Solving for M

by Jennifer Swender

  “We’re lucky we have such a great medical center so close by,” she says as we pull into the parking garage.

  I’m thinking we’d be luckier if we didn’t have to go at all.

  * * *

  —

  When they take Mom in for the procedure, I stay in the waiting room and do my homework. Then I half pay attention to this silly game show that’s on TV. There are lots of lights and colors and sound effects. Everybody on the show is so excited. They are so ridiculously happy.

  I take my oil pastels and a blank book out of my backpack. I’m not really drawing anything, just lines and dots and scribbles.

  After a while, a nurse comes through the door and looks around. “Mika Barnes?” she asks in my direction. I raise my hand like I’m at school.

  “Hi, I’m Ana,” she says. “Your mom’s doing great. I’m supposed to tell you that Jeannie’s running a bit late, but she’s on her way.”

  I’m not surprised. Jeannie is often “running a bit late.”

  “Thanks,” I say. But instead of leaving, the nurse sits down on the waiting room couch next to me.

  “This show is so weird.” She nods up toward the TV. “So how are you?”

  I shrug. I don’t really have an answer. I guess I’m okay. I’m not the one who’s sick, right?

  “Do you have any questions?” she asks next.

  I think for a minute. Lately, it seems like whenever I ask Mom a question, she just tells me there’s nothing for me to worry about. She doesn’t say there’s nothing to worry about, just that there’s nothing for me to worry about.

  Or she does that grown-up sneaky strategy of choosing her words very carefully. Like when I was little and I asked her if Santa was real. She said, “Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas, which is very real.” So not a lie, but not the straight truth, either.

  “Anything you want to know?” Ana tries again.

  I think about what I want to know. But I don’t know if I really want to know what I want to know. But the not-knowing is like this loud echo in my head. And I remember what Mr. Vann says—it’s always better to know.

  I start with an easy question. “What’s the ink for?” I ask.

  “You see, cancer cells can travel,” Ana explains.

  Figures. Travel is supposed to be a good thing, like going on a cruise or a safari or going to Paris after your high school graduation. But I can tell from the look on Ana’s face that this kind of travel is not good.

  “They can travel through the lymphatic system,” she continues. “Think of it like a bunch of highways going all over your body. Your lymph nodes are like the tollbooths along the way. The doctors inject the ink to see which tollbooth the cancer would get to first. Then they look at that node, the sentinel node, under the microscope. Best case scenario, it’s clean.” Ana smiles.

  I suddenly get this weird picture in my mind of a super-clean tollbooth, all sparkly and shiny. Maybe those fifth-grade aliens who came down from space to find their home pods made it their mission to scrub that tollbooth like nobody’s business.

  Ana gives my knee a squeeze. “And if it’s clean,” she says, “chances are we caught it in time.”

  Math Journal Entry #7

  Write a number that represents something, anything.

  Your number should span the hundred-thousands place all the way to the hundredths place.

  First, “dissect” your number. Explain which digit is in which place, and the value that each digit represents.

  Then have fun “playing” with your number. In other words, move that decimal point and see what happens!

  Maybe I shouldn’t have used Jeannie for the latest math journal conundrum. But it was super fun drawing her and her hamster toothpaste.

  Jeannie’s not exactly famous, but she is the kind of actress you see on TV a lot if you know to look for her. Last year she did this commercial for car insurance that was on all the time. She jokes that one commercial bought her a new car, and Jeannie has a really nice car.

  Jeannie comes over for dinner a lot when she’s not out of town for work. She just shows up. Then Mom’s line is, “Would it kill you to call first?” But she doesn’t really mean it.

  I like it when Jeannie comes over. Sometimes “just the two of us” can get a little boring, and Jeannie’s good at filling in the empty spaces.

