The Very Principled Maggie Mayfield

by Kathy Cooperman

  Lucy and Rachel glanced at each other, both repressing smiles. Then they shook their heads in unison.

  Mr. Carlsen eyed them warily. “I see. What if I told you there was another difference between these two cars? What if I told you the blue car is heavier than the red car? Would that make a difference?”

  Lucy frowned. She’d never studied this before. Mr. Carlsen took another poll of the classroom. “How many of you think the heavy blue car is faster?” Half the kids raised their hands—Lucy too. “And how many vote for the lighter red car?” The other kids raised their hands. This time, Rachel joined them—thus ending her two-minute alliance with Lucy.

  Mr. Carlsen said, “All righty, so we’ve got two teams. The blue team thinks heavy blue cars are faster, and the red team thinks lighter red cars are faster.” Mr. Carlsen rubbed his chin and looked at them thoughtfully. “You guys seem pretty sure. Well, let’s find out. Let’s experiment.” He strode across the classroom to a large shape concealed under a dark-green tablecloth. He whipped the cloth off with a flourish like a low-rent magician to reveal a wooden ramp with a yellow line down its center.

  “We are going to race the red and blue cars against each other down this ramp. I need two volunteers to help me.” He chose two volunteers. They immediately positioned themselves at the top of the ramp. Mr. Carlsen handed them the cars, then drew back, shaking his head in dismay. “No. This won’t do. Let’s spice things up. Let’s give the blue car a little head start, say one foot.” He had the boy with the blue car move the car down the ramp, drawing grumbles from the red team. Lucy and her fellow blue teamers smirked. Then Mr. Carlsen demonstrated how the Lord taketh away by adding, “And let’s give the red car an extrahard shove. That should even things up, give the red car a fighting chance.” Now it was the blues’ turn to whisper angrily, while the reds gloated.

  Mr. Carlsen stood aside and gave the “ready-set-go.” The red car flew down the ramp, easily beating the blue car. Mr. Carlsen turned to the class, holding the red car aloft. “We have a winner!” Two of the red team boys high-fived each other, and Lucy’s hand darted up into the air. Mr. Carlsen called on her. “Yes, Lucy, what is it?”

  Lucy said, “That’s not fair!”

  Mr. Carlsen’s eyes widened. “Why not?”

  “Because Joey gave the red car a big push. He practically threw it.” Blue-team heads bobbed in agreement. By unanimous, telepathic vote, Lucy became their spokesman.

  Mr. Carlsen frowned. “Hmm, perhaps Joey’s shove did tip the scales.” Mr. Carlsen turned and studied Joey for a moment. “He does look like an exceptionally strong boy.” Joey beamed. Mr. Carlsen continued, “I guess we’ll have to redesign the experiment.”

  And so they did. Joey was instructed to push the red car gently. So now, the blue team won, making the red team furious. So Mr. Carlsen ran the experiment over and over, altering it slightly each time. After every race, the winners high-fived while the losers scrounged for objections.

  At the end of class, Mr. Carlsen put the green cover over the ramp and said to the students, “So, what did we learn?”

  Lucy raised her hand. “We didn’t learn anything. We can’t tell whether cars go faster ’cause of weight or color or pushing or whatever. All that stuff, and don’t know anything.”

  Mr. Carlsen beamed. “Yes! If you design an experiment with too many different factors—we call those variables—then you don’t learn anything. So tell me, if you want to find out whether blue cars are faster than red cars, what’s the best way to figure that out?”

  Eugene what’s-his-name—Lucy’d never heard him speak in class before—volunteered, “You make sure the cars are the same, the starting point the same, everything is the same except color.”

  Mr. Carlsen said, “Yes! Give that man a Kewpie doll. And how do you figure out whether heavier cars move faster than lighter ones?”

  Rachel answered, “You run a test where everything’s the same except the cars’ weight.”

  Mr. Carlsen smacked his hands together. “Yes! Brilliant, Rachel!”

  Rachel smiled.

  Mr. Carlsen told the class, “This year, we are going to run lots of experiments. And I want every one of you to be a world-class referee. Whenever you see me running an experiment that’s unfair—an experiment with too many variables—I want you to call me out. I want you to watch every move I make to see if I’m getting away with something I shouldn’t.” The bell rang, and Mr. Carlsen said, “Class dismissed.”

