by Janice Repka
“That will be enough!” Mr. Ripple shouted. Feedback screeched through the air and silenced the crowd. “The score is tied at 25 all. This is the last question for the Wolves. What is the formula for calculating the perimeter of a rectangle?”
An overconfident Wolf blurted out the answer for calculating the perimeter of a triangle by mistake: Perimeter = side A, plus side B, plus side C.
“The answer is incorrect,” said Mr. Ripple. “Do the Frogs have an answer?”
The Wolves had responded so quickly that we were still huddled.
“If we pick up this steal,” Bobby whispered, “I think we can win. Can you believe it?”
“This is gonna be so sweet,” Keisha said. “I can smell the victory.”
“Not so fast,” I said. “Does anyone know the answer?”
“It’s two times side A plus side B,” said Adam.
“No, that’s not right,” said Salvador, adjusting his glasses.
“I’m the captain and I say it is,” said Adam.
I folded my arms and sat back. “My vote is with Adam.”
“Why should we care who your vote is with?” Salvador asked me. “You haven’t solved a single problem.”
“Your answer?” Mr. Ripple demanded.
“And just because Adam is the captain,” said Salvador, “it doesn’t mean he’s right.”
“Leave him alone,” said Bobby. “Everyone but you agrees.”
“That doesn’t make his answer right.”
Buzzzzzzzzzz!
“Time is up,” said Mr. Ripple.
It was too late to answer. The boos hit us like tomatoes.
“Quiet down,” Mr. Ripple snapped. “If the Lions know the answer, they can steal.”
“That’s it,” said Bobby. “We’re doomed. If they pick up the steal, it’s over.”
The captain of the Lions smiled. “The answer is two times side A plus side B.”
“Correct!” cried Mr. Ripple.
The crowd erupted, and Mr. Ripple did not move to quiet it.
“We’re losers,” said Bobby.
“Not complete losers,” said Adam. “We have one question left, and if we get it right, we’ll pull into second place. That’s better than third.”
I looked at Dytee to see how she was handling the defeat. The experiment was definitely over and the results were in: we would never be math wizzes. But Dytee was on her way to Mr. Ripple. He covered the microphone as she whispered in his ear. His smile dropped like a dodgeball falling from an airplane. When Dytee returned, she was the one smiling.
“There has been a challenge. I stand corrected. Because the answer failed to indicate that side A plus side B must be enclosed in parentheses, it is not correct. The Lions do not get the steal, and the score remains tied.”
A large woman in the third row fainted onto a row of fifth graders, and the television crew rushed over to get it on film.
“The last question of the night is for the Frogs,” said Mr. Ripple.
Timothy suddenly jumped up from his seat at the top of the bleachers.
“Wait!” he yelled. He crisscrossed to the floor and darted over to where Dytee had been sitting. He put his hand on Mr. Finch’s head and rubbed his four-leaf clover tattoo. Then he scampered back to his seat. “Okay! Go ahead.”
The crowd burst into laughter. While they were laughing, Mr. Ripple shuffled his index cards and chose the last question.
“This is a word problem,” he said, reading the card. “Listen carefully. Thirty-five students attend a dance. Nobody may dance with anyone shorter than him- or herself. Sixty percent of the students are over six feet tall. How many couples can dance?”
Our team jotted down the problem.
“Sixty seconds,” Mr. Ripple reminded us.
The Frogs huddled.
“If sixty percent of the students are over six feet tall,” Adam whispered, “that means forty percent are shorter.”
“So only that forty percent could find partners not taller than them,” said Keisha.
“There are 35 couples,” Bobby added. “Forty percent of 35 is 14. So the answer must be 14 couples.”
“I don’t know,” said Salvador. “What do you think, Professor Wigglesmith?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t tell us.”
“Mindy’s right,” Dytee said. “I leveled the playing field for you, but you have to win—or lose—on your own.”
“I agree,” said Adam.
“Wish us good luck?” I asked Dytee.
