What I Wore to Save the World

by Maryrose Wood

  “Uh, seven and five.”

  “I said two-digit numbers! Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Seventy-eight times twenty-four . . .”

  Then she grabbed my fashion magazine, took a crayon out of her Pocahontas purse and started to draw little lines and triangles and arrows all over the page. At the end of this exercise she came up with some random number.

  “That’s not two-digit multiplication, Tam.” I took the magazine back, glad that there was finally something I could teach her. “Two-digit multiplication is when you put the numbers on top of each other like this, see?” I started to write it out in crayon, all over Paris Hilton’s hideous spray-on tan. “And you times the ones and carry the tens and . . . hmmm . . .”

  She’d gotten the right answer.

  “This is the new kind of multiplication,” she said smugly.

  “But multiplication is just—multiplication.” I threw the magazine down. “How can there be a new kind?”

  “They invent a new kind every year.” Tammy leaned forward, and her sunglasses slipped down to the tip of her nose. “It’s because they don’t have enough math. I think they’re running out.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh!” She put a finger to my lips. “It’s a secret. I think math is going stinked.”

  I mulled that over for a minute. “You mean extinct, Tam.”

  “I mean they don’t have enough.” She pushed the glasses back up. “And that’s why they keep changing multiplication. Because once you know how to do it, they have to invent a new way. Otherwise they would run out of math to teach you. And if they ran out of things to teach us at school,” she concluded with a shrug, “then what?”

  Then what, indeed. I had no answer for that.

  “Miss Wallace is a way better teacher than you,” Tammy offered.

  “I’m sure she is.” This tutoring idea was starting to feel like a huge mistake. World peace would be easier.

  “I hope you don’t get Marcus. He goes to that SmartYCamp.” Tammy leaned back on the chaise longue and shook her head, which made the pink feathers fly everywhere. “Marcus will eat you up and spit you out.”

  providing job security for her beloved miss wallace might have been enough to keep Tammy cheerfully relearning the same crap year after year, but my patience was already shot. My failed attempt to teach her anything had given me a massive headache, plus, some of the lemon juice had gotten in my eye and it stung like hell.

  Here’s a new kind of multiplication, I thought, as I bent over the garden hose and splashed cold water in my eye: Take a dozen smart-ass kids forced by their overachieving parents to “maintain academic skills” over the summer, then multiply them by one C-average seventeen-year-old who’s desperately padding her college application at the last minute, equals what?

  Even I could do that math. It equaled disaster. It equaled a totally not-fun summer. It equaled me being eaten up and spit out by Marcus, Tammy’s arch-nemesis at Idle Hour Elementary School: a snub-nosed bully who had single handedly brought many a substitute teacher to tears, according to Tammy.

  What it did not equal was me getting in to Oxford. Who was I kidding?

  Tammy was so entertained by stomping around the yard in her scuba flippers while I chased her with the hose that she decided she wanted to go swimming, but I didn’t have the nerve to take her to the pool club. I knew as soon as we got there the manager would offer me some shifts flipping burgers in the Snack Shack, because the job was so greasy and unpleasant they were always looking for people.

  And I knew I should say yes, because I was going to crash and burn as a volunteer tutor and I had no paying gig lined up for the summer, but saying yes to being Burger Girl seemed like sealing my fate in the most pathetic way possible. Of course Burger Girl didn’t get in to Oxford. Burger Girl would be lucky to even end up as an X-ray technician.

  And she sure didn’t end up with the cute Irish boyfriend.

  Forget the pool club, then. Instead I filled the bathtub, the big one in my parents’ bathroom, and poured half a bottle of Mr. Bubble into the swirling water. Tammy was psyched. She kept the flippers on and put on her Little Mermaid pink plastic snorkel mask. She’d be good for at least forty-five minutes in there, until the water got cold.

