I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know my mom had called Mr. B. I guess it’s another one of those things she just forgot to tell me.
“So how are you, Mika?” he asks.
I don’t know what to say to that, either. The answer seems way too complicated to explain to a man who thinks that snowpeople can play baseball.
Should I tell him that I’m excited about going to Chelsea’s on Saturday? Should I tell him that I’m happy in math? That I’m sad at home? That I really liked being in Florida? Should I tell him that I’m sick of my mom being sick? That I’m great and I’m terrible and I’m just fine and I’m mad and I’m really, really scared?
When I don’t say anything, Mr. B says, “Is this a good time to check in? Maybe once a week?”
“Um…,” I start.
This is all so middle school messed-up. Grown-ups are always saying how important it is for kids our age to feel like we’re part of a group, to feel safe and cozy in our home pods. And then when you finally do, they call you down to the main office.
“No,” I say, louder than I mean to. “I mean, it’s my math block, and math is kind of challenging for me,” I lie.
“Understood,” Mr. B says with a smile. “Let me take a look at the schedule, and we’ll find another time.” He looks down at the large day planner open on his desk. There are so many names penciled in, erased, rewritten. It makes me feel a little better to see all of those names, to know I’m not the only one with problems.
“You know, Mika,” Mr. B says, erasing my name from its little slot. “Sometimes keeping a journal can be helpful during difficult times. A journal can be a place to record and process your thoughts and feelings.”
“I have a journal,” I say a little too quickly. I don’t mention that it’s a math journal. But he’s right. It does help.
And then I say something I never would have imagined saying before this school year. As politely as I can, I ask, “Could I please go back to math?”
* * *
—
The whole bus ride home I thought about pushing open the door and asking Mom when she was planning on telling me that she had talked to Mr. B.
I was going to say, “Did it just slip your mind…like my birthday?” Or “Didn’t you think I might like to know I was going to get called out of class before I got called out of class? Because when you do something is just as important as what you do, perhaps more. I know you thought you were helping, but that got canceled out by not telling me first.”
I was going to describe how it felt walking down to the main office. How scared I was. Not scared that I was in trouble or anything, but scared that something bad had happened. I mean, that something new and bad had happened.
But when I walk in the front door, Mom is at the kitchen table talking to Jeannie loudly. She sounds upset. “I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just done the last procedure first, and then we could have started this all at least a month earlier.”
Mom stops when she sees me.
“Welcome, Mika,” Jeannie says, bowing dramatically. I can tell she’s trying to “steal focus” from my mom’s minor meltdown.
“Hi,” I say.
Jeannie’s not working right now so she comes over a lot, I think to give Grandma Beau a break. At least when Jeannie’s here, Mom comes out of her room and sits at the kitchen table. Mom drinks tea while Jeannie swipes at her phone and looks for funny things to talk about.
Jeannie’s phone buzzes. “You must be nuts if you think I am going to Minnesota in April,” she says to the screen. “I love Brigadoon as much as the next gal, but I am way too old for snow on Easter.”
I know it’s just an excuse. It’s not like the weather here is any better. It’s still gray and cold. It feels like waiting.
Jeannie looks back down at her phone. “You have got to see this video, Mika. A kitten gets totally freaked by a salamander. Oh, and we’re going out for dinner this weekend.” She starts swiping again.
I drop my backpack and go to the fridge. I open the door and stare inside. Jeannie obviously stopped at the deli and stocked us up with yummy things.
“There’s a new restaurant downtown,” Jeannie goes on. “Or maybe it’s an old restaurant under new management. Anyway, it was on one of those food TV shows. Oh, I hope it’s not the show where they find a really bad restaurant and try to turn it around. That never works.”
“Mika,” Mom says, like she’s on autopilot. “Fridge.”
Really? I want to shout. Really? It’s so important that I close the fridge door to save the four cents on electricity, but it’s not important for you to tell me that the school counselor was going to call me out of math today? But I don’t say it. I just shut the door hard.
Mom turns and gives me a look.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Great,” Jeannie says. “Then it’s settled. Saturday night. They’re supposed to have excellent eggplant. And we’re going to have fun. Or at least we’ll fake it till we make it.”
“But…,” I start. Then I stop.
The idea suddenly pops into my mind that if I don’t go out with “the girls” on Saturday, something bad will happen. I’m not sure what.
Maybe I should have checked with Mom before telling Chelsea I could come over. That’s what I always would have done in the past. When Chelsea asked me, I would have said, “I just need to ask my mom first.” Maybe I’m the one doing things all out of order.
“It’s okay,” I say out loud. “I’ll call Chelsea and tell her I can’t go.”
“Can’t go where?” Jeannie asks.
“I kind of had plans to go to my friend Chelsea’s house on Saturday. But it’s not important.”
“Hang on,” Mom says, putting her mug down. She takes a deep breath. I’m surprised to hear her voice so clearly. Lately, she’s like this flat, silent outline. “We can drop you at Chelsea’s, and then the boring old ladies will go and have their eggplant,” she says in her Mom-trying-to-be-funny way.
