“Yes, ma’am?” he asked, ignoring the scattering of light laughter throughout the classroom. “I’m next?”
“Yes, Mr. Ghostley. You have the final three questions to answer–numbers twenty-eight through thirty,” his teacher replied. “Then we can all go home if you answer them correctly before the dismissal bell.”
Griffin glanced down at the math worksheet upon his desk, his name neatly printed in the upper left hand corner. His eyes quickly focused on the last three problems at the bottom of the sheet. He had been concentrating on them for the last twenty minutes while his classmates took turns answering the others. Now it was his turn.
“Are you ready, Mr. Ghostley?” his teacher patiently called out as she stood up from behind her desk.
Griffin nervously cleared his throat and sat up straight in his chair. He looked in her direction as she rose to full height from behind the fern, her head of silvery hair and leafy, vine patterned blouse complemented by two smiling, bright orange pumpkin earrings she proudly wore for Halloween.
“I’m ready,” he said halfheartedly.
“Then hurry it up already,” whispered a boy named Dwayne seated to his right. “We want to get out of here on time, Griff.”
Griffin shot a quick glance at the wall clock. There was less than five minutes until the final bell, and if he didn’t answer the last three questions correctly, he knew that the entire class would have to stay while their teacher reviewed the math problems on the blackboard. Oh, on today of all days, on Halloween, why was he picked to go last? Griffin took a deep breath and read the first of his three questions.
“Number twenty-eight,” he said. “How many degrees are there in a right angle?”
“And your answer is…?”
Well, that wasn’t a terribly difficult question, he realized, particularly since he had had nearly half the class time to think about it. But Griffin quickly went over a few basics in his head before answering, just to make sure he didn’t make any careless mistakes.
“A right angle, the L-shaped angle,” he whispered to himself, “has exactly…” He looked up at his teacher. “Ninety!” he nearly shouted, quickly lowering his voice. “A right angle has ninety degrees.”
“Correct, Mr. Ghostley,” the teacher replied with an encouraging smile as she walked along the blackboard in front of the room. Upon it were drawn an array of circles, squares, triangles and other geometric shapes. In the corner of the room adjacent to the far edge of the chalkboard stood a tall, plastic skeleton, its arms folded in a silly pose and draped with layer upon layer of fake spider webbing. It was one of many Halloween decorations adorning the room. “Now on to number twenty-nine,” she instructed.
“Yes, ma’am,” Griffin replied, feeling a little more at ease. He slid his finger down the worksheet to the next question and began to read. “What is two to the fifth power?”
Griffin knew that this problem would be a little bit more complicated, requiring some mental calculations, but he again felt confident that he had the right answer since he had ample time to think about it. He realized that going last during one of these group pop quizzes was not always a bad thing. But he wanted to take a few more seconds to review the question before he accidentally blurted out the wrong answer and doomed the entire class to staying after on Halloween.
“Two to the fifth power,” he whispered to himself. “That means multiplying the number two by itself five times.” He glanced at the row of windows along the left side of the room, each sill decorated with several small pumpkins and a scarecrow figurine. Outside the window upon a distant hill, he noted the straight rows of tombstones in a local cemetery, the marble grave markers catching the light of the late afternoon sun.
“Hurry up, Griff!” whispered Dwayne who impatiently twirled a pencil between his fingers, the top of which was crowned with a rubber werewolf eraser. “I want to go home now. It’s Halloween.”
Griffin nodded understandingly. The problem was simple enough. Two times two times two times two times two. He counted on his fingers to make sure he had five twos. Two times two was four. Times another two was eight. Times two again was sixteen. Then times a final two was…
“Thirty-two!” he called out, startling the girl seated in front of him who briefly turned around. She had long dark hair and wore a pair of owlish glasses.
“I think they heard your answer in the next room, Griffin,” she said with a soft chuckle. Mindy Mayhew offered a friendly smile before again facing front.
“You’re two for two, Mr. Ghostley,” his teacher said, urging him successfully onward with an approving rise of her eyebrows. “Now for the last one. And there’s still two minutes left,” she added after glancing at the clock. “Question number thirty.”
So it all came down to this, the final question. But in reality, Griffin knew that it all came down to him. It was make or break time. So after taking another deep breath to clear his mind, he carefully read the last problem on the page.
“Given a circle of any size, what number do you always get when you divide the circle’s circumference by its diameter?”
That was a first class math problem for sure, Griffin realized, especially if one had only paid scant attention to the teacher during that lesson last week. His eyes widened as he quickly reread the question to himself, momentarily holding his breath as if to keep the words from escaping his brain. But a couple of points from that lesson did flutter about on the edge of his mind, yet he couldn’t fully recall the details. He just needed a little more time to think–but time was fast running out. And he suddenly had a craving for apple pie, too.
Think! He silently told himself this. Think! Attack the problem logically. Divide the circle’s circumference by its diameter. Griffin knew that the circumference was simply the distance around the circle. Easy enough. And the diameter was a straight line extending from one end of the circle to the other through its center. So when you divide the first length by the second, you always get… He thought for another instant. He knew this answer. It was starting to come back to him. It was three… Three point–something. He couldn’t remember the last two digits.
“The answer is…” he slowly said while glancing at the worksheet, stalling for time. “The answer is three point…”
Griffin shifted his eyes left, glancing at a poster between two of the windows. It was a poster he always looked at when needing a boost of encouragement. Scrawled across the top were the words: Doggone it! Can’t get enough of reading!
