Solving for M

by Jennifer Swender

  Everybody looks at her like she’s totally crazy. Except for Chelsea, who raises a pretend glass and shouts, “Hear! Hear!”

  But I think what she’s actually saying is: “Here! Here!”

  And I am happy to be here at (-2, 5). Right now, I can’t imagine anyplace else I’d rather be.

  Math Journal Entry #20: Ordered Pair Dot-to-Dot

  Create a four-quadrant coordinate plane on a piece of graph paper. (Tuck this into your math journal.) Then draw an image, any image, on your coordinate plane. Make sure the outline passes through various points that can be described by ordered pairs.

  Record the list of the ordered pairs on a separate page in your math journal.

  The phone wakes me up. It’s only six-thirty. At first, I think it must be my dad calling before he goes to work. I hear Grandma Beau say hello. She doesn’t say anything else. Then she hangs up.

  Grandma Beau quietly walks over to my door and peeks in.

  “I’m awake,” I say.

  “Oh, Mika,” she says, like I surprised her by being in my own room. “No school today.”

  “What?” I sit up in bed.

  “Snow day,” says Grandma Beau. “Well, not snow precisely, but there’s a leak or something, so no school.”

  I look out my window. The snow in the yard is almost melted. On the edge of the flower bed, I can see one teeny, tiny purple crocus poking up. Maybe winter really is almost over. Maybe things do change. Maybe things can get better.

  About an hour later, the phone rings again. This time it’s Dee Dee.

  “My parents have to work and my sister still has school,” she says before I even have a chance to say hello. “So I’m coming over to your house.”

  That reminds me that the next meeting of the Calculators is supposed to be at my house anyway, so why not today?

  This time, I remember my order of operations and ask Mom if it’s okay first. She surprises me by saying she thinks the idea is super-dee-duper. I have to roll my eyes at that one.

  I call Dee Dee back. “Bring your math journal,” I tell her. Then I call Chelsea. They both arrive by nine o’clock.

  “I love your room,” Chelsea says.

  “Where’s your graph paper?” Dee Dee asks.

  I take a few sheets out of my desk and pass them out.

  “One to a customer,” I say.

  Then we sit on the floor and trade math journals. I do Dee Dee’s ordered pair dot-to-dot, Dee Dee does Chelsea’s, and Chelsea does mine.

  After a while, Mom pokes her head in. “You do realize it’s a little odd to be doing your math homework voluntarily,” she says in her Mom-trying-to-be-cool way. She sets a big bowl of grapes on the floor in the middle of us.

  “Oh, we’re not doing homework,” Chelsea says. “We already did it. But we haven’t had a chance to share yet.”

  “And sharing is caring,” Dee Dee says, doing her best Mr. Vann imitation. She turns the page in Chelsea’s math journal. The list of ordered pairs goes on and on. “And I’m going to need more graph paper,” Dee Dee says with a sigh.

  “Sorry,” Chelsea says with a smile. “Guess I got a little carried away.”

  “That was all the graph paper,” I say.

  “I have some in my office,” Mom says. “I’ll go grab it.”

  It feels good to have friends over and have Mom bring us grapes and try to act cool. It feels normal. I guess Mom is finally getting used to the medicine.

  “Thank you, Mika’s mom!” Dee Dee calls after her.

  Dee Dee’s ordered pair dot-to-dot turns out to be a volcano. Underneath it, she’s written: All you need is lava.

  Chelsea’s is a very cute teddy bear.

  When Chelsea finishes mine, she cries, “The Eiffel Tower! Oh là là. Très jolie!”

  We color in the pictures with my colored pencils from Katie. Then we hang them all on the fridge with about a million magnets.

  Dee Dee has to stay for dinner because her parents won’t be home until after six. We call Chelsea’s mom to ask if she can stay, too.

  So dinner is “just the girls,” which today are me, Mom, Grandma Beau, Dee Dee, and Chelsea.

  “After dinner I’m heading home for the night,” Grandma Beau says. “I desperately need to check on my treasures.”

  “And some of us have to work in the morning,” Mom says with a sigh. She says it in a way that makes it sound like she’s not looking forward to it, even though I know she is. Kind of like if I were to say, “Oh, no, I have math tomorrow.”

  “And some of you have school in the morning,” Mom continues. “At least I think you do.” She looks over at the phone and screws up her face, as if to say who knows what’s going to happen.

  “Luckily, all homework has been completed,” I say, and give a silly salute.

  Mom gives her own silly salute back. Then she points at my graph paper dot-to-dot, now firmly stuck to the refrigerator with a big bubble-letter RM at the top, thanks to Dee Dee.

  “Hey, the Eiffel Tower,” she says.

  “Chelsea’s mom’s been there,” I say.

  “And Mika and I are going,” Chelsea says. She throws her arm around my shoulder. “We just have to grow up and get jobs and earn enough money first.”

  “Hey, what about me?” Dee Dee asks like she’s really offended, even though I know she’s not.

  “You’re coming, too,” I say. And I swing my arm around Dee Dee’s shoulders. “All three of us are going.”

  It’s not until I’m in bed that night that I start worrying about what I said. I didn’t mean to say that I would go to Paris with my friends and not with Mom.

