The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl

by Stacy McAnulty

  I relax. Slightly.

  “Here, boy.” Levi lures him out with kissy sounds. The dog is shaking and keeps his tail between his back legs. I know how he feels.

  “Now you have something to do.” I motion to Cutie Pi with my head. “Get him out of here.”

  “Hey, Cutie Pi. Do you want to go for a walk?” Levi asks in a fake deep voice. “It sounds like I’m hitting on him.”

  “Maybe we should call him Pi,” I suggest.

  I double-check to make sure there’s nothing else living under the desk. Then I turn on the computer.

  Claire comes in as I’m wiping the keyboard with Clorox.

  “I heard you were here,” she says. “Thanks for coming in.”

  “Can I take Pi for a walk?” Levi asks. The dog hides behind Levi’s legs. It’s hard to imagine he would enjoy a walk.

  “Sure. But keep him away from the other dogs. We don’t have a vaccination record yet.”

  Pi tilts his head like he is trying to understand what’s happening.

  “Come on. It’s okay,” Levi assures the dog.

  With Levi gone, Claire explains to me how to put the data into the computer. They use an old program that is similar to an address book.

  “It’s pretty simple,” Claire says. She isn’t kidding. There are better ways to track the information, but this will work for now.

  I enter adoption form after adoption form into Claire’s system. I also take the information I need and scribble it on a pad of paper. I could put it in a spreadsheet, but that would take away some of the fun. I collect each dog’s breed, age, color, weight, and gender, and the number of days it took to be adopted. Since the Pet Hut is a no-kill shelter, all the animals are eventually adopted. Including Barnaby, a dog that lived here for 103 days before finding a home. He might still be here if some anonymous donor hadn’t paid his $175 adoption fee. I don’t bother working on the cats. I’m only interested in the dogs for now.

  I work for 72 minutes before Levi and Pi finally come back.

  “How’s it going?” Levi unclips Pi’s leash. The dog immediately pushes his way back under the desk.

  “Fine.” I don’t want to be interrupted. Things are coming together. Correlation and causality. Things are making sense. I scribble another ratio on the pad of paper.

  “What’s that?” Levi asks.

  “Nothing.” I flip over the paper and send a pile of adoption forms sailing to the floor.

  Levi snatches the pad of paper. “Looks like math. Like hard, gross math.”

  “Hey!” I jump up. My chair slides back into a filing cabinet. “Give me that.”

  “What are you working on?” He studies the sheet like he needs glasses. I grab for it, but Levi’s faster.

  “Come on!”

  “Tell me what you’re doing.” He holds the pad over his head, teasing me. I jump. I miss. I jump. I miss. Of course, I feel the need to try a 3rd time and fail again. I’m so angry my arms shake.

  “Levi!” My voice cracks.

  “I’m just playing—”

  Barking erupts from between us before Levi can finish his thought. Pi growls at Levi. The fur on his back sticks up. All his teeth are showing.

  “Whoa.” Levi steps back. He holds his hands out.

  Pi quiets and walks to my right side. He sits, practically on my foot, and leans all his weight against my leg. I try to slide away, but Pi adjusts so he’s still touching me. Gross.

  “I’m sorry,” Levi whispers.

  “What got into the dog?” I imagine he’s got a trigger word that sets him off. I don’t want to make him mad like Levi did.

  “I think he likes you.”

  That doesn’t make any sense. And the feeling is not mutual. “What do I do?”

  “Pet him.”

  “No.” I look down at the stupid dog. He looks up, his head tilted. Our eyes meet in a corny cartoon way. He does have beautiful brown eyes that are thoughtful and sad. Not that I’d tell him that. Not that he understands English.

  “Pet him,” Levi says again.

  Pi’s tail thwacks the floor with a beat.

  1-2-3-4.

  1-2-3-4.

  1-2-3-4.

  “Lucy, rub his head. Scratch him behind the ears.”

  “But dogs are so dirty.”

  “You don’t have to lick him. Just pet him.”