  As the students left the classroom, Lucy headed for the front. She needed to know she was right. She needed the truth. “Mr. Carlsen, I know the experiment had a lot going on, but heavy things fall faster, right?”

  Mr. Carlsen answered, “Well, there’s two schools of thought on that, Lucy. There’s a law, one of Newton’s laws, that says weight doesn’t matter at all. If you drop a heavy thing and a light thing into a vacuum, then they’ll fall at exactly the same speed.”

  Lucy tried again. “Well, maybe things get weird if you drop them into a vacuum cleaner, but in the real world . . .”

  Mr. Carlsen smiled. “Not a vacuum cleaner, a vacuum. A vacuum is a special, sciency place where there’s no air, like in outer space.”

  Lucy retrenched. “Okay, so in outer space, weight doesn’t matter. But here on Earth, heavier things fall faster, right?”

  “Not necessarily. It depends on something called friction.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Friction” sounded like a made-up word to her.

  Mr. Carlsen added, “You don’t have to believe me, Lucy. You shouldn’t believe anyone without proof.”

  Lucy remembered her manners and nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Carlsen.” As she ran to catch up with her classmates in the hallway, her brain began to hum as she worked on how to get her proof.

  17

  HAPPY HALLOWEEN

  Californians need holidays more than other people do—at least that’s what Maggie thought. Back east, people had seasons to punctuate the passage of time. But in relentlessly sunny San Diego, life was one long run-on sentence. Without holidays, every day in San Diego would have been just like the one before it, give or take five degrees. A New Englander, Maggie missed the seasons bitterly: the fall foliage, the snow, even the “wicked bastard” mud season. She never mentioned these longings to her relatives back east. To Vermonters who’d been pistol-whipped by blizzards for decades, her complaints would have been about as welcome as Snoop Dogg at a KKK rally.

  To give form to her students’ monotonously sun-drenched lives, Maggie marked the holidays with pomp and circumstance, starting with Halloween. Teachers festooned their classrooms with decorations while Maggie and Diane tackled the common areas. The staff did all this on their own dime. They also hung black-and-orange “HAPPY HALLOWEEN” banners on the school gates, along with Dollar Store cobwebs, dangling ghosts, and oversize spiders. Paper witches and monsters were drawn with cheerful smiles, a fact that irritated Diane—who grumbled that the place was about as menacing as a Care Bears convention.

  On the great day itself, everyone—students, staff, and even some parents—came to school in full costume for the Halloween parade. Maggie and Diane usually teamed up, playing Diane’s ample height off Maggie’s stunted frame. Maggie had been Frodo to Diane’s Gandalf, Mini-Me to Diane’s Dr. Evil, and Mike Wazowski to Diane’s Sully.

  This Halloween morning, Maggie greeted the children at the school gates as Little Red Riding Hood while Diane was gussied up as her tasty, ill-fated grandmother. The children giggled as Diane hammed it up, hobbling along on her cane and saying in her creakiest voice, “I remember when college was a nickel!” and “You want to see my enormous wart?” Meanwhile, Maggie tossed out costume compliments like confetti. For kids, compliments from “the Principal” carried extra weight. If Maggie was the queen, her compliments were like a down-market version of knighthood. She beamed as the children marched past. There were the usual Disney recidivists (princesses), Marvel superheroes, and old-timey
monsters, plus a few genuine originals—a jellyfish made of an umbrella with streamers flowing down from it, a Marie Antoinette carrying a tray of little cakes, and a human fidget spinner.

  To Maggie, Halloween’s only drawback was her role as censor in chief. Her few well-publicized costume rules boiled down to one commonsensical principle: “DON’T SCARE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE KINDERGARTNERS!” But every year, she had to turn a few kids away. She had to explain that little Justin couldn’t parade about as a blood-spattered murder victim with a meat cleaver lodged in his head. And so sorry, but precious Brianna can’t be a machete-wielding evil clown with fangs.