  “We have a problem,” Chelsea says. She plops her tray down next to mine on the cafeteria table. “I saw a piece of paper.”

  Usually Dee Dee would say something funny, like “Oh, no! A piece of paper! Whatever will we do?” But we can tell by the speed of the words coming out of Chelsea’s mouth that this is no time for jokes.

  “My mom had a school board meeting last night. I saw the agenda from the meeting on the table, and one of the action items was a status report from the search committee for the new fifth-grade math teacher.”

  I don’t understand what Chelsea is talking about. There are three Pods, and each Pod has its own fifth-grade math teacher.

  “New fifth-grade math teacher,” Chelsea repeats. “For Pod Two.”

  “What?” Dee Dee practically shouts.

  “I think Mr. Vann is getting fired,” Chelsea says quietly. “And I think it’s my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?” I ask.

  “At the beginning of the school year,” Chelsea says, “I told my mom about the shouting out and the lighting candles and the not doing the chapters in the correct order. It seemed important back then.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I say. “This was probably set in motion long before you were on the scene.”

  “Thanks,” Chelsea says.

  “They can’t fire a teacher just because one student complains,” Dee Dee adds. “Especially if it’s an informal complaint to one’s own parent who happens to be on the school board.” But Dee Dee’s confidence seems to decrease the more she talks. “They can’t just fire him,” she says in a way that begs us to tell her she’s right.

  “You’re right,” I tell her. “They can’t just fire him.” Although we really don’t have enough information to know if that’s true.

  We start packing up our lunch stuff even though we’ve barely eaten, and we head to math.

  * * *

  —

  “What is today?” Mr. Vann asks. He starts pacing in front of the board. “Come on. Shout it out. There is not nearly enough shouting out in this classroom.”

  The class starts shouting out answers. Just then, I see Principal Mir walk by the d
oor, making her rounds. Great, I think, just when the whole class is yelling at the top of their lungs.

  “Thursday!” someone yells really loud.

  “Probably.” Mr. Vann nods. “But as probability is chapter five and we are only at chapter six, we will hold off on the whole ‘It’s probably Thursday’ for the time being.”

  “I’m pretty sure it is Thursday,” Dan says.

  “Yes.” Mr. Vann smiles. “As we said, the chances are high, but let’s stick to chapter six for now.”

  “I think it’s a B-day,” someone tries next.

  “Not incorrect,” Mr. Vann says, but he’s still pacing and obviously looking for a different answer.

  “Is it an early-dismissal day?” Dee Dee asks.

  Mr. Vann turns to the clock with a look of concern. “Sure hope not,” he says.

  “Is it somebody’s birthday?” Chelsea asks with her own look of concern. “I would have made cupcakes if I’d known. I sincerely think we should make a birthday chart.”

  “I cannot disagree,” Mr. Vann says. “But seeing as how representing and interpreting data is clearly chapter seven, and we are still at chapter six…” He lets his voice trail off.

  There are more guesses. “Almost Easter?”

  “Yes and no,” Mr. Vann says.

  “A week till April Fools’ Day?”

  Mr. Vann doesn’t say anything. He just opens his desk drawer, takes out a sticky note, writes something on it, and puts it back in the drawer.

  I turn to chapter six. Then I raise my hand, not high enough to pop my shoulder out, but high enough for Mr. Vann to see. He nods at me.

  I look down and read directly from the textbook: “It is necessary to know the problem at hand in order to discern the specific information needed to solve it. For what purpose is this information required?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Mr. Vann says. “I am planning my next trip to the opera. If I purchase my ticket at least fourteen days in advance, I can save a bundle.” He rubs his hands together. “I, of course, cannot go on a school night. Way past my bedtime. April vacation begins, I believe, Monday, April twenty-second. But that, as we all know, is only one week after tax day, and I will have had my hands full. So let’s make my date for the theater Tuesday, April twenty-third. What is today? I beseech you, dear thinkers.”

  “You still have plenty of time to get the discount,” I say.

  “Whew!” Mr. Vann pretends to wipe sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s La Traviata, after all. Now, I realize our steadfast textbook calls them ‘real-world problems,’ but I much prefer the term ‘story problems.’ More dramatic. So please find your groups to brainstorm some characters, settings, and plot points for your own stories.”

  Before we’ve even sat down, Mr. Vann calls, “Chelsea, could I please speak with you for a moment?” Chelsea gets up and goes over to his desk. He takes out a sheet of paper and points at it. It looks like he’s asking her questions and she’s answering them.

  “I wonder what that’s about,” I say.

  “Beats me,” says Dee Dee.

  I tell myself that Mr. Vann has called Chelsea over to talk about the birthday chart and not about the school board meeting.

  Math Journal Entry #21: Story Problems

  Write a short story. (Emphasis on the word short—this is math, not language arts, after all.) Infuse your story with numbers. Then create one question that CAN be answered using the information in your story, and one question that CANNOT be answered. But DO NOT answer them! (We will do that together.)

  As soon as I finish my math journal entry, I wish I’d chosen something else to write about. I’m worried that Mr. Vann is going to read it over my shoulder and wonder why I’m writing about him. It’s pretty obvious he’s Professor X, even though I technically used a variable.