  “So, I spoke to a friend of a friend of a friend,” Jeannie tells us excitedly as she unpacks the takeout. She holds up a container of some green-bean-salad thing. “Doesn’t this look amazing?” she asks. “Almonds! I couldn’t resist. Anyway, this person said that if they find something in your sen— What do you call it?”

  “Sentinel node,” I say.

  Mom looks at me. She seems surprised that I know the answer.

  “Right,” Jeannie says. “That thing. Anyway, if they find something, they call you lickety-split because, you know, it’s not…so good. But if they don’t find anything, then they don’t care about you as much anymore. No offense,” she says in Mom’s direction.

  “None taken,” Mom says.

  “Then you get put in the ‘this call can wait until later’ pile. So if you haven’t heard anything yet, you’re totally in the clear.”

  Jeannie can be very convincing. I know she’s not a doctor, even if she has played one on TV like a million times.

  After the procedure last week, the real doctor said Mom’s sentinel node appeared to be clean, but they would still need to send samples for more thorough testing, just to be 100 percent sure.

  “I guess no news is good news,” Mom says as she grabs three forks from the drawer.

  I know what she means. She means that getting “no news” is equal to getting “good news.” If I had to express it as a math equation:

  No News = Good News.

  But I can’t help thinking about it the other way, too. It could also mean that there actually is no good news. Except right now there isn’t any news, and according to Jeannie, that is good news. No news also means that you can just forget about all of it for a little while.

  * * *

  —

  “Hi, Mika.” Chelsea comes over to where I’m sitting by myself in the cafeteria. I’d hoped to sit with Ella, but by the time I got through the lunch line, she and the Onesies had already left.

  Chelsea lowers her tray and sits down next to me. “You know, Mika, skin cancer isn’t that serious. I mean, it’s not like brain cancer or”—she looks around and hides her mouth behind her hand—“breast cancer. When you said that in math the other day, you seemed really worried. But you won’t get it if you’re careful. You just need to wear sunscreen and a hat. Like how you won’t get lung cancer if you don’t smoke.”

  “Actually…,” Dee Dee interrupts. She walks around to the other side of the table and plops her tray down. “Approximately ten percent of men and twenty percent of women who get lung cancer are nonsmokers.”

  Chelsea shrugs. I feel a little bad because I know she’s just trying to be nice, but I’m not going to let it spoil my good day. There’s still no news. And no news probably does mean good news.

  This is all over, and my mom is fine, and now I can use my math journal for other things, like estimating the number of fairies on the head of a pin (thank you, Chelsea, for the idea), or recording the number of millimeters in a millipede’s feet (using scientific notation, of course), or figuring out the amount of time that will elapse before we have to leave for math (exactly sixteen minutes).

  “My mom’s cousin’s husband had lung cancer,” Dan chimes in. He’s on his way to bus his tray. “And he totally smoked.”

  Chelsea gives me a look that politely says I-told-you-so.

  “Or maybe it was stomach cancer,” Dan says. “But he still smoked.”

  “A lot of people think of cancer as an immun
e issue,” Dee Dee says, cracking open her milk. “It has to do with how well your body can fight stuff. So smoking would still affect the quality of his overall health.”

  “What are you, a doctor?” Dan says sarcastically.

  “Not yet.” Dee Dee smiles. Today’s T-shirt has a big picture of an arm bone. Underneath it, it says: I found this humerus.

  I turn around and look up at Dan. “How’s your mom’s cousin’s husband?” I ask. “Is he okay?”

  “Oh, no,” Dan says, heading for the garbage cans. “He totally croaked.”

  * * *

  —

  Right after I get home from school, the phone rings.

  Like finding things and traveling, phone ringing is usually a good thing. If it’s not someone calling my mom for work, it’s usually Jeannie or Ella, although Ella hasn’t called in a while. But now that I think about it, I guess I haven’t tried calling her, either.

  Or else it’s Grandma Beau. That’s my mom’s mom. Grandma Beau just lives over in Schenectady, but she still calls every day.