“Hey,” Jeannie says with a fake huff. “Speak for yourself.”
Math Journal Entry #18
Karina and her mother are back. Karina’s mother wants to compute the complicated problem below. However, she is unsure how to proceed. Please offer her some direction.
Explain your process using words, numbers, and/or pictures.
4 + (5 x 2) – 32
Chelsea’s mom opens the door and invites me in.
“I’m so happy to meet you, Mika,” she says. “I’m Erica. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Chelsea comes running to the door and gives me a big hug. She leads me into the living room, where Dee Dee is sitting on the sofa, riffling through her backpack. Dee Dee waves without looking up. “Where are they?” she mutters.
“This is the living room,” Chelsea says, like she’s a tour guide.
One wall is lined with shelves to display all of Chelsea’s family’s “treasures”—seashells and pretty rocks and tons of snow globes. Grandma Beau would have a field day offering to buy it all so she could resell it online.
“My mom collects snow globes,” Chelsea explains with a bit of an eye roll. “Whenever we go someplace, she brings back a snow globe. Even if it’s a place that doesn’t have snow.” She picks up a snow globe with the Hollywood sign in the background to illustrate her point. She turns it upside down and right side up again. We watch the tiny white confetti fall onto palm trees.
Chelsea’s mom has been to a lot of places. My favorite snow globe is the smallest one. It’s the size of a golf ball, and inside there’s a teeny, tiny Eiffel Tower. The base is painted with the skyline of Paris.
“You went to Paris?” I ask.
“No,” Chelsea says. “My mom did. But I so want to go.”
“Me too,” I say.
“So
we’ll go,” she says with a smile.
“Okay,” says Dee Dee. “But before you go, I have these for you.” She pulls three cards out of her backpack. They’re about the size of a credit card, and they’re laminated. She hands them out.
I look down at mine. Across the top, it says The Calculators in a funky font, and in the corner there’s a photo that looks just like one of Mr. Vann’s ancient calculators. At the bottom there’s a blank line, and underneath the line it says, Official Member.
“You need to sign,” Dee Dee says very seriously. She fishes around in her backpack for a pen.
“Wait,” Chelsea says. “This calls for a Sharpie, fine tip.”
“Exactly,” I say.
Chelsea runs to her room and comes back with a marker.
I carefully sign my card and shake it a few times to make sure the ink has dried. I tuck it in my pocket and give it a pat for safekeeping.
I suddenly realize that I didn’t bring anything to our first official meeting. A “hostess gift,” as Grandma Beau would say. But even Grandma Beau forgot to remind me about something I needed that I didn’t know I needed.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t bring anything.”
“The best present is your presence,” Chelsea says with extra corny sauce.
“No biggie,” Dee Dee says with a shrug. “Just means the next meeting is at your house.”
“Today, dear thinkers, we enter the art of math.”
Mr. Vann reaches into the storage cabinet, which is somehow already a complete mess again. He pulls out three boxes of charcoal art pencils and a large stack of thick drawing paper.
“One to a customer!” everyone shouts.
Mr. Vann passes the pencils and paper out himself. “Serious thinkers need serious tools,” he reminds us.
When he gets back to the front of the room, Mr. Vann reaches into his desk drawer and takes out a pair of 3D movie glasses. They’re just like the ones I still have from my trip to Florida, the kind with one red lens and one blue lens.
“What allows us to see in three dimensions?” Mr. Vann asks mysteriously.
We all know this is not the kind of question he really expects us to answer, although Dee Dee could probably explain it if we needed her to. “And what, dear thinkers,” he continues, “is the difference between a surface and a solid?”
Mr. Vann writes the following words on the board: circle, square, triangle, rectangle. He waits until he’s sure we have all read the list. Then he erases it with his right hand as he writes with his left: sphere, cube, pyramid, rectangular prism.
He reaches back into his desk and pulls out a box of toothpicks and a bag of mini marshmallows. More serious tools, I guess.
The Calculators meet in our corner. Dee Dee starts building pyramids out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Chelsea stares at one of her notebooks very intensely, trying to draw a rectangular prism with very little height.
I never thought about art and math having that much in common before, but if Principal Mir came into the classroom right now, she’d probably think she’d wandered into the art studio by mistake, except for the fact that people are actually drawing.
I’m not sure which solid to start with. I know the formula for a cube. You just follow the steps, and it turns out like it’s supposed to. That’s easy.
Instead, I decide to try a sphere. It takes time to get the three dimensions of it. It’s all shading and shadows. It’s mostly trial and error.
* * *
—
At home, it’s like walking into the same still life every day. Mom is sitting at the table. Grandma Beau is standing at the sink, and Jeannie is talking, talking, although I don’t really hear what she’s saying. I know I said that Jeannie is good at filling in the empty spaces, but everything feels so tight lately, it’s like there’s not a lot of space left to fill.
After I get home from school, I usually grab a snack and then go to my room to do my homework or draw. But today the phone rings while I’m still in the kitchen.
“Who could that be?” Grandma Beau asks. “Everybody’s already here.” I guess that’s supposed to be a joke.