  My fate is so not ready to be sealed, I thought, as I dragged the kid-sized pink beanbag chair from Tammy’s room into the hallway, close enough to the bathroom for me to hear her splashing around. I wanted it all: Oxford and the cute Irish boyfriend (okay, one of those things I actually wanted more than the other). And I knew there must be some kind of half-goddess destiny in store for me. But was I supposed to wait for it to show up and ring the doorbell? Or was I supposed to go looking for it?

  And how do you go looking for something when you don’t know what it is?

  “Behold, I am Tammy! Mermaid Queen of the Bubble Sea! Blub blub blub blub blub . . .”

  I sank into the beanbag chair, took out the Oxford packet that Mr. Phineas had given me and started to read it—not just the captions this time, but the whole thing.

  Founded nine centuries ago . . . the first University in the English-speaking world . . . graduates include twenty-five British Prime Ministers, forty-seven Nobel Prize winners, six kings, twelve saints . . .

  And, oh my God, Hugh Grant. How cute was he in Bridget Jones’s Diary?

  Clearly, Oxford rocked. Just as clearly, I was way out of my league. Two-digit multiplication had proven beyond a doubt that Morgan Rawlinson was not even close to being smarter than a third grader.

  On the other hand, in all those centuries of churning out heads of state and Archbishops of Canterbury and Olympic gold medalists, nowhere in the brochure did I see any mention of a half-goddess graduate. Wasn’t it about time they added one?

  Major splashing sounds were emanating from the bathroom. It sounded like entirely too much fun was being had.

  “Hey, take it easy in there!” I jumped up and pushed open the door. “Am I going to have to clean this whole bathroom or what—”

  Tub full of bubbles. Floor full of bubbles. Bubbles stuck all over the tile walls.

  No Tammy.

  “Tammy!” I plunged my whole upper body into the water and batted away the suds. It was a big tub, too big, like everything else about this stupid house. Why did I pour in so much Mr. Bubble, I thought frantically as I pushed the foam away, it’s all suds, I can’t see anything . . .

  There, beneath the bubbles, with her snorkel apparatus still on but fully submerged, was Tammy. Her eyes were closed, and she lay flat against the bottom of the tub. She looked like she was sleeping, or—

  I yanked her up as if she weighed nothing, water streaming everywhere. As soon as she was out of the tub she opened her eyes. No sputtering, no choking. She just looked surprised.

  “Oh my God, Tammy, are you okay? Can you talk?” To think of the millions of times I’d wished this kid would just shut up for a minute, but at that moment all I wanted was audible proof that she was alive and breathing.

  “I got a new P-H word,” she said. Then she started shivering. “Can you g-g-get me my sp-sp-spelling book?”

  five

  i wrapped tammy in the biggest bath towel i could find, brought her downstairs and sat her on the sofa, safely away from any bodies of water, active gas lines or open flames. Then I went to her room and got her favorite Disney Princesses comforter—“and m-m-my sp-sp-spelling book!” she yelled after me through chattering teeth—and wrapped her up again, even though she was already squirming and trying to get loose.

  The more I asked her if she was all right the more she looked at me like I was insane.

  “Do I look drownded to you?” she snapped, flipping her spelling book open to the right page. She pushed it into my hands. “You write it for me, my fingers are all wrinkly from the water.”

  “It’s ‘drowned,’ not ‘drownded’—okay, shoot.”

  “P-H-I.” She stopped and thought. “N.”

  I was getting a twitchy
feeling down my spine. “What word is this?”

  “Just write it. N,” she repeated.

  “The same N? Or another N?”

  “How many did I say?”

  I glanced at the book. “Two.”

  “Two is enough. The rest is easy. B-A-R.”

  “No offense, Tam, but I don’t think that’s a real word . . .” Then I saw what I’d written:PHINNBAR

  Finnbar? My faery half brother? The magical brat whose well-intended efforts to help me out usually caused more problems than they solved? And who really sucked at spelling?

  “Tammy,” I said, grabbing her a little too hard. “What does this word mean?”

  “Ow ow ow,” she squealed. “It’s not a word, it’s a name, let go let go let go.”

  The phone rang. I ignored it, but Tammy lunged at the handset on the end table.

