by Janice Repka
“Practice,” I said, twirling from hand to hand. “It’s easy to do tricks if you practice every day. I’ve been practicing my throws in this alley two hours a day since I was six.” Out of habit, I twirled as we talked. Whenever I held the baton, it felt like it should be in motion.
“If you can get that good at baton through practice,” she said, “you can be a math wiz. Math and baton aren’t that different. They both require dedication and hard work. Might I try?”
I handed her the baton, and she examined it like it was an alien. “Turn up, turn under, like this,” I said, showing her how to do a simple twirl.
She tried to mimic, but the baton clunked against her elbow. I showed her again, and this time she managed not to whack herself too bad. She had this droopy elbow thing going on, but once we fixed that she actually got it going a bit. It felt cool to be the teacher for a change. I went inside to get another baton so we could twirl together. I came out just as Professor Wigglesmith spread her legs out for balance, lowered the baton, and flung it in the air. It flew crooked, crashed into a window, and broken glass rained down. The baton hit the pavement on the ball end and bounced up.
“Omigosh! You broke my window!”
“I forgot to take into account the difference in our arm strengths—and that I haven’t developed the ability to throw it straight,” she said.
“You forgot to take into account that my mom is going to kill me,” I replied.
Professor Wigglesmith reached into the pocket of her jacket and fished out a wad of cash. She peeled off two one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to me. “Do you think that’s enough to cover the cost?”
“What are you, rich or something?”
She shrugged. “Every time I win a math contest, I get a prize. Plus, now I get money for teaching at the middle school. My parents have asked me to stop buying them things, and Hermy already has every toy in the store. I don’t have anything else to spend it on, so I always have a lot of ready cash.”
I held a bill up close for inspection, in case she was trying to pull something on me. The name under the picture said FRANKLIN. The only hundred-dollar bill I had held before was beige and printed with the word MONOPOLY. “How do I know it’s real?”
“You can soak it in a solution of one part isopropyl alcohol to one part water and then try to set it on fire. A chemistry professor showed me once. If it’s real money, it won’t burn.”
I put the bills in my pocket. “Thanks, but I’ll just take your word for it.” We pushed the broken glass to the side of the alley near a wall. Then I helped her with a wrist roll.
“You know, you’re not half bad for a—”
“Weirdo?” she asked.
I was going to say teacher, really I was, but as soon as she filled in the blank like that, a picture of the VJs insulting her on the porch came zooming back to me. I felt bad that we had hurt her feelings, and I didn’t know what else to say. “It’s just that you’re different,” I told her.
“Not as different as people often assume.”
“But you’re a genius.”
“At math. That doesn’t mean I’m good at everything. Besides, you can catch a spinning baton dropping three stories with your eyes closed. Isn’t that different?”
“You totally got me there,” I admitted.
It made me think. Maybe I didn’t have to settle for the short end of the baton. This meeting with Professor Wigglesmith could be a sign of good things to come. If I practiced, I would pass math, win first place at the Twirlcrazy Grand Championship, and maybe, just maybe, Miss Brenda wouldn’t sell the Baton Barn after all. Everything was going to be cool. My stupid, rotten luck was all bridge under the water.
I tossed my baton, did a backflip, closed my eyes, and held out my hand, waiting for the baton to return. I would catch it, Professor Wigglesmith would applaud, and life would be good.
I opened my eyes just as the stupid baton shifted its path and landed with a whack on her head.
9
Aphrodite Calls for a Showdown
The best way to avoid a news reporter is to climb up a tree and act like a nut. Don’t ask me how I know this. Even if I had done it, I would never admit it. And Bernie, my squirrel friend from Harvard, would not testify against me for all the Tootsie Rolls in town. I will admit I hate being interviewed. Most reporters don’t know enough math to understand my work, so they focus on personal details. They think it’s funny that my mother’s a plumber and make up headlines like PLUMBER’S CHILD HAS GREAT MATH PIPES and UNCLOGGING THE MYSTERY—HOW A PLUMBER’S DAUGHTER DRAINED THE MATH POOL.
