“Cut it out, Mimi.” I laugh, pushing her away. “Your breath smells like liver.”
Mom has been waiting for me too. One of her cooking magazines is lying open on the couch next to her. I can tell she’s been crying ’cause her nose is red.
“What took you so long, Joey?” she asks. “I was beginning to worry. Can we talk?”
“I don’t want to talk,” I say.
I go into the kitchen, grab a couple of oatmeal cookies out of the jar on the counter, and pour myself a big glass of milk. Mia follows me upstairs to my room. I take off my sweatshirt, toss it on the floor, and shut the door.
I’m starving, but I’d rather skip dinner than have to sit across the table from Mom after what she did.
Later, after my evening shower, Appa comes upstairs to say good night.
“I didn’t even have a chance to ask you how your first day of school was, Ravi. Is it true what Perimma says, that there are no other Indians in your class?”
I tell Appa the truth.
“There is one other, but he’s an ABCD.”
“What sort of fellow is he?” Appa asks.
“Funny,” I say. “And popular.”
“Tell him your IQ is 135 and that you were first batsman on your cricket team at Vidya Mandir. That should impress him well.”
“I don’t need to impress him,” I say. “He already wants to be my friend.”
“There’s no harm in showing off a little. You were top of your class at Vidya Mandir—does your new friend know that?”
I don’t tell Appa that it’s Mrs. Beam, not Dillon, who needs convincing. If my parents find out that she suggested I need special help with my English, they will insist on coming to school to complain.
When Amma comes in next to say good night, she tells me, “I’m making vegetable biriyani in the morning for you to take for your lunch with cinnamon sticks and coconut milk, just the way you like it.”
“Thank you, Amma,” I tell her, slipping the postcard I received from Pramod a few weeks ago between the pages of Bud, Not Buddy to save my place. Mrs. Beam only assigned us the first chapter, but I am liking the story very much, so I’ve read up to chapter eight.
“Don’t forget to say your prayers, raja,” Amma reminds me. Then she kisses my forehead and turns out the light.
My first day of school in America is over, and though it wasn’t perfect, I did make a new friend. Not only that, thanks to Appa I have an idea for how to fix things with Mrs. Beam. She told us that in the morning we will be starting with math, and that is going to change everything.
At five o’clock, Mom comes upstairs to tell me that dinner is almost ready.
“I made a meat loaf,” she says. “The recipe is from Bon Appétit, so it ought to be pretty good.”
My mom is a great cook, and even though I don’t want to eat dinner with her, I’m so hungry now I’m actually seeing stars. The phone rings and Mom goes to answer it. I hope it isn’t Dad checking in from the road. The last thing I need is for him to get involved in this whole thing between Mom and me. He’d probably just say what he always says: Man up, Joe.
The whole house smells like meat loaf. I try to ignore it, but I don’t have the willpower to pass it up. I pick up my fork and start eating my dinner as fast as humanly possible. If I make sure my mouth is always full, Mom can’t expect me to say anything to her. As soon as my plate is clean, I head to my room to read Bud, Not Buddy. Mrs. Beam told us to read the first chapter, but it was only eight pages long, so I decided to keep going. I’m a pretty decent reader when I’m not distracted, plus the story is good. It’s about this orphan kid named Bud Caldwell and there’s something about the way he talks that cracks me up. Like, instead of saying all of a sudden, he says woop, zoop, sloop. I just love the way that sounds—woop, zoop, sloop.
When Mrs. Beam wrote the assignment on the whiteboard, Dillon turned around in his seat and made a joke, calling it Pud, Not Puddy. Mrs. Beam didn’t hear it, but Lucy Mulligan did and she laughed so hard she almost fell out of her chair.
Mrs. Beam gave us another assignment too—some corny “personal collection project,” whatever that is. She didn’t write it on the whiteboard with the other homework. Instead she just told us about it, which means now I can’t remember anything she said. I tried to take notes, but she was talking really fast and then they started mowing the grass under the windows, so the only thing I know is that the project is due on Friday. I wonder if Miss Frost forgot to talk to Mrs. Beam about me.