  What Maggie couldn’t censor—much as she wanted to—were the moms’ costumes. The lingerie show had gotten increasingly out of hand: naughty nurses, sexy sailors, and frisky French maids. No doubt, the slutty Supreme Court judge was on its way, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s large lacy collar reduced to a bondage-themed choker (“You’ve been a bad boy. I’m ruling against you”). Maggie didn’t mind these costumes in an adult setting, but in an elementary school?! She knew these curvy fortysomething moms had worked hard to “get their bodies back” after whelping their young. But did they really want to star in some confused fifth-grade boy’s first wet dream?

  The leader of the MILF brigade—gorgeous, buxom Felicia Manis—squealed in delight when she caught sight of Maggie. In her breathy voice, Felicia exclaimed, “Little Red Riding Hood?! I love it. We’re from the same story.”

  Maggie smiled uncertainly. Felicia was packed into some sort of costume, but Maggie had no idea what she was supposed to be. The statuesque blonde wore a gray fur-lined hood, a matching fur-covered bustier and miniskirt, and furry white Ugg boots. She looked like a slutty Iditarod racer. Maggie stammered, “You’re the . . . um . . .”

  Felicia blurted, “I’m the Big Bad Wolf!” Then she struck a decidedly unwolflike pose, hands on her hips with her leg cocked so as to highlight her enviable everything.

  Maggie said, “Wow! Those three pigs better watch out.”

  Felicia tossed her head back and howled like a wolf: “A-rooo.” The geekiness of this gesture reminded Maggie why she liked Felicia so much. Then Felicia immediately snapped back into her other mode: doomsayer, leaning down and telling Maggie, “But seriously, I do not eat pork anymore. It’s way too dangerous.”

  “How so?” Maggie girded herself against another of Felicia’s revelations. Maggie loved her bacon.

  Felicia reported, “The New York Times says pork can give you avian flu.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. You see, we import tons of pork from China every year, and they have practically no health regulations. I mean, the chickens shit all over the meat.”

  Maggie nodded thoughtfully, straining to give this grave news the reception it deserved. She did not say what she knew—that the US exported pork to China every year, not vice versa. She also didn’t say what she suspected—that Felicia had not picked up this factoid from the New York Times, but had instead “learned” it from the movie Contagion when Gwyneth Paltrow’s character caught a fatal virus by eating tainted pork on a business trip. Felicia had probably seen the movie, decided it “felt” true, and then assumed the Times must have covered it. Over time, this suspicion must have hardened into fact the same way a dinosaur turd can fossilize into a boulder. Maggie had been down this road with Felicia many times.

  Diverting Felicia’s attention to a real threat, Maggie asked, “Any luck with the snake fence?” Since deputizing Felicia to start a whispering campaign, Maggie had heard nothing. Usually, Felicia was a much more effective town crier.

  Felicia sighed. “I have gotten all the way to nowhere on that. People just don’t realize how dangerous snakes are. Also, I dunno, people are tight this year. The radio says the economy’s getting better, but it doesn’t feel that way here . . . what with the Gallcomm layoffs.”

  Maggie blew her bangs out of her eyes, frustrated. “I know.”

  “How’s the STEAM fund-raising going?” asked Felicia.

  Maggie forced a smile and gestured to the Willy Worm sign. “All right.” The STEAM fund thermometer level had risen quickly with the first gush of donations, but there was still a long way to go. Experience had taught Maggie that once Halloween ended and Christmas decorations went up, donations would dry up until January. She was due for another tough slog.

  Felicia pressed, “The rummage sale brought in some real money. Didn’t it?”

  “Yes, oh yes.”

  “So what have you got planned next?”

  Maggie scrounged around in her brain for something spectacular, yet came up with nothing but old candy wrappers and pocket lint. She bluffed. “Diane’s been ginning up some ideas. She’s going to present them to the board. Good stuff, good stuff.” This was only partly true. Diane had come up with more ideas. But they were all flamboyantly terrible. The latest involved shaming all the parents who had not yet donated to the STEAM fund by putting their names up on giant, brightly colored billboards—an idea she’d pilfered from her favorite movie: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

  Felicia opened her mouth to respond, but fell silent as Danny arrived at Maggie’s side. “Happy Halloween, ladies.” He had not bothered with a costume.

  The women said their hellos. As Maggie felt the weight of Danny’s gaze, her heart sunk. Standing next to gorgeous, tall Felicia made her feel like a troll. An awkward silence fell, and Maggie roused herself. “Where are my manners? Daniel, this is—”

  Danny cut in, “Felicia Manis.”