Principal DeGuy waved from the back of the classroom. He was visiting again and had brought a guest—a reporter who was doing a feature story on me. The reporter was himself a graduate of Carnegie Middle School, where he was best remembered as the soloist who sang “Hark the Hairy Angels Sing” at a Christmas concert.
The reporter was staring at Roland, who was in the front of the classroom making pistachio ice cream. Roland measured out one cup of milk, two teaspoons of sugar, and one tablespoon of imitation pistachio extract into a small freezer bag. Then he took a larger freezer bag, filled it with four cups of ice, and added 1/4 cup of salt. He placed the small bag inside the big bag, sealed it, and danced like a crazed rock star to shake the concoction.
It was not exactly what I had expected when I announced today would be a “Why Math Matters to Me Day,” but I couldn’t have been more pleased. After Mindy had demonstrated her baton skills for me in the alley, I realized that math affects my students’ everyday lives as much as mine. So I challenged each of them to think about a favorite hobby or interest and do a presentation for the class that showed the mathematics involved (for extra credit, of course). Roland had been my first volunteer.
“Math matters to me because without it I couldn’t make ice cream,” he had said when he began. “Cooking is a very mathematical thing. It uses fractions, ratios, weights, volume, temperature, and time. You multiply a recipe when you’re in a sharing mood and want to make enough for everyone, and you divide when you’re feeling like a pig and want to make just enough for yourself.”
When Roland stopped shaking, he opened the bag and squirted a mushy helping of hand-shaken pistachio ice cream into his mouth. Then he grabbed his heart as if to suggest the ice cream was so good it could kill him. “In conclusion, math tastes good.”
The bell rang and the students sprang for the door, but the reporter caught me before I could steal away.
“I’m Stanley Butera,” he said. “Delighted to meet you, Professor Wigglesmith.”
“I hope you enjoyed the class,” I replied, inching toward the exit.
Principal DeGuy took me by the arm. “Stan covers all the school activities for us.”
“My favorite is the Great Math Showdown,” the reporter said. “It’s a quiz-type competition for the eighth-grade math classes here at the middle school, sponsored by Right Type Office Supply Store. The winning team gets two hundred dollars. Last year’s team used it to buy new calculators and give their classroom a makeover. Mr. Ripple, your honors math teacher, runs the competition.”
“How interesting,” I said. And I wasn’t just being polite. It was the most exciting news I’d heard since I began teaching. New calculators would be a well-deserved reward for all the work my students had been doing, and my classroom could certainly use a makeover. But, more important, if my remedial math class entered the Great Math Showdown and won, it would prove my theory that anyone could be a math wiz.
“You should encourage your students to watch,” the reporter added. “It would probably be a thrill for them to see the smart students solving equations.”
It made me want to give him a thrill in the nose, the way he said “smart students”—as if my students were stupid. I would speak to Mr. Ripple, but not about getting my students good seats so they could watch the competition. I would talk to him about entering my students in the Great Math Showdown as an official te
am; the only watching they would do would be to watch the judges hand them the trophy.
The teachers’ lounge was located beside the adult restrooms and as far away from the band room as possible. There were three unwritten rules: don’t hang your coat on a more senior teacher’s hook; don’t compare salaries; and (for reasons that would later become clear) don’t allow your pet tarantulas to run loose.
Mr. Ripple took a huge bite out of his baloney sandwich and talked as he chewed. He had tight skin and a pencil-thin mustache that wiggled as he ate. “Only the gifted and academic math classes enter the Great Math Showdown,” he said. “There are advanced problems, so there’s no way your students could win.”
“But no rule prohibits my students from entering, right?”
Mr. Ripple bit off another chunk of sandwich, while the handful of other teachers present listened. “Little lady, you’d be setting them up for failure. Why would you want to embarrass them like that? Remedial math students should focus on remedial math and leave the showdown to the other classes.”