  I hear Mom pick up the phone in her office, but I don’t hear her say “Hey there, Jeannie” or “Hi, Mom” or even “Rebecca Barnes and Associates.” All I hear is nothing.

  Then she finally says, “Yes, I do have family in the area.” And then she says, “Yes, I’ll expect their call.” And then she hangs up.

  I hear her pick up the phone again. It sounds like she’s leaving a message. She hangs up, picks up, and dials again. I can’t hear exactly what she’s saying, but it sounds like she’s saying the same thing every time.

  After a few minutes, the phone rings. Mom picks it up, and I hear her say, “Oh, Hugh.” It’s my dad, and the way she says his name sounds like someone letting the air out of a balloon all at once.

  I can’t understand what they’re saying because my mom is in the other room. Plus, she’s talking really fast. Then she hangs up the phone, and it immediately rings again.

  “Mommy?” I hear her say.

  Now I’m really confused. She’s Mommy. Then I realize it must be Grandma Beau.

  When my mom finally comes out of her office, about twenty-one million phone calls later, her eyes are red and her face is all puffy.

  “It’s okay, Mika-Mouse,” she says to me. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She goes to the fridge and opens the door. She stares into the fridge for a long time before she asks, “What should we do for dinner? It’s just the two of us tonight. Just the girls.”

  What she doesn’t say is what I somehow already know. The tollbooth wasn’t clean after all.

  Math Journal Entry #8: Scratch and Match

  Divide your page into three columns. (Those are the ones that go up and down, Dan.)

  In the left column, list four numbers.

  In the center column, write those numbers in expanded form. (Please remember to attend to precision.)

  In the right column, list the things those numbers enumerate.

  Be sure to scramble the order of your lists! Someone else will have to match them up.

  Scratch and Match is actually the name of a lottery game where you scratch off the silver stuff with a coin. If you have three numbers that match, you win that amount of money. Rumor has it Mr. Vann won ten thousand dollars once. That’s a one in the ten-thousands place and a whole mess of zeroes.

  I guess Mr. Vann is lucky like that. I wonder what the odds are of winning ten thousand dollars. I wonder if it’s more or less than the odds of getting cancer.

  “Dear thinkers,” Mr. Vann announces, “please partner up.”

  Dee Dee looks over at me with a little shrug. I pick up my math journal and bring it to her desk. Her T-shirt today simply says: This is what a scientist looks like.

  “Now,” Mr. Vann says once everyone is settled, “switch journals with your partner. You are going to use deductive reasoning and good old common sense to match each number with its expanded form, as well as the concept that both enumerate. And remember,” Mr. Vann warns, “no peeking at your partner’s other pages. Except for this page, math journals are the private property of the math journalist.”

  I guess Mr. Vann is the only one who’s allowed to peek.

  I look over Dee Dee’s lists. All of her numbers have to do with different kinds of science stuff. I draw a tentative line between “the closest the Earth gets to Jupiter” and “390,682,810 miles.”

  “You probably should have been partners with Chelsea,” Dee Dee says as she looks over my list. “But you’re in luck. She told me just yesterday that there are, in fact, exactly seventeen zillion fairies on the head of a pin. So that one’s easy. The rest I have no clue about.”

  “Put on your thinking caps!” Mr. Vann yells as he walks around the room.

  “I knew I forgot something this morning.” Dee Dee sighs and pats her head. “Let’s see, I also happen to know that your phone rang precisely twenty-one million times yesterday.” She draws a thick line between the words and the numbers.

  “I know this because my sister obviously went over to your house due to the fact that she managed to get her phone taken away at my house on account of completely unacceptable overage charges.” Dee Dee is funny even when you don’t feel like laughing.

  “And I’m going to guess that one thousand, two hundred, and whatever goes with the distance, in miles, from Albany International Airport—airport code ALB, by the way—to Orlando International Airport, airport code MCO on account of its original name: McCoy Air Force Base,” she says matter-of-factly. “What’s in Orlando? I mean, besides Mickey Mouse.”