I hear my mom coming up the stairs, so I quickly stash the book under my pillow, roll over on my side, and close my eyes. She knocks a couple of times, then she opens the door a crack.
“Joe?” she whispers. “Honey, are you awake?”
Mia is curled up on the bed beside me, and when she sees my mom, she starts wagging her tail, thumping it against my leg like crazy. I lie there like a rock, but I guess Mom can tell I’m not really asleep.
“It won’t happen again, Joey. No kisses. I promise.”
When she told me she’d applied for the job, I told her I thought it was a terrible idea. But she needed the work, and Einstein needed a lunch monitor, so who cares if the only thing I actually used to like about school is ruined now? Nobody, that’s who.
“You won’t even know I’m there,” she tells me.
“Yeah right,” I say, then pull the pillow over my head.
I lay out my math notebook, which Amma and I have carefully covered with brown paper. The label in neat cursive says:
Ravi Suryanarayanan
Grade 5, Albert Einstein Elementary School
Mathematics
It is my mother’s handwriting. We went to Staples together last week to buy all my school supplies, but she insisted on writing out the labels herself. Even Perimma has to admit that Amma’s handwriting is beautiful.
“Your book is the first thing your teacher will notice, Ravi,” Amma told me as she carefully wrote my name on one of the smooth white labels. “First impressions matter.”
Now, sitting at my desk, I run my hand over my math notebook and smile. In India, I was the winner of the Math Olympiad three years in a row. I know all my multiplication tables till twenty. Appa is right: There’s nothing wrong with showing off a little. I am sure that after this morning Mrs. Beam will realize what kind of student I really am, and this silly business about Miss Frost and special help will be over.
I place my new pencil box next to the notebook. Amma made sure that every item on the school supplies list was bought. Three mechanical pencils, two erasers, a six-inch ruler, two highlighters, four ruled notebooks, and a pack of 3M Post-its.
I keep looking over at Mrs. Beam, but I don’t think that she has noticed yet how well prepared I am. She’s busy writing on the whiteboard. In India, we only had blackboards. I loved the soft scraping noise the chalk made and the smell of the dusty erasers.
The desk in front of me is empty. I wonder if Dillon Samreen will be absent today, but at the last minute, he comes rushing into class and takes his seat. I’m glad my new friend is going to be here to witness what’s about to happen. I’m sure he will be impressed.
“Let’s do a quick review,” Mrs. Beam announces.
Easy peasy! I think when I see the math problems Mrs. Beam has written on the board. Is this what fifth graders in America are doing? I was expecting something much harder, like maybe order of operations or something to do with decimals and fractions.
The big guy who sits behind me is groaning and moaning. I turn around to see what’s wrong with him and notice his name card for the first time. Joe Sylvester.
As I’m reading his name, Joe Sylvester suddenly looks up. I smile, but he doesn’t smile back. I can’t believe kids in America are allowed to come to school looking like him. In India, we had to wear uniforms with dress pants, a collared shirt, and a tie. Joe Sylvester has on tracksuit pants and an unironed T-shirt. I face front again and straighten my back. Good posture is also on Amma’s list
of ways to make a good first impression. Joe Sylvester is slouching in his chair.
“Who would like to come up and show us how to solve the first problem?” Mrs. Beam asks the class.
I push up my glasses, take a deep breath, and raise my hand.
Please don’t call on me please don’t call on me please don’t call on me, I think.
But I can feel Mrs. Beam’s head turning my way. I groan. I have a feeling I know where this is heading. I sure hope Miss Frost remembered to tell Mrs. Beam about my APD.
Nobody knew anything was wrong with me until I started school. The first week of kindergarten, I spent most of my time hiding in the coat closet with my hands over my ears. My teacher, Ms. Kain, thought I was homesick, but that wasn’t it at all. I didn’t want to go home—I just couldn’t handle the noise.