I peeled my orange and gave him a sour look. He opened a bag of potato chips and crunched loudly. Once, while I attended Carnegie Middle School, Mr. Ripple briefly had been my math teacher. He didn’t seem to like me then, and he didn’t seem to like me now. It was not my wish to embarrass my students, but how else could I get the rest of the school to stop treating them like boneheads?
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” I mumbled.
“What’s that?” asked Mr. Ripple, brushing crumbs off his shirt.
“Nothing.”
He bit another chip.
I said, “It’s just that, if we expect my students to fail, they will expect themselves to fail. If everyone expects failure, that’s the result.”
Mrs. Underwood, the district’s reading specialist, chimed in. “Really, sweetie, you’re not suggesting intelligence is irrelevant? You of all people should realize that some students are born with more upstairs.”
“Know what they call my students?” I asked.
Silence.
Finally, Mr. Ripple responded. “Everybody knows. Boneheads.”
“Do you know how that makes them feel?” I asked.
“Probably like boneheads.”
“That’s the problem,” I said.
Mr. Ripple crunched another chip.
“Intelligence isn’t as much about ability as it is about the time required to learn something,” I continued. “Success requires confidence and effort. The students in my class simply aren’t used to exploiting their full potential.”
“If you say so, sweetie,” said Mrs. Underwood.
“Sweetie” and “little lady” were words adults often used to suggest I should shut up, but I would not be deterred. “How can I ask my students to believe in themselves if we don’t believe in them? Winning the Great Math Showdown is exactly what my students need to prove they, too, can be math wizzes.”
“And losing the competition is exactly what those poor students don’t need.” Mr. Ripple dropped his baloney sandwich. He wagged his finger at me like he was scolding a puppy. “You’re expecting too much. Assuming they can beat the gifted and academic classes.”
“I believe,” I told him, “that given sufficient instruction and motivation, almost anyone can be a math wiz.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe frogs can fly.”
It was the same thing Principal DeGuy had once said. The other teachers were nodding madly. They were so set in their ways, they weren’t even listening. If only they realized how much progress my students had already made. They were doing the harder work and doing it well. But if the rest of the world still treated them like boneheads, they might lose confidence and stop trying. I could never prove my theory if that happened.
I gathered my orange peels and placed them in my brown bag. From the corner of my eye, I caught a movement. Something was scurrying across the floor, something fist-sized and hairy.
“Tarantula!” Mrs. Underwood screamed.
Mr. Green, the biology teacher, dropped on all fours and followed the spider. “Romeo, or Juliet, whichever one you are, I’ve got you this time.”
In the end, things were just as they had been before I went to the lounge. Mr. Green’s pet tarantulas (which I later learned were mascots for the Carnegie Spiders wrestling team) remained on the loose, and, to the other teachers, my students remained boneheads. But things were about to change.
10
Mindy Has a Meltdown
I decided to put it to a class vote,” Professor Wigglesmith told us the next day. She was wearing another one of her boring gray suits, and it made me think: If a yawn had a color it would probably be gray. Anyway, she told us all about the Great Math Showdown and said winning it would prove to everyone we weren’t hopeless dolts. A lot of the kids seemed to be buying it, but I happen to be a little more careful about what I put in my shopping cart.
“The competition will require practice, but you’ll get extra credit, and that will go a long way toward helping you pass class,” she said. “Those who think we should enter the competition?” Adam, Keisha, Eugenia, Salvador, Hunter, LeeAnn, and Roland raised their hands. “That makes seven. Anyone else?” She turned to put the number on the board, writing it low, probably to avoid having to use the dreaded stool.
While her back was turned, Roland held up a paper that said Vote for the competition or I’ll breathe on you.
Bobby raised his hand. “Me too,” he said. “I’ll vote for it.”