  I wonder if Mr. Vann knows they’re looking for a new fifth-grade math teacher for Pod Two. Would it be better if he did know? Maybe I should cover up the page in my math journal with my elbows. Or maybe not. Maybe if he knows now, he can make a plan, and things will be better later.

  And that’s another thing chapter four failed to teach us about time. How sometimes bad things now can turn into good things later, the same way good things now can turn into bad things later.

  But my elbow-cover-up strategy doesn’t matter because Mr. Vann doesn’t have us share our short stories or even trade math journals with a partner to answer each other’s questions.

  Today actually is an early-dismissal day, so math is a mere seventeen minutes long. And in what is maybe the strangest math class of the entire year, Mr. Vann just assigns us a list of problems from the textbook to work on quietly. Then he sits at his desk and fills out something that looks like paperwork.

  * * *

  —

  When I get home from school, Mom is sitting at the kitchen table. She has her own stack of paperwork in front of her. I don’t see Grandma Beau around.

  For a small second, it feels like how things used to be. In elementary school, after Mom picked me up at the bus stop, we would go home and have a snack. Then she would bring her work to the table, and I would work on my homework while she worked on her work-work.

  “Where’s Grandma Beau?” I ask.

  “She went home to check on some things,” Mom says. “She’ll be back.”

  Mom gathers up her papers and pats the chair next to her for me to come sit.

  “Listen, Mika,” she starts. “I want to talk about the treatments. They’re the reason I’ve been so fatigued and crabby and altogether…”

  “Absent?” I try. I know it’s a school word, but it seems to fit.

  “Yeah,” she says with a sigh. “Absent.” She messes up my hair, but just once. “So the doctors have been giving me a little break from them. My numbers weren’t too good.”

  So far in math this year, we’ve learned about large numbers and real numbers and rational numbers and imaginary numbers and positive numbers and negative numbers. But we haven’t learned about good numbers and bad numbers.

  “I could stop them altogether,” she says. “Then maybe things could get a little bit back to normal.”

  “You can do that?” I ask.

  She nods. “They recommend a whole year. But they also said the side effects would abate…I mean go down.”

  “I know what abate means,” I say. I don’t say it meanly. I’m not trying to be fresh. I just want Mom to know that she doesn’t have to change the words for me. I’m old enough to understand.

  “But if you stop them early,” I say, “the chances of the cancer coming back go up.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Mom says again. She seems surprised that I know so much about it, that she’s not my only source of information.

  I wait a bit before asking my next question. “But if you stop the treatments, are they sure it will come back?”

  “No,” she says, “but the chances are slightly higher.”

  “Define slightly,” I say.

  Mom rolls her eyes.

  “I’m serious.”

  She pulls a paper from the bottom of her stack. “This study indicates that the therapy lowers the risk of a recurrence from approximately thirty-seven percent to approximately twenty-six percent,” she reads out loud.

  I knew these numbers before. I estimated them as fractions in my math journal back in Unit 7, and here they’re expressed as percentages, but they haven’t changed.

  “Eleven percent,” I say. “About one-tenth. That’s like a slice of a large pizza.”

  “I guess that’s one way to look at it,” Mom says with a chuckle.

  “What do the doctors say?” I ask her.

  “They recommend the full year, but they also say it’s my decision.” Mom sighs. “I don’t think they really know. I don’t
think…”

  “I don’t think we have enough information to answer this question.”

  “Yeah,” Mom says.

  “Yeah,” I repeat. “Some questions are like that.”

  Math Journal Entry #22

  Imagine you do not have all the necessary information to solve a real-world problem. What could you do?

  Explain some strategies for dealing with this mathematical conundrum.

  When Dee Dee and I get to math a few days later, the door is locked. The little strip of glass is dark, and not just because the lights are off inside the classroom. There’s a piece of cardboard stuck in the window, like when we have testing or a lockdown drill. I’m wondering if this is some kind of April Fools’ joke.

  Dee Dee and I look at each other.

  “What’s going on?” Dee Dee asks.

  “No idea,” I say.

  I know we’re ten minutes early, but we’ve never gotten to math to find the door locked before. I look around for Chelsea, but she’s not here. She wasn’t at lunch, either. Dee and I assumed she was absent.

  But now that I think about it, Chelsea got the Montgomery Hills Elementary School Perfect Attendance Award five years in a row, and unless she was physically unable to walk or unconscious somewhere, she would be at school.

  “Maybe they already did it,” I say quietly.

  “Did what?” Dee Dee asks.

  “Fired Mr. Vann,” I say.

  “That’s crazy,” Dee Dee says. She has her face up against the door, trying to peer around the paper in the window.

  But it doesn’t seem that crazy to me. It seems perfectly logical. They fired Mr. Vann and hired a new teacher who doesn’t leave the classroom open for kids who would rather be in math than the cafeteria; another teacher who can’t write and erase the board at the same time; another teacher who will do the chapters in the textbook in the right order. And when Chelsea found out, she felt like it was all her fault, and she felt so bad that it made her sick, and she had to stay home today.