It turns out I have something called APD, which stands for Auditory Processing Disorder and means I have trouble listening. I’m not deaf—I can hear just fine. In fact, in a way the problem is that my hearing is too good. Which is why I go to Miss Frost. She gives me exercises to help my ears and my brain agree about what to listen to and what to tune out. She also has M&M’s in her office—peanut ones—and she lets me eat as many as I want.
Miss Frost understands what’s going on. But pretty much nobody else does. They don’t understand how hard it is for me to follow directions when the electric pencil sharpener is going, or the door keeps slamming, or I’m worrying about whether someone is about to sneak up behind me and do something mean.
They also don’t understand how much I hate to be put on the spot. Like when a teacher calls on me.
As Mrs. Beam turns my way, I slide down in my seat. Even if she knows about my APD, it doesn’t mean I’m safe. Sometimes teachers think they’re doing you a favor by treating you like you’re no different from anyone else. The thing is, I am different.
I slide down even farther in my seat, as low as I can go without falling out. All I care about is not getting called on. It’s not that I can’t do math—actually, I’m pretty good at it. But standing up in front of the class makes me nervous, and when I get nervous, I forget what I’m doing and make mistakes.
It turns out today is my lucky day, though, because the new kid shoots his hand straight up in the air like an arrow. He’s wearing another white polo shirt, buttoned all the way up. Even the sleeves have been ironed flat. They’re stiff, and stick out funny, like little wings. His desk is covered with a bunch of junk, including some shiny new mechanical pencils, which Dillon keeps eyeballing with a klepto gleam.
Mrs. Beam looks right at me—at least I think she’s looking at me, but then she calls on the new kid instead.
That was close.
“RAH-vee?” asks Mrs. Beam. “Would you like to come up to the board?”
This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for.
“Yes, ma’am … uh, Mrs. Beam,” I say quickly, correcting myself. In my hurry to get up, my knee bangs against my desk, and all my school supplies fall to the floor. I don’t want to miss my chance to show off my math skills, so I quickly bend down to pick up my things. My glasses start to slip down my nose, but before I can push them up—ahhh! Something hard hits my forehead.
It’s Joe Sylvester’s head. Why has he done this, bumped me with his rock-hard head? Can’t he see I am trying to collect my stuff? I rub my forehead as he rubs his. His giant foot is stepping on my name card.
“Big Foot,” I mutter under my breath.
Dillon hears me and laughs.
“That’s rich,” he says.
Big Foot just sits there like a lump, but Dillon gets right down on the floor beside me and helps pick up the rest of my things.
I thank him for his help, then take a deep breath and straighten my back. I am not going to allow anything to spoil this moment. This is my time to shine. I march up to the front of the class, take the blue marker from Mrs. Beam’s hand, and face the whiteboard.
I look at the first problem, 23 x 13. I close my eyes and the answer comes to me in a flash. 299. But I am not going to blurt it out and take a bow. I am going to show Mrs. Beam something she has never seen before.
“What you are about to witness is pure magic, a secret handed down from ancient times,” I say with confidence. There is complete silence in the classroom. I think Mrs. Beam’s jaw has just dropped.
Take your time! I warn myself.
I write the two numbers, one below the other, in blue marker. Then, with a red marker, I draw an arrow connecting the last digits of both the numbers. “Three times three is nine,” I say aloud, writing 9 in the ones place with the blue marker. Then I pick up a green marker and draw two arrows like a cross. “Two times three plus three times one is nine.” I use blue again to write 9 in the tens place.
I look at the class. No one is moving. My plan is working perfectly! I draw an orange arrow connecting the tens digits of both the numbers and then pick up the blue marker again to write 2 in the hundreds place.
“The answer is two hundred and ninety-nine!” I proclaim, underlining the answer three times in purple, then replacing the cap on the marker with a satisfying click.
Everyone is staring shell-shocked at the board, amazed by what I have just done. Dillon Samreen grins and winks at me. I think he is impressed. If this performance has not impressed Mrs. Beam as well, nothing will.