I look at the caller ID and see Katie’s name. Cool. Maybe she’s calling to ask how my new shoes worked out, or maybe she’s calling because the dogs did something really cute today, or maybe she thought of a name for our “math club.” I probably should have let her know that we came up with a really good one, but I didn’t even think of it.
“Hi,” I answer. “I should have called you.”
“Hi, Miks.” It’s not Katie. It’s my dad.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “I thought you were Katie.”
“Nope,” he says. “Just me. My phone’s out of juice. How’s things? Listen, can I talk to your mom for two seconds?”
“It’s Dad,” I say. “For you.” I point the phone in my mom’s direction.
“I’ll get it in the other room,” she says blankly. She gets up from the table and walks away.
I guess my dad is another one who could use a little bit of a math review because they talk for way longer than two seconds.
Math Journal Entry #19
Choose a three-dimensional object, any three-dimensional object.
First, represent your object using two-dimensional figures. Next, describe each of the figures you have used. What else can you discover from this solid?
Explain your thinking using numbers, words, and/or pictures.
When Dee Dee, Chelsea, and I get to math at 12:57, Mr. Vann is already there. He’s moved the desks and chairs to the sides of the room again and is making a huge grid on the floor with blue painter’s tape.
The right angles aren’t perfect, and some of the squares are slightly bigger than others, but it’s still pretty good. Then he starts rummaging through his desk drawer. He takes out a roll of red painter’s tape.
“Thank goodness you’re finally here,” he says as if we’re late and not ten minutes early.
Mr. Vann pulls out a long piece of the red tape and gives me the edge. He gives the rest of the roll to Dee Dee and orders us to separate, separate, separate. Chelsea directs us to keep the line as straight as possible.
Dee Dee and I keep walking backward and away from each other until she’s standing against the desks on one side of the room and I’m standing against the desks on the other side. In between, we are holding one very long piece of red tape. You could safely use meters to measure it.
“We need an x-axis, please,” Mr. Vann says.
“How many quadrants?” Dee Dee and I ask at the same time.
“Jinx,” Dee Dee whispers.
“Great minds…,” Mr. Vann says. “Four quadrants, please.”
Dee Dee and I carefully lay the long strip of red tape in the middle of the blue grid, side to side.
By now, other kids have started to arrive. They have to sit on top of the desks to stay out of the way of the major construction project going on.
Mr. Vann then has us put down the y-axis, and we now have a huge piece of graph paper…on the floor.
Mr. Vann goes back to his desk drawer and finds a plastic bag of big, colorful numbers. They look like something you’d see on a kindergarten bulletin board. It turns out they’re stickers. He enlists a bunch of kids to stick the numbers on the grid in the right order, and we’re good to go.
“First,” Mr. Vann announces, “we warm up.”
He starts stretching side to side and touching his toes. “We will start with the technical challenge: Last one to the correct quadrant is a rotten egg. Quadrant One! Go!”
“Wait! What?” Dan shouts.
Everyone scrambles down from the desks and runs to the area of Quadrant One. There’s a lot of confusion and tripping and noise, and tons more exercise than we’ve been getting in gym. Even though it’s slightl
y less freezing outside, the fields are still too muddy and squishy. We usually just sit in the gym to watch videos about healthy living.
“Quadrant Four!” Mr. Vann shouts next, and the chaos erupts again. “If your birthday is in January, February, or March—Quadrant One! April, May, and June—Quadrant Two! You get the idea.”
“If only we had a birthday chart!” Chelsea shouts before darting to her quadrant.
We’ve barely managed to complete the birthday challenge when I see Principal Mir poke her head in the doorway. I can’t imagine it looks very good to have the floor covered with tape and sweaty fifth graders.
“Hello, Mr. Vann,” Principal Mir calls.
“Hello, Principal Mir!” Mr. Vann shouts back. “Don’t worry. This is just the warm-up. Now, shoes with laces—Quadrant Two! Shoes with Velcro—Quadrant One! No shoes at all—Quadrant Four.” Dee Dee kicks off her sneakers and hops to Quadrant Four.
“And…please sit!” Mr. Vann shouts.
Everyone’s huffing and puffing and smiling. When I look over toward the door, Principal Mir is gone.
“That concludes our warm-up,” Mr. Vann continues. “Now we are going to talk about ordered pairs. No, Dan,” he says, even though Dan hasn’t asked anything. “Ordered pairs are not pairs of things you ordered. Ordered pairs are clues, insights, directions. They help us to know exactly where we are.”
Mr. Vann reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out his straw hat. Today, it’s filled with small pieces of paper. He starts passing the hat around.
“One to a customer,” he whispers.
I pick a slip of paper out of the hat and pass it on. My paper has the ordered pair (-2, 5) written on it.
“Once you have your directions, please find your place on the plane,” Mr. Vann says. Dee Dee, Chelsea, and I all end up in the same quadrant. Now, what are the chances of that? But as probability won’t be covered until chapter five…
“The Calculators rule!” Dee Dee shouts really loudly.
Solving for M Page 10