“You don’t need to rely on luck,” she told me. “You’ve got a knack for word problems. Visualize the problem. I know you can solve it.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated. Nobody may dance with anyone shorter than him- or herself. I imagined dancing with Adam under the sparkling disco ball. I was taller than most of the kids at school, but so was Adam. I had never considered which one of us was taller than the other before. Of course, no two people are exactly the same height, no matter how tiny the difference. Nobody may dance with anyone shorter than him- or herself.
“Time’s up,” said Mr. Ripple.
Adam breathed deeply. I watched as his gaze went to his parents at the top row of the bleachers. He stood. “The answer is—”
“Wait!” I jumped up and cupped a hand over Adam’s ear, “It’s a trick question,” I whispered. “With every couple, one of them is going to be shorter than the other. If nobody can dance with anyone shorter than him- or her-self, then nobody can dance at all.”
He smiled. “Go ahead. You tell them.”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. What if I was wrong? What if the audience burst out in laughter and the kids at school called me an idiot for the rest of my days? Then I remembered something Dytee told me: Making a mistake doesn’t mean you’re stupid; it just means you’re human. She was right. The people who were important to me, my real friends, like Dytee and Adam, knew I wasn’t a bonehead. More important, I knew it, too. So what if I got it wrong? So what if people laughed? I still had “infinite potential.” I was the kind of girl who could land on her feet. “The answer,” I said, “is zero.”
Mr. Ripple’s jaw dropped, and he stuttered out the result: “Correct.”
First place! We jumped and hopped around like we really were frogs. I latched onto Adam, and we got pressed into a huge group hug. Spectators from the bleachers ran onto the floor, whooping and hollering.
People in the crowd supporting the Lions or the Wolves began to chant, “Rematch. Rematch. Rematch.”
I looked for Dytee, but the crowd was rushing against me. Suddenly a burly biker pulled me off my feet and tossed me onto his shoulders like I was a rag doll. All the Frogs were on shoulders. Spectators had brought cans of Silly String and were spraying them. A television camera was getting it in the lens. There was so much confusion, so many people; I couldn’t find Dytee anywhere. She was gone.
23
Aphrodite Figures It Out
They say that if everybody is special then nobody is, but I think that’s a load of doggie doo-doo. Can’t everyone be special in their own different way? Some people are math geniuses and some people are baton geniuses. Other people are really good at throwing up neatly into their laps, like Eugenia, or at caring enough about their friends to eat garlic and drink vinegar for them to try to get rid of their bad breath, like Roland. Isn’t it all genius? That’s what I figured out at the Great Math Showdown.
The next day, I went to say good-bye. Even though school wasn’t quite over, it was the last day the remedial math class would be meeting; Principal DeGuy had been so impressed by the Frogs’ first place win that he said everyone in the class had already earned an A. The students decided to throw a party to celebrate. They had used the two-hundred-dollar prize from Right Type Office Supply Store to buy drinks, snacks, and a pizza pie for each student. Timothy arranged his pepperoni to make the number 3.14 so he could call his a pizza pi.
I helped myself to a slice of veggie lovers and g
ot out my folder. “I have something for you,” I said. I handed each member of the class a certificate on which I had inscribed my favorite math saying: Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.—Albert Einstein.
Some of the students who hadn’t gotten a chance yet to put on their “Why Math Matters to Me” presentations decided to do them. Bobby showed the class how to use math to calculate strikes and spares in bowling, and how to knock down a row of math books using his new bowling ball. LeeAnn—who really had been missing practice to wash her cat, which it turned out had some weird skin problem that they had to rush it to the vet for on the night of the Great Math Showdown—explained how she could beat a role-playing video game ten percent faster by calculating probabilities during a quest.
Holding a gleaming baton trophy in one hand, Mindy read from an index card about how baton twirlers apply torque to make the baton turn in a circular motion. She explained that force, speed, and angular velocity are essential to twirlers. Then she used her baton to show off some basic spins.