  “My dad,” I say.

  “Lucky you,” she says.

  “I guess,” I say.

  “Melanoma?” Dee Dee says next. “Yuckety yuck yuck yuck. I’m going to match that with eighty-seven thousand because it sounds like something you actually looked up, and eighty-seven thousand is the only real number left.”

  Mr. Vann happens to be passing by just as Dee Dee says that. “Real numbers will be addressed in chapter two, dear Dee Dee,” he says. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Or should I say, as we are currently at chapter three, let’s not get behind ourselves.”

  Dee Dee rolls her eyes. I smile. Mr. Vann gives everyone a five-minute warning.

  “So how did I do?” Dee Dee asks.

  I write a 100% at the top of the page, with smiley faces in the zeroes. Then I write RM in big bubble letters.

  “What’s RM?” she asks.

  “Refrigerator Material,” I say. “My mom writes that. But I guess since it’s in my math journal, you can’t put it on your fridge. Sorry.”

  “No sweat,” Dee Dee says. She looks over the page in her math journal and gives me a 100 percent, too. “Why melanoma?” she asks.

  I haven’t told anyone at school about my mom, not even Ella. Every time I see her, she’s surrounded by Onesies. We just wave in the halls.

  But Dee Dee knows a lot about all kinds of science stuff. Plus, she’s smart and funny and nice. I wait approximately seven seconds of elapsed time. Then I tell her.

  “Mika and Dee Dee have expressed a real interest in real numbers,” Mr. Vann announces from the door.

  It’s been a few days since Dee Dee said real numbers, and she didn’t even mean it in a math way.

  “So we are moving further back in time,” Mr. Vann says mysteriously, “all the way back to chapter two.”

  I can’t help noticing that Mr. Vann has appeared in the doorway four minutes early, and since it’s sleeting outside and everybody’s already here, today math starts at 1:03. If this were a normal class, kids would moan and groan, but nobody does.

  Mr. Vann writes on the board: Real numbers can be positive or negative. Real numbers are not imaginary numbers.

  I’m waiting to hear what Dan has to say about imaginary numbers.
Any minute now I expect him to start counting: goop, cheen, bloopy-boo.

  But Dan is absent. And he’s not the only one. There are only two days of school this week, then Thanksgiving break. Now I remember Dan saying that he was going to Cleveland to see his grandparents.

  “Let’s talk about zero,” Mr. Vann says. “Is zero real?”

  “Is anything real?” a kid named Kevin asks back. He seems to be filling in for Dan as resident smart aleck today.

  “Interesting point,” Mr. Vann says. “But let’s limit the conversation to math, or else we’ll just…” Mr. Vann hooks his thumbs together to make a bird or a butterfly. Then he flaps his fingers into flight.

  “Zero has not always been on the world stage,” Mr. Vann continues. “Many ancient civilizations had no concept of zero.”

  “Zero is nothing,” Chelsea chimes in.

  Mr. Vann raises his eyebrows in encouragement, but Chelsea doesn’t seem to have anything more to say.

  “And nothing is something,” Dee Dee helps her out. “It is a value. So zero is real.”

  “Right,” Chelsea adds. “Because zero is nothing, it is actually something.”

  “Five trillion bonus points for the both of you,” Mr. Vann says with a smile.

  And mixed up as it is, I totally understand what Dee Dee and Chelsea mean. Even nothing is something. Like if the doctors find nothing in your sentinel node, that’s something—something good.

  “Please find a real partner with whom to create a real number line for your real numbers,” Mr. Vann tells us. He hands Dee Dee a stack of long strips of paper. “And remember,” he says, “your number line should feature zero, our newfound hero.”

  “You mean she-ro,” Dee Dee says as she starts passing out the paper strips. “One to a customer!” she shouts.