  Since both Levi and Pi seem determined for this to happen, I lower my right hand and, with the tips of my fingers, stroke Pi’s head 3 times. His eyes close. He pushes his head into my knee. These jeans are going right in the wash when I get home.

  “You’re a good dog,” I say. I pet him some more, and I lose count of the number of times my hand moves back and forth.

  “Here.” Levi hands me my paper with the calculations. “I don’t want your guard dog to attack again.”

  “He didn’t attack. He gave you a warning.”

  Levi sits on the edge of the desk. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing or not?”

  “It’s statistics.” I squirt hand sanitizer in my palm and then walk around to Levi. My new sidekick follows me. “I’m working on a formula. There’s a pattern to how quickly a dog will be adopted. Like small dogs are adopted 1.75 times as fast as big dogs. Gray dogs find homes 2.2 times as quickly as black dogs. Dogs over the age of 8 take an average of 25 days to be adopted, which is over 2 times the average for all Pet Hut dogs. But this is all very preliminary. I need more numbers.” When I sit, stand, sit, stand, sit in the chair, Pi watches with his head tilted.

  “How did you come up with all this?” Levi asks.

  “It’s not that hard for me.” I drop the pad on the desk. Across the sheet are averages and standard deviations for the 107 dogs most recently adopted.

  “I hate math.” His upper lip curls in disgust. “It bites. Math hates me, and I hate math.”

  “I could help you,” I offer. “I’m kind of good with numbers.”

  “Will you do my homework?”

  “No.”

  He picks up my calculations again and flips through the 4 pages. His eyes narrow. He shakes his head slightly.

  “How good are you?” he asks.

  “Really good.” Pi pushes his way back under the desk. I look at him instead of Levi.

  “Really good?” He does air quotes around really good. “Don’t make me sing ‘liar, liar, pants on fire.’ I hate to sing.”

  “Fine. I’m freaky-excellent-genius-good at math.”

  “Seems you’re good with adjectives, too.”

  I take a deep breath and tell him my story before I lose my nerve. I want someone to understand that I might not be normal, but this—the numbers, the OCD—is my normal.

  “When I was 8 years old, I was struck by lightning. Part of my brain was injured, and I ended up with super number abilities.”

  Levi’s eyes open wide. “Seriously?”

  I can tell he doesn’t believe me. So I try to dazzle him by reciting pi to the 314th digit.

  “I don’t know if you’re right,” he says.

  “Trust me. I am.” Then I hand him the oversized plastic calculator Claire keeps on the desk. I tell him to quiz me. I add, subtract, multiply, divide all the numbers he throws at me. We play this game for over 10 minutes, which is plenty of time for me to worry that I’ve made a huge mistake in telling him my secret.

  “Enough,” I finally say.

  “You’re a freak.” He smiles, exposing the gap between his front teeth.

  I shrug. I already knew that. “Don’t tell anyone. Okay?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die. Do you need me to pinkie-promise, too?” Which is his way of promising to keep quiet and sort of mocking me at the same time.

  “And I was serious. If you ever need help with math, I co
uld tutor you,” I offer.

  “Gee, thanks, Mighty Math Genius.”

  “Actually, I prefer Lightning Girl.” I touch my necklace. “And you can always go online if you don’t want to be seen with me.” I tell him about the MathWhiz website.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to be seen with you?”

  I shrug again. I’m not sure why I said that. The small office suddenly feels too warm.

  “So, do you want to help me enter this stuff?” I ask.

  “I don’t know if I’m qualified, Lightning Girl.”

  “I’m qualified enough for both of us.” I point to the pile of forms on the floor. We spend the rest of the day entering adoption information into the computer and collecting my own sampling. A scraggly dog sleeps on my feet. Levi complains the whole time. It might be the best afternoon of my life.