Beneath it were three dogs, each sitting in front of an open book. One dog, a black Labrador Retriever, had a pair of glasses set upon the tip of its nose. A Dalmatian next to him was wearing an elegant pearl necklace. And beside her, wearing a party hat, stood a light brown and white Basset Hound with its head looking up as if howling with delight. The sight of the three canines always amused Griffin and helped him to think through difficult problems. This was no exception.
And then he raised his eyes just a little bit higher, looking in the same direction as the Basset Hound. Attached to the wall along the space above the window tops was a series of beige cards with the letters of the alphabet printed upon them. But not the English alphabet–that was listed in front of the classroom. Tacked above the windows was the Greek alphabet which their teacher had displayed for the literature unit on Greek mythology. But something about those letters now captured Griffin’s attention.
He hurriedly began to recite the first few letters in his mind. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon... What was this leading to, he wondered. Zeta, eta, theta… He vaguely recalled something about circles and a certain Greek letter. But what? Iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi… What had his teacher said that day during her lesson on circles and such? Omicron, pi–
Griffin stopped right there on the sixteenth Greek letter. Pi! That was it. She had said that dividing the circumference of any circle by its diameter always equaled the same number that mathematicians called pi. And pi was always equal to three point–what?
Griffin shook his head, still stuck on the same problem, still searching for the first two digits of pi that came after the number three. Then an image of a slice of warm apple pie popped into his head and he suddenly remembered one thing his teacher had said during that lesson–a short poem, of all things. To help remember the value of pi, she had recited the following to her students.
Three hot apple pies from the bakery.
One for you and one for me.
And one for right now, if you please.
Apple pie–that was the key! Griffin now remembered that the three pies stood for the number three in pi, which was also pronounced just like the word pie. But as for the other two numbers after the decimal point? What was the answer in this little riddle his teacher had provided? Where were those next two numbers hidden?
He recited the poem once more in his mind as he glanced at the clock. The final sixty seconds of class were ticking away. He noticed his restless classmates fidgeting in their seats, hoping to be released before it was too late. He watched as his teacher patiently waited in front of the classroom for his reply. And then, like a lightning bolt, the answer hit him.
One for you… one for me… and one for right now… That was the key he now recalled. The words one for actually stood for the numbers one and four. That was it! The answer to the final problem was–
“Three point one four!” Griffin shouted out. “The circumference of any circle divided by its diameter is always 3.14, which is also called pi.”
“Correct!” his teacher proudly said to the relief of the entire class just as the dismissal bell rang loudly throughout the corridors of the Franklin W. Fitzgibbon Middle School. “And just in the nick of time, too. A job well done, Mr. Ghostley.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“That goes for me, too,” Mindy quietly remarked to Griffin as she stood up to leave. “I knew you could do it!”
“Yeah, not too shabby a job,” Dwayne said as he walked by with a smirk, playfully punching Griffin in the arm.
“Thanks, guys,” Griffin replied as if it were nothing. But inside he was beaming all the while.
“And as a Halloween bonus, there will be no homework for tonight,” their teacher announced to the jubilant cheers of all as she made her way to the door.
It was decked out in Halloween fashion just like the rest of the room, decorated with a colorful array of rubber snakes on the top, bottom and sides of the door. In its center, wearing a vacant gaze, was a skeleton mask suspended from a small hook as it kept watch over the classroom. Their teacher reached for the handle and turned it, opening the door and allowing her weary yet excited students to finally depart.
“Have a good night!” Mindy said with a quick wave as she passed by her teacher on the way out behind the bustling line of other children.
“Thank you,” she replied. “And don’t stay out too late while trick-or-treating, Miss Mayhew.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
“And a goodnight to you too, Mr. Ghostley,” his teacher added as Griffin passed by next. “Once again, a job well done, sir.”
“Thank you,” he told her, still basking in his success.
“Enjoy all the festivities tonight, too,” she said. “You certainly deserve it after doing all that terrific math work today.”
“Oh, I intend to, Mrs. Kensington,” Griffin replied with a pumpkin-size grin. “I intend to.”
And with that, he stepped through the doorway, free at last to enjoy the parades and treats and pageantry of a crisp Halloween night brimming with scary excitement that was just waiting for him to find it.
THE END
I hope you enjoyed reading this book, the first of many that I want to write in the Griffin Ghostley adventure series. Right now I am planning twelve stories in all, so I hope my imagination can keep up with my ambition. Ideas for Book #2 and others in the series are already swirling inside my mind.
I came up with the idea for this book last autumn, intending only to pen a short story for my young nephew who had asked me to write a mystery story for him about two years ago. After a couple of false starts, I finally hit upon an idea and quickly realized that I could turn it into a book and a series. So to Matthew, thank you for challenging me to think up a new set of characters that will keep me busy for at least the next few years.
Thanks also to my nephew, Ryan, for some advice on the cover, and many thanks to my sister, Theresa, for previewing this book and providing a list of helpful comments and suggestions. And my heartfelt thanks to you for taking the time to read this story. I look forward to releasing the next one as soon as possible.
Thomas J. Prestopnik
April 18, 2016
The Griffin Ghostley Adventure Series
for readers ages 10 to 13
Search for the Silver Swamp Monster #1
Nicholas Raven and the Wizards’ Web
an epic fantasy in three volumes for adults & older teens
A Christmas Castle
a novella for adults & older teens
The Endora Trilogy
a fantasy-adventure series for pre-teens & adults
The Timedoor - Book I
The Sword and the Crown - Book II
The Saving Light - Book III
Gabriel’s Journey
an adventure novel for pre-teens & adults
Visit Thomas J. Prestopnik’s official website
www.TomPresto.com
Search for the Silver Swamp Monster (A Griffin Ghostley Adventure Book 1) Page 6