  “A name? Whose name?”

  “The boy who was blowing bubbles in the bathtub while I was drownding—look, it’s him on the phone!” she squealed, reading the caller ID. “P-H-I-N-”

  How could Finnbar be calling my house, I thought in a panic, as if he were some neighborhood kid looking for a play date and not an immortal faery prince? I grabbed the phone away from Tammy and looked for myself.

  “Phek! I mean, Mr. Phineas—hello!”

  “Took you long enough to answer, Morgan.” Mr. Phineas chuckled. “I was about to give up on you.”

  “Sorry, I was just—in the middle of something.” Now Tammy was mouthing I’m hungry and rubbing her stomach.

  “In the middle of something, eh?” Mr. Phineas sounded positively jolly. “I’m not surprised. After all, a person is generally located somewhere between the past and the future, which could fairly be described as the middle, don’t you agree? Of course, there are exceptions.”

  Only half-listening, I followed Tammy as she shuffled into the kitchen, still mummy-wrapped in her towel. The way this day was going she’d probably shut herself in the refrigerator next. Mr. Phineas kept babbling.

  “I have some wonderful news for you, Morgan! My contacts have informed me that the University of Oxford is hosting an orientation session for their ‘special admissions’ candidates. And you fall right in the middle”—he chuckled again—“of that category.”

  “Sounds great,” I said wearily. “When is it?”

  “This Friday, ten A.M. Punctuality absolutely required.”

  “Hang on a sec.” I scribbled it down on the message pad on the kitchen counter. “And, where is it?”

  “On campus, of course.”

  “On campus, cool, okay—” Now Tammy was staring at me with big round manga-girl eyes, making begging gestures and pointing to her mouth in a truly obnoxious way. I turned my back to her and covered my free ear with my hand.

  “Sorry, Mr. Phineas, I was distracted. Which campus did you say?”

  “The University of Oxford, located in the city of Ox ford, approximately sixty miles northwest of London, En gland.” He sounded very matter of fact, like he was giving me directions to the local pizza place.

  “You mean—I have to be in England in three days?” I had to lean against the counter for support. “But there’s no way—”

  “Perhaps I’m not being clear.” Mr. Phineas’s attitude went from chuckles to chilly in a heartbeat. “This is a special orientation session. For special applicants. It is by invitation only, and a campus tour is a mandatory component. Your plane ticket is already purchased and paid for, courtesy of the Oxford admissions office. You have a valid passport, I presume?”

  Though I knew he couldn’t see me, all at once it felt weird that I was talking to him in my polka-dot bikini top and bare feet. “Sure. I mean, I went to Europe last summer, so I guess the passport is still good.” I shoved a banana into Tammy’s mouth to make her get out of my face. “But, Mr. Phineas? Seriously—the plane ticket is free? Is this really on the up and up?”

  “The ‘up and up.’ What a curious expression,” he said, not bothering to answer my question. “Travel instructions will arrive via e-mail this evening at eight o’clock sharp. Please follow all instructions to the letter! Understood?”

  “I understand, but I kind of have to talk it over with my parents first—”

  “Morganne,” he said, so sternly I didn’t bother to correct him, “where you go to college and what you do with your life—it’s not about your parents, or anybody else, for that matter. It’s about you. Now don’t forget to check your e-mail, please! Eight o’clock. Do exactly as it says; that’s very important. Goodbye.”

  I hung up, as dizzy as if I’d just spent an hour riding the Cyclone at Coney Island.

  “Yuk!” Tammy spit out the banana into my hand. “You could have peeled it first!”

  “oxford is paying for you to fly over for a campus tour? They must think you’re incredibly special!”

  Morgan, how we’ve underestimated you! Clearly your academic potential is limitless! Why didn’t we see it before?

  At least, this was the kind of ego-boosting crap I was imagining my parents would say, when they both got home from work and I tried to explain what Mr. Phineas had told me over the phone.