Professor Wigglesmith changed the number to eight. “Those who don’t want to compete?” Eight other kids raised their hands. “We can’t make a decision with a tie. Who didn’t vote?”
“Mindy didn’t vote,” said Roland.
“Shut up and mind your own business,” I said, slumping down in my chair. Getting my math grade up was one thing; wasting my time on some lame math contest was another. There were two good reasons not to do it. First, I had to stay focused on getting ready for the Twirlcrazy Grand Championship, which was coming up and might be my last chance to compete, since the Baton Barn was closing. Second, I might have been stupid, but not stupid enough to believe I was smarter than the smart kids.
“Mindy? What about you? I know you could use the extra credit. If we set the practices later in the evening, you would still have time for your baton.”
I leaned back in my seat. “Sorry, I don’t think so.” Professor Wigglesmith was wasting her time. I already had a solid C, and between class and after-school tutoring, I spent enough time on math. Nothing could make me give up free time to crunch more numbers.
“Come on,” said Adam. “Give us your vote.” From the tone in his voice, he was practically begging.
He locked eyes with me, and a tingle crept up my spine. Adam’s smile was so sweet I gained two pounds. After all the new lip gloss and cute outfits I had tried, I finally had his attention. “Okay,” I said. “As a favor for you, Adam.”
Cheers and boos followed, but I kept my gaze on Adam. Call me crazy, but when he mouthed the words “Thank you,” I swear my chair lifted six inches off the ground.
“I will advise Mr. Ripple to include us in the Great Math Showdown,” Professor Wigglesmith said. “For those who raised their hands, six will be on the class team and the other three will be alternates. After class, we’ll meet to set a team practice schedule. The competition is in only nine weeks, so we begin practicing immediately.”
“What? You mean we have to practice for nine whole weeks?” asked Roland.
“We must work hard if we want to win,” Professor Wigglesmith said. “Now, who wants to be team captain?”
Timothy raised his hand.
“You have to be on the team to be the captain,” said Professor Wigglesmith, smiling.
Adam raised his hand. “I volunteer,” he said.
Professor Wigglesmith blushed. She’s got a crush on him, I thought. Like every other thirteen-year-old girl. But the idea of Professor Wigg
lesmith with Adam was so ridiculous it was hard to take seriously.
We practiced three evenings a week at the Carnegie Diner. So that I could make it on time, Professor Wigglesmith’s dad would drive me to my class at the Baton Barn and then drop us both off at the diner afterwards. That was fine by me, since it beat the icicle ears I got when I biked there.
We were usually the first to arrive at the diner, and would take the two tables in the back and push them together. Today, just to shake things up, we ordered for each other. I ordered her cheese fries and a killer burger. She ordered me some stupid salad with gross little chunks of chicken and this runny low-fat dressing. That shook me up, all right!
It had rained earlier in the day and the slippery streets were slowing traffic, so it was taking longer than usual for the rest of the math team to show. I dropped my straw, and when I bent down to pick it up, I noticed Professor Wigglesmith’s feet dangling. “You don’t even touch the floor when you sit,” I observed.
“We’re all on the short side in my family. I’m only four feet, six inches,” she admitted. “It’s a genetic predisposition. My father says we’re remotely descended from General Napoleon, although my history professor at Harvard said Napoleon’s stature was grossly underestimated.”
At five feet, six inches, I was a solid foot taller than Professor Wigglesworth. “Doesn’t it bother you to be so short?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” she said, pushing bangs out of her eyes. “Like when I want to write high on the board and I have to pull up that awful stool.”
She shuddered, and I could almost hear it fart. Half of me wanted to tell her about the hidden whoopee cushion so she could stop embarrassing herself, but the other half didn’t want to go to detention for not telling her sooner.
“Does it ever bother you to be so tall?” she asked.
“When I was in elementary school I got called ‘Jolly Green Giant’ so many times, I banished the color from my wardrobe. I still won’t wear green.”