. Or maybe I’ll just skip it this year.
“Are light-years going to be on the chapter test?” Chelsea raises her scepter to ask the question. (She’s dressed as a princess.) “Because light-years are not in the textbook. And actually, the fifth-grade math standard for measurement only goes up to miles.”
Mr. Vann just looks around and shouts, “I’ve lost my head!”
I didn’t dress up today. Usually I put a lot of time and thought into my Halloween costume. Last year, I was Monet’s Domino. I had a black rectangular sandwich board with six circles on each side. But instead of the circles being white, I painted a section of Monet’s Water Lilies in each one.
I want to see the real Water Lilies in Paris so badly. But it’s eight huge paintings that are way too big to move, so it’s not like they’re coming to the museum in Utica anytime soon. Mom says we’ll go to Paris when I graduate from high school, which might as well be in a million light-years.
This year, I was planning to be a Monet Rubik’s Cube. Same idea, but a little more complicated. I was going to get a big box and paint it black. Then I was going to copy four paintings from Water Lilies—one for each side of the cube. I know a cube has six sides, but I wasn’t going to worry about the top and bottom. No one would see them anyway.
Then I was going to cut each of the paintings into nine equal squares and glue the squares onto the box, but all out of order. So if you could move the squares (which you can’t because it’s really just a big box with suspenders), you could try to get each painting back to normal.
But I haven’t even started working on my costume. I haven’t carved a jack-o’-lantern or found the corny old CD of spooky sound effects Mom keeps in the holiday box in the basement. I just don’t feel like pretending to be scared.
Today, Mr. Vann begins class by announcing that Chelsea was correct.
“You, dear thinkers, are actually being challenged too much,” he tells us sympathetically.
Everybody knows that Chelsea said exactly the opposite, but we’re not about to tell Mr. Vann that we want him to make our work even harder.
“So we are traveling further back into the future,” Mr. Vann says. “All the way back to chapter three.”
I think about this idea of going back to the future. If we’re going back to it, I guess it means we’ve been there before, so we already know what’s going to happen.
But I’m not so interested in going back to the future. I think I’d rather just go back to the past. Probably third grade. I really liked my third-grade teacher, and we had an art club after school and went on a field trip to this cool living history museum. My mom came as a parent helper.
Mr. Vann starts erasing the board with his right hand and writing the longest number I think I’ve ever seen with his left. Then he goes back from right to left, adding a decimal point and several commas.
“Who would care to read?” he says with one eyebrow raised.
Dan starts reading off the numbers on the board, but he reads them like they’re in a list, not like they’re making up a larger number.
“Partial credit,” Mr. Vann responds. “I am certainly glad that you recognize all the symbols I have written on the board.” Everybody laughs.
Dee Dee raises her hand and reads off the number—three hundred twenty-seven trillion and something hundredths. Then she tells us what the number would be in scientific notation.
Mr. Vann gives her three hundred twenty-seven trillion and something hundredths bonus points.
“If it’s scientific notation,” Dan mutters, “we should be learning about it in science.”
I guess Dan hasn’t figured out how mixed up fifth grade at the middle school can be.
“I will raise the issue with the science department,” Mr. Vann says. “But for now, dear thinkers, please name some things that require very large numbers in order to be described.” He starts pacing in front of the board. “Come on,” he says. “Shout ’em out.”
I won’t bother mentioning that teachers are usually telling kids to stop shouting out. Mr. Vann often encourages it.
“The number of fairies on the head of a pin,” Chelsea offers.
“Possibly.” Mr. Vann nods.
“The number of people living on the continent of Asia,” a girl named Olivia says.
“The Yankees’ total payroll!” Dan shouts.
“The number of neutrons in all of the atoms in the human body,” Dee Dee says with a smile.
Dee Dee likes to say things that only she and Mr. Vann will understand. It usually gets her a bunch of bonus points. Today, her T-shirt has a copy of the periodic table of elements on the front. On the back, it says: I wear this shirt periodically.
“The total number of notebooks in Highbridge Middle School,” Chelsea tries.
Again with the notebooks. But actually, if you estimate three hundred kids per grade times four grades, that’s 1,200 kids. Even if every kid has five notebooks, that’s still only 6,000 notebooks, which isn’t that big a number.
Now everybody is shout
ing, and it’s really, really loud. I notice Principal Mir in the hall. She pokes her head in the doorway.
Principal Mir likes to walk around the building with a tiny notepad in one hand and a tiny pencil in the other. When she’s not writing things down, she keeps the pencil behind her ear.
But Mr. Vann doesn’t see Principal Mir because he’s walking around the room with his eyes closed again, waving his arms like an orchestra conductor. He holds a dry-erase marker like a baton. He listens closely to certain sections of the room and then moves on. He gestures for some kids to shout louder, and other kids to shout softer.
“The number of calories in ten Big Macs!”
“The number of miles on Mr. Vann’s car!”
“The number of rats living in the basement of Highbridge Middle!”
I figure it’s so loud, I might as well say what’s on my mind. Maybe it will feel good. Maybe I’ll feel better if I just say the words out loud.
“The number of people every year who get…”
Of course, Mr. Vann hushes everyone just as I say “skin cancer” really loud.
“Very true,” Mr. Vann says. He gives me a nod and three million bonus points.
I can’t help smiling a little. I mean, that’s a lot of bonus points.
* * *
—
I barely get home before I have to get into the car. At least this time, Mom had the appointment on the to-do list. She’s going to the medical center to have the test that she and my dad were talking about. It’s supposed to tell us something, something important, I guess.
“Jeannie will meet us there and drive us home,” Mom says as she pulls out of the driveway. “I might be a little loopy.” She makes a silly face.
I don’t bother with “I know you’re loopy, but what am I?” I just don’t feel like it.
“My first tattoo,” she says in her Mom-trying-to-be-cool way. As part of this procedure, they have to inject some kind of ink into my mom’s leg. I know she’s just trying to lighten things up, but my mom is like the last person on earth who would ever get a tattoo.
Solving for M Page 3