“RAH-vee,” she says very slowly, looking at all the arrows on the board, “your answer is correct, and your method is very colorful. But …”
But? What can she mean, but?
“… we do things a little differently here,” she goes on, giving me that pity look again. “Next time, we don’t need to see the arrows—just the numbers will do.”
The purple marker slips from my hand, falling to the floor. First my manners are too Indian for her, and now my math?
What will the next humiliation be? I wonder as I walk back to my desk.
As if in answer to my question, I suddenly feel my feet go out from under me. I have tripped over something, and when I fall, my glasses go skidding across the floor.
“What’s the matter with you, Pud?” Dillon calls out. “Why did you trip the new kid like that?”
What have I done to deserve this? I haven’t said a word to Big Foot (or Joe or Pudding or whatever his name is). First he bumps my head, and now he trips me with his giant foot?
“Oh my goodness, are you hurt, RAH-vee?” Mrs. Beam asks, rushing over to where I’m lying on the floor.
I want to:
Show Joe Sylvester what I think of him and his giant foot.
Tell Mrs. Beam the only thing that is hurting is my pride.
Shout at the top of my voice—MY NAME IS NOT RAH-VEE!
But here is what I do instead:
Bite my tongue.
Pick myself up.
Go and get my glasses.
Appa’s advice has gotten me nowhere. I am right back where I started.
The only difference is that now, thanks to Big Foot, I have a bump on my forehead and a huge shoe print on my name card.
When Mrs. Beam calls on the new kid to come up to the board to do the first problem, he jumps out of his seat like a jack-in-the-box on a spring. His glasses slide down his nose and all the stuff on his desk goes flying, including his name card, which lands on the floor beside my desk.
R-A-V-I. Mrs. Beam has been calling him RAH-vee, but when he introduced himself earlier, I’m pretty sure he said his name was rah-VEE, with the accent on the second syllable. As I reach down to pick up the card, he reaches for it at the same time and we bump heads. Ouch!
Dillon gets down on the floor to help Ravi pick up his stuff. But I know what he’s really up to. Quick as a flash, he puts one of those mechanical pencils down the front of his pants.
When Ravi finally makes it to the front of the class to solve the problem, he draws a bunch of crazy-looking arrows on the board, each in a different color. I think it looks cool, but Mrs. Beam isn’t impressed. He seems
pretty bummed out after that. I don’t see what the difference is as long as he gets the right answer.
Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, Dillon sticks his foot out and trips him. That’s a Dillon Samreen specialty, kicking a person when they’re already down. He tries to pin it on me, but anyone with half a brain would see through that. How could I trip him from ten feet away? My legs are long, but they’re not that long.
While Ravi goes to get his glasses and Mrs. Beam tries to decide whether she needs to call the school nurse, Dillon reaches back and swipes another one of Ravi’s mechanical pencils.
I feel bad for Ravi. I could definitely give him some pointers—like for instance, not to leave his stuff lying around, and to watch out for the winking. Dillon always winks when he’s up to no good. Maybe at lunch Ravi and I will sit at the same table again. I wouldn’t mind. His clothes are flat and his lunch box is weird, but other than that he seems okay.
After my failure to impress Mrs. Beam with my Vedic math, and then the tripping episode, I can hardly wait for the morning to be over. At lunch, I will sit with Dillon Samreen and the other boys and come up with a plan for how to put Big Foot in his place. One time at Vidya Mandir, a boy named Hassan stole a pair of leather batting gloves from my sports bag. My friends and I caught up with him after school and pushed him into a corner until he cried like a baby and gave back the gloves.
“Please take out your social studies textbooks and open them to page ten,” Mrs. Beam tells us. “Who would like to read the first paragraph to the class?”
Dillon starts waving his hand in the air, but Mrs. Beam chooses a boy called Keith Campbell instead.
“Most Native Americans were forced to leave New Jersey during the seventeen hundreds,” Keith reads. “Descendants of New Jersey Native American people hid or …”
Save Me a Seat Page 3