“Excellent,” I said. “When math concepts are used to help explain a physical phenomenon, such as how a baton works, we call it physics.” I stepped on the stool so I could write the term high on the board, but it didn’t make a sound. Mindy turned to Roland, and he gave her a mysterious thumbs-up.
Timothy was the last student to present. “Math matters to me because there are a lot of really funny math jokes. Ten cats were in a boat and one jumped out. How many were left? None! The rest were copy cats. Get it?”
“Knock, knock,” said Roland.
“Who’s there?” Timothy answered.
“Police.”
“Police who?”
“Police stop telling lame jokes.”
Finally, Adam went to the back of the room and pulled a bag from the closet. Shhhhh could be heard around the room. He handed the bag to Mindy, who handed it to me.
“Last night,” Adam explained, “after we won the math competition, we wanted to thank you. We’ll be going to Carnegie High School in the fall. You’ll be going back to Harvard.”
“We wanted to give you something to remember us,” said Mindy.
“Just give it to her,” said Roland.
“Anyway,” Mindy continued, “here it is.”
I blushed and said, “Thank you.” The package was about six inches square and wrapped in silver with a pink bow. Inside was a plastic frog. It had a wide mouth and a long red tongue that flew out when I squeezed. The class had glued feathery wings to it.
“Because you taught us that frogs can fly,” said Adam.
My smile was so wide there was barely room on my face for it. Then the bell rang, and the students raced from their seats like they were on fire. Most screamed their good-byes on their way out. A small group risked being late for their next class to give me a personal send-off.
Mindy was the last to go. She hesitated, as if gathering her thoughts. “I guess this is it.”
“My plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow.”
“All the same, I’m going to say this now, to make sure it gets said. I apologize for being mean and telling you to go back to Harvard. I didn’t really want you to go. I was angry because Adam danced with you instead of me. I wanted to hurt you, but I ended up hurting everybody, because you really did leave.”
“It wasn’t just you,” I admitted. “I would have had to leave anyway. Harvard wanted me back. How could I say no?”
“So you’re happy at Harvard?”
The question took me off guard. “I’m . . .” What was the way to describe it? “I’m fulfilling my destiny.”
Mindy looked down at her shoes. “Remember when I said that we couldn’t be friends, that it would be too weird? It wasn’t true. You were the best friend I ever had.” Then she hugged me. It was not a more-arms-than-chest hug like I sometimes saw Mindy give Jordeen, Veronica, or Summer, but a long I’m-going-to-miss-my-best-friend hug that required me to stop breathing for a second so I wouldn’t ruin it.
“It was my sister,” said Father as he hung up the phone that evening. “She’s down with the flu again and wanted to know if I could go over and help her with the little ones.”
“Go ahead,” said Mother. “You can bring along the casserole that’s in the freezer.”
I had just finished packing my bag and bringing it downstairs to set near the door so I would be ready to leave first thing in the morning.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” said Father, grabbing his car keys.
He wasn’t gone five minutes when the phone rang. It was a customer with a plumbing emergency.
“Sorry,” said Mother. “Would you keep an eye on Hermy for me?”
I pulled a chair next to his playpen. Hermy was sound asleep, sucking his pacifier in and out as he breathed. I stroked his hair. Ten minutes passed. Twenty minutes. An hour. I wished he would wake up so I wouldn’t be alone. That way, I wouldn’t have to think about what I was doing—returning to Harvard.
I turned on a television show about predatory insects, but my mind kept wandering back to Harvard. Was I happy there? That’s what Mindy had asked. I could do important work there. I could utilize my talents there, like my professors wanted me to. But was I happy? It was such a simple question; I could hardly believe I had never considered it before.
I thought about it for another hour, until Mother finally came home. “Someone flushed a sock,” she reported. “When will they learn that even a toilet needs a little respect to function?” She headed upstairs to shower, like she always did after a plumbing job.