  I can’t explain it, but I trust that Levi will keep my secret. Unlike Windy, he rarely talks about other people. I know I should get it over with and tell her, too. She’s my best friend, and she shares every detail of her life with me. Like last night, she told me about the time she peed her pants waiting in line for a roller coaster. And it wasn’t a story from when she was 5. It happened last year. I’d want to forget something like that, not admit it. The problem is, she also tells me about everyone else. From her mom—who needs to wax a mustache—to which kids repeated kindergarten. There’s no controlling information once it’s in Windy’s head. No vault. No lock and key. No secret combination.

  I’m also worried she might be hurt that I’m keeping something from her.

  Luckily, Windy and I have plenty of other stuff to talk about, like the musical Wicked (her newest favorite), her birthday party, and global warming. She watched a video with a starving polar bear last weekend, and the next day she insisted on walking to school. She only made it about ¾ of a mile—just to the next bus stop.

  It takes me 2 more visits to the Pet Hut to finish entering all the data into the computer and collecting it for my own purposes. Levi and Windy join me on Monday. They play with dogs while I stay in the office. Wednesday, I go alone to complete my work. The numbers are fascinating. I share them with SquareHead314 and Numberlicious, but they aren’t impressed. They say my sample of 242 dogs isn’t large enough to make any definite conclusions. But it’s not like I’m going to go to another animal shelter to collect more data.

  I don’t visit the Pet Hut just for the numbers. I also like to see Pi. He still doesn’t have a kennel to call his own. So I try to make his under-the-desk doghouse more comfortable. I bring him an old sweatshirt to sleep on. It’s green and yellow (like the numbers 14 and 102) and too small for me. But while I’m working on the computer, he prefers to sleep on my lap, which is gross and adorable.

  I think our Cougar Cares Project is going great. If it were up to me, I’d even say we’ve done enough; their adoption files are all digital and up to date. We can keep visiting the Pet Hut to enter any new paperwork—and to check on Pi. But Windy still wants to make a difference. On Thursday night, we have a group phone call to see how we can change the world. Our revised project plan is due tomorrow.

  “Okay, guys. What are we going to do?” Windy asks, in charge as always. “We need some good ideas, like right now.”

  “Let’s just have a bake sale, raise some money, and get it over with,” Levi says.

  “Do you bake?” I lie back on my bed.

  “No.”

  “Think bigger,” Windy demands.

  “A big bake sale,” Levi says.

  Windy groans. “I’m so glad this isn’t for a grade, or I’d kick your butt out of this group.”

  I can imagine Levi smiling at his end. He likes to get Windy upset. And he’s good at it.

  “Maybe we could have a bake sale for pets,” I say. “We can make homemade dog treats and grow catnip. People who love animals will come to the sale. We’ll raise funds and maybe get people to adopt another pet.”

  “Will you 2 give up on the bake sale?” Windy says. “Besides, we can’t raise money. They told us that on the 1st day.”

  “Lucy, tell us what you’ve been working on,” Levi says. “I see you scribbling your…your ideas down.” He doesn’t say formula or equation or math. I guess he’s trying to keep my secret.

  “What’s he talking about?” Windy’s voice cracks. I can’t tell whether she’s hurt or mad.

  “As I was entering the adoption information into the computers, I just noticed some interesting things. That’s all.” I tell her what I told Levi last weekend. “Certain types of dogs take longer to get adopted. Pit bulls take 19 days to be adopted, while terriers take only 8.”

  “How did you figure that out?” Windy asks.

  “It’s not like it’s hard,” Levi says, covering for me. “Even I can calculate an average.”

  “So what? How does this help us?” Windy says.

  “Um, that doesn’t seem fair,” I say.

  “Maybe we could change those odds,” Levi offers. “My mom runs a marketing firm. People come to her to get more business or get more attention. Like she helps new restaurants get reviews and sends out coupons. The unpopular dogs need a publicist.” I get the feeling that the idea didn’t just pop into his head.

  “So, what do you suggest?” Windy asks.

  “The Pet Hut website is beyond pathetic,” Levi says.

  “You want to redesign their website?” Windy asks. I can imagine her lip curled in disgust.

  “I want to get dogs adopted,” he says.