  “He says I have to go to Oxford. I mean, go. In person. Like, this week. The Specials Admissions something-or-other wants me to be there Friday morning. I’m supposed to get all the details later—”

  They stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Then, piercing through the air like a hundred smoke alarms going off at once:

  “Morgan is the worst babysitter ever!”

  Tammy had been happily watching SpongeBob in her room until she realized Mom and Dad were home. Now she ran downstairs screaming. “She gave me potato chips for breakfast and she almost let me get drownded in the bathtub and she doesn’t even know how to peel a banana!”

  I knew Tammy was really only upset about the banana, but after they heard “drownded in the bathtub,” I pretty much lost my parents’ attention. Mom started screeching at Dad to hold Tammy upside down by her ankles in case there was any water left in her lungs, and Tammy started crying because she hated being upside down, and Dad started yelling because Mom and Tammy were both hysterical.

  From the noise Tammy made it was obvious her lungs were fine. She’d still be happily underwater playing mermaid games with her bubble-blowing faery friend if I hadn’t yanked her out of the tub, but I didn’t think there was much point in trying to convince my parents of that.

  I’ll tell them about the trip to England later, I thought dejectedly, as I slunk back to my room to wait until eight o’clock rolled around.

  at seven fifty-nine i was sitting in my room in front of my computer, staring at the screen and feeling like a fool.

  Don’t get your hopes up, I told myself. The more I thought about it, the more unlikely the whole offer seemed. Mr. Freaky Short Pants was probably just yanking my chain. Nevertheless, I’d already piled a dozen potential campus tour outfits in a big messy heap on my bed. I’d also swiped some travel-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner that my mom had nabbed from various hotels during family vacations.

  I’d found my passport stashed in the bottom of my underwear drawer, where so many valuable but rarely needed items eventually find a home. Most important, I’d fantasized at least twenty different ways of trying to convince Colin to meet me in London.

  Now I was just sitting there at my desk, watching the screen and the clock.

  Sure enough, at eight o’clock exactly, right when my mind started to wander, the new mail alarm on my computer went off. The alarm was a snippet of a heavy metal riff from Kiss, which was kind of an in-joke between me and Gene Simmons, you might say.

  I reached for the mouse, but my hand froze when I saw who the e-mail was from.

  Mor,

  What I’ve got to tell you is complete lunacy so I’ll just spit it out.

  Am in Wales on holiday with Grandpap (long story)—but something unbelievable happened and I’d give anything if you could cros
s the Atlantic, quick. Is there a chance? Wales is just few hours’ bus ride from London, details below. Tell your da, I’ll pay for your travel myself, no worries.

  Hate to say emergency but that’s what it is in my humble opinion. Unless I’ve gone mad, of course! A tragic but real possibility.

  Sorry to dump this on you, darlin’, there’s no one else I can turn to—anyway, you’ve been summoned by name (& not only by me) so if you possibly can, you’d best come quick.

  Colin

  My heart was pounding like a basketball being dribbled in double-time. Colin had attached a page with some cheap flights and the bus schedule from London to the place in Wales where he and his grandfather were staying. It was called “Castell Cyfareddol.” I was not even going to guess how to pronounce that.

  . . . Travel instructions will arrive via e-mail at eight o’clock sharp. Please follow all instructions to the letter . . .

  Was this some kind of insane coincidence? Or was Colin’s distress signal the e-mail Mr. Phineas was telling me to wait for?

  And if so, what did Mr. Phineas have to do with whatever was going on with Colin?

  And what the phek, sorry, fek, was Finnbar doing in my parent’s bathtub? The weirdness was reaching critical mass. Something must be up.

  My mom knocked on the door before opening it a crack.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Uh.” I glanced back at the computer to make sure I hadn’t left Colin’s e-mail open on the screen. “Sure.”

  “Mr. Phineas just rang the bell, didn’t you hear it?”

  I looked at her stupidly. “What bell?”

  “The doorbell, silly. He dropped this off.” She handed me another envelope with the official Oxford emblem on it, sealed and addressed to me.