I waited until she was dressed. We sat in the den, across from her collection of Golden Plunger Awards for Plumbing Excellence. I got straight to the point. “Would you be too disappointed if I decided I didn’t want to be a famous mathematician anymore?”
The color drained from her face. “But it’s all you’ve ever wanted,” she said. “Principal DeGuy, the people at the gifted testing office, your teachers and professors, they’ve all told us it is what’s best for you, your destiny.”
“But destiny, if there is such a thing, is what brought me to Carnegie Middle School. Destiny isn’t just something that happens to you. Like Father says, ‘Life is what you make it.’ ”
She took my hand and held it on her lap. “It is,” she agreed, nodding as she spoke. “Of course it is.”
For a few moments we were both silent as we appreciated the magnitude of what had just taken place. Finally, I asked, “You’re not too disappointed?”
“A bit surprised, yes; disappointed, no. But if you don’t go back to Harvard, what will you do?”
I had absolutely no idea. Suddenly my future was a wide-open field and, regardless of my IQ, I could spin through that field as fast or as slow as I wanted. I didn’t have to be anything except me.
It’s funny how the smallest things can make the biggest difference in a person’s life. Fate and destiny were qualities that were hard to calculate. Like the sock that Mother had to unclog the night before I was supposed to go back to Harvard. If that sock hadn’t ended up in someone’s pipes, Mother might not have left me alone with the time that I needed to think. Of all the possibilities in the universe, it was, for the third—and final—time, a toilet that changed my life, forever.
That night, before I went to sleep, I counted all of the cash I had accumulated. Then I cleared a spot in the center of my bedroom, hugged Hershey Bear to my chest, and spun. Around and around and around. And when I stopped, at that exact moment when my brain hadn’t yet caught up to my body and it felt like I was still spinning, I stumbled upon what I wanted to do.
“Three more steps,” I told Mindy. It had taken an entire week to get my surprise ready for her. Halfway through the drive there, I had made her put on a blindfold. Now we were standing on the sidewalk, getting ready for the big reveal.
“Now?” asked Mindy.
“Now,” I said.
She pulled the scarf off her
eyes and was so startled she almost stumbled.
The Baton Barn had never looked better. It had been repainted flamingo pink. Batons poked from the ground lining the path to its doors. Across the face of it was a huge sign: UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.
“I made Miss Brenda a better offer,” I said. “So you can keep taking lessons as long as you want.”
The crowd behind us began to whoop and cheer. Our families, the math team, the teachers from Carnegie Middle School, the guys from the Shoot-M-Up pool hall, Miss Brenda’s students, even the news reporters—everyone we knew had turned out for the surprise.
“What a great story of friendship,” said the reporter from the Carnegie Signal Item. “You two are amazing. You should write a book together: From Bonehead to Infinity, or Aphrodite Wigglesmith and the Toilet’s Flush.”
“Only a total genius would read that hilarious book,” said Timothy.
The whole thing was captured for the evening news: Mindy jumping up and down, screaming for joy; the other baton students doing cartwheels; Mr. Finch bending over so people could rub his lucky tattoo; Timothy telling me another one of his amusing jokes; me telling him my Einstein joke; Timothy laughing; me calling dibs on him.
“What’s dibs?” he asked.
“It’s a girl thing,” Mindy told him.
I had never noticed how cute he was. Maybe I could convince him to sign up for baton lessons. Now that I owned the Baton Barn, I would have to figure out how to twirl. I already had experience as a math teacher, but being a baton teacher was going to be a whole new challenge. Sure, I was still a math genius, but that wasn’t all I was anymore.
The batons lining the walkway had sparkly streamers on their ends. I pulled one out and drew the symbol for infinity in the air with it. Then I placed my hand around the center of the shaft. A formula came to me. I calculated the height of the Baton Barn, the distance to the other buildings, and the wind speed. Then I spread my legs out for balance, lowered the baton, and flung it in the air.