  I log on to my computer and go to the Pet Hut website. It has the basic information about adoption fees and the shelter’s hours. There are a few pictures and a very out-of-date blog. The last post was 67 days ago. It’s a success story about a poodle mix that was adopted and lives with a family. I click around some more. The site doesn’t have any posts about animals waiting to be adopted.

  “Lucy! Lucy!” Windy yells. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Lucy, how long does it usually take a dog to get adopted?” Levi asks.

  “The average wait time for all dogs is 12 days. Not counting puppies.”

  “So the goal is to lower that number, and we do that by focusing on the dogs that take a superlong time to get adopted,” Windy says. “We’ll put them on the website. We can write feature articles on them.” We’ve done feature articles in language arts class. We had to write about a famous dead author.

  “I’m not writing anything,” Levi says. “I’ll take pictures.”

  “That’s a good idea. And I’ll figure out which dogs need our help the most.” I don’t want to write, either.

  “This is awesome, guys. We’re going to save thousands of puppies.”

  “No puppies. They don’t need help finding homes.” According to my math, dogs under 6 months old are adopted within 3 days.

  “Fine,” Windy says. “We’re going to save thousands of dogs.”

  “Or 10,” I say, trying to keep Windy from expecting too much.

  Some teachers can’t be trusted. I thought Ms. Fleming and I had an understanding. For 4 weeks, she’s been giving me the class readings to look over ahead of time—3 short stories and our 1st assigned novel, The Call of the Wild. She thinks I’m prereading the stuff, but all I really need to do is count the words. Then when she calls on me in class, I have no problem reading aloud.

  Today, she breaks that fragile trust we’ve built. And I know it’s no accident. She asks Maddie and Jennifer to hand out the anthologies. I haven’t counted any words in this book.

  “When you get your book, turn to page 97,” Ms. Fleming says to the whole class, but her eyes are focused on me.

  I don’t have my book yet. I need to start counting. My face grows hot as I wait. Maddie finally gets to me. She coughs on the cover before dropping the book onto my
desk. I use the sleeve of my sweatshirt to open it.

  The text is dense. It’s the abridged version of The Odyssey.

  “Lucy, why don’t you start?”

  I haven’t even tallied a single word yet.

  “I can’t. My throat.” I rub my neck.

  “Just give it a try.” She looks down at the podium, where her book sits. What kind of middle school teacher needs a podium?

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She does that thing where she takes off her glasses and puts 1 of the end pieces to her lips.

  I close my book and cross my arms over my stomach. I’m not acting. I might throw up.

  “I’ll read,” Windy offers, like she did the 1st week of school.

  “No, Windy. I told Lucy to read.” Ms. Fleming steps in front of her podium. “Read the 1st page, Lucy. You can do this. You’ve been working really hard.”

  “I can’t.” My eyes are cloudy.

  “Now, Miss Callahan.”

  “Leave her alone,” Windy says. “Look at her. She’s sick. Or about to be.”

  “You are both dangerously close.” She holds her fingers about a ½ inch, maybe ¾ inch, apart. But I’m not sure what she’s measuring.

  Windy mutters something and shakes her head.

  “Lucy Callahan, this is the last time I’m asking,” Ms. Fleming says.

  “You aren’t really asking,” someone interrupts.

  It’s not Windy this time. It’s Levi.

  “You’re demanding. She doesn’t want to read. Leave her alone.” He’s slumped in his chair, and it looks like he’s talking to the textbook.

  “You’re being a bully,” Windy adds.

  And that’s all it takes for Ms. Fleming to finally snap. “Get out of my classroom!”

  Levi gets up 1st and grabs his bag. I follow him, slipping the anthology under my binder. I’m taking it home to count the words later.

  Windy is sickly pale and frozen in her seat. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go.” Ms. Fleming squeezes her glasses. They bend but don’t break.

  “Come on, Windy. Take 1 for the team.” Levi holds the door open for us. When I get in the hall, I tap my toe 3 times.