  Maggie said, “You’ve met?”

  Danny said, “Yes. Felicia stopped by HQ to introduce herself.”

  Grinning hard, Maggie said, “She did?”

  Danny went on, “Yes. We had a lively debate about the dangers of too much screen time. Felicia had me on the ropes.”

  Felicia put her hand on his forearm, cooing, “Oh, that’s not true, and you know it.” She laughed a bit too loud and looked slightly embarrassed, like a woman laughing to cover up the sound of her own fart. Frowning up at her, Maggie realized Felicia had a crush on Danny. The thought rankled.

  Fortunately, Felicia’s son intervened. He tugged at her hand, whining, “C’mon, Mom. I wanna see Brian.”

  Felicia made her excuses and bustled away on her long, shapely legs. Watching her disappear into the courtyard, Maggie resolved to get back to the gym—as soon as Halloween was over. Or maybe after the post-Halloween candy sales wound down. Maggie never could resist bargain chocolate. Watching Felicia, Danny asked Maggie, “What’s she supposed to be?”

  “The Big Bad Wolf,” answered Maggie. She added tartly, “Some people need a costume for that.”

  Danny grinned at Maggie. “You’re much prettier than she is, you know that?”

  Embarrassed, Maggie blew her bangs out of her eyes, saying, “Yeah, I mean, Felicia’s only good-looking if you’re into that whole gorgeousness thing.”

  Danny held his hands up in defeat. “Have it your way, Maggie.”

  Maggie changed tack. “I’m surprised you didn’t bother to dress up today.” She gestured to Danny’s costume-less form. As usual, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a J.Crew catalog. For today’s runway, he wore an open-throated, button-down shirt and chinos.

  “Are you disappointed that I didn’t wear a costume?”

  Maggie sputtered, “Pff, I don’t . . .” These conversations always went so much more smoothly in her head.

  “’Cause if you want to see me in a costume, Maggie, all you have to do is ask.”

  Maggie said evenly, “I’ll restrain myself.”

  Danny shrugged. “Your loss.”

  They stood for a moment watching more kids shuffle by in their costumes. During a lull, Maggie turned to him. “So, tell me, what can I do for you on this fine morning?” Maggie was like her school’s version of the Godfather. People always wanted things from her.

  Danny leaned down, saying, “Actually, if I could just have a moment wi
th you, in private.”

  This caused Maggie to suffer a flash of déjà vu. Danny had said this to her in several of her more salacious daydreams. Giving away nothing, Maggie harrumphed, “Of course.” A few of the teachers—including Mr. Baran dressed as Elvis—had joined Diane as greeters, so Maggie could be spared. She gestured for Danny to follow her as she walked over to the closest empty classroom, Miss Pearl’s art room. Closing the door behind her, Maggie asked, “What’s on your mind?”

  Danny started, “This is a little awkward. It’s, um, it’s about our sampling group. As you know, we’ve designed our pilot testing to measure exactly how well the MathPal works for typical students.”

  Maggie nodded. “Okay?” She was surprised to hear Danny using teaching jargon. In education circles, her circles, “typical” was code for kids without disabilities. Kids with learning disabilities were “atypicals.”

  Danny went on, “But so far, we’ve been testing everyone at the school, not just the typical students.” Danny punched the word “typical.”

  “So?”

  Danny struggled on, “So, since we’ve designed the MathPal for normal—I mean typical—learners, we were thinking it would make sense, uh, going forward, to exclude atypical learners from our test population.”

  Maggie suddenly understood what Danny was asking, and she didn’t like it one bit. “Let me get this straight. After two months of having our special needs kids work on the MathPal every day alongside their typical peers, you want me to suddenly yank them—but only them—out of testing. Is that right?”

  Danny flailed. “Yes, but not in a mean way.”

  Maggie snarked, “Oh yes. So I should exclude them in a nice way? How lovely.”

  Danny ran a hand distractedly through his red hair. “Look, the truth is we didn’t design the MathPal for disabled students. And we don’t intend to market it that way. So, when investors look at our testing results, our scores shouldn’t be brought down by . . . um . . .”