Fractions = Trouble!

by Claudia Mills

  “Do you want to take your pictures home, or may I keep them?” Mrs. Tucker asked as Wilson stood up to leave.

  Wilson hesitated. It would be cool to have the pictures for his room. But Laura and Becca both lived nearby. Wilson imagined seeing them on their bikes—kids who didn’t go to math tutors had time to ride bikes after school. They would see his rolled-up sheets of paper, and one of them would say, “What are those, Wilson?” And he’d say, “Oh, those are the hamsters I drew with my math tutor.” And they’d say, “What? You have a math tutor?”

  Wilson shook his head.

  “You can keep them,” he said.

  4

  “How did it go?” Wilson’s mother asked when he walked in the door.

  “Okay.” He wasn’t going to tell her that he had spent the whole time drawing hamsters. She might fire Mrs. Tucker and get him a different math tutor who would make him spend the whole time doing math.

  Fortunately, his mom didn’t ask anything else, though Wilson could tell she wanted to. He hated seeing the hopeful look on her face, as if one hour with a math tutor would have solved her son’s problems with fractions forever.

  “She said I’m going to be seeing her two hours a week,” Wilson said. “I thought I only had to go one hour a week.”

  “No, it’s going to be twice a week, on Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning. We’re lucky that Mrs. Tucker had these openings in her schedule.”

  Lucky wasn’t the word Wilson would have chosen.

  Pip wasn’t in her cage in Wilson’s room. He found her in Kipper’s room. Or rather, he found her inside the tent in Kipper’s room.

  Since their overnight family camping trip one weekend during spring break, Kipper had been sleeping every night in the small tent he had begged his parents to set up in his bedroom. Wilson couldn’t decide if the tent was cool, or stupid. Maybe cool in a stupid sort of way. Or stupid in a cool sort of way.

  Inside the tent Kipper was reading a story to Pip, Peck-Peck, and Snappy. The only problem was that Kipper couldn’t read. So he was holding the book and making up his own story, about three friends named Pip, Peck-Peck, and Snappy.

  Wilson crawled inside the tent and picked up Pip, who had been dozing in a tightly curled little ball.

  “And they lived happily ever after,” Kipper finished quickly. “What is your science fair project going to be?” he asked Wilson.

  “I don’t know.” Josh’s popcorn-catching idea was funny, but Wilson didn’t feel like finding a whole bunch of kids and grownups and dogs and cats who were willing to let him test how many kernels of popcorn they could catch in their mouths. He doubted that even his own parents would agree to do it.

  He stroked Pip’s firm little body, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. Maybe he could time how many hours a day she slept versus how many hours a day she ran in her wheel. Or he could teach her to do tricks, to see how smart she was. He could probably teach her to do some amazing tricks.

  “Actually,” Wilson said, “I’m going to do experiments with Pip.”

  Kipper’s face lit up. “Can I do experiments with Pip, too? Pip is my hamster, too!”

  “No!” Wilson hated that Pip was Kipper’s hamster, too. Kipper already had Peck-Peck and Snappy. Why did he need half of a hamster? Half of Wilson’s hamster. “Think of your own idea.”

  Kipper pushed out his lower lip: step one of Kipper crying.

  Kipper’s eyes started to water: step two of Kipper crying.

  Before Kipper’s mouth could start to tremble—step three of Kipper crying—Wilson said, “I’ll help you think of another idea, an even better idea.”

  “Like what?”

  Good question. Nothing was better than doing experiments with hamsters. Wilson looked around, desperate for inspiration.

  “Like—something about tents.”

  “Like what about tents?”

  At least Kipper’s mouth wasn’t trembling and his eyes had stopped watering. His lip still stuck out, though.

  “We’ll ask Dad when he comes home.”

  Their dad loved anything to do with camping. If anyone could think of a good science fair project about tents, he would be the one.

  Wilson crawled back out of the tent with Pip, soon to be co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Science Fairs.

  “Tents,” their father said as he speared the first meatball on top of his spaghetti.

  “We could set up all our tents”—their family owned three—“and see which tent is the biggest,” Kipper suggested.

  That didn’t seem, to Wilson, like the right kind of question for a science fair project. Which person in their family was the tallest? Their dad. Which person was the shortest? Kipper. Or Pip, if she counted as a person. It was too easy. But he didn’t say anything, for fear that his father would change the subject and start asking him about his math tutoring.

  “Let’s think a bit more,” his dad said. “What do we want a tent for?”

  “To keep out bears!” Kipper made Peck-Peck and Snappy jerk their heads with fear of bears. Peck-Peck and Snappy sat at the table every night for dinner, while Pip ate alone in her cage. It was another thing in Wilson’s life that wasn’t fair.

  “Well, a tent won’t provide much protection from bears. But it definitely helps with rain and wind. All three of our tents are waterproof, but I know from experience that some tents do better in the wind than others, depending on their size and shape. We have one big, tall tent, and one small, low tent—that’s the one in your room, Kipper—and a medium-sized one. How about setting up all three tents outside in the backyard on a windy night and seeing which one holds up best in the wind?”

  “I think the big one will be the best,” Kipper said.

  Their father looked as if he thought that was the wrong answer, but didn’t want to come right out and say it. “Okay, boys—Wilson, you can help with this, too. Think about a sailboat. Which sail would catch more wind: a big, tall one or a little, low one?”

  “The big one,” Wilson said. That seemed obvious.

  “Yes,” their dad said. “But when it comes to tents, you don’t want them to catch the wind, right? So that means that, in the wind—”

  “A little one would be better,” Wilson said, since Kipper had obviously stopped listening to their dad’s explanation.

  Kipper’s face lit up with a new idea. “Can we put Peck-Peck and Snappy in the tents when we test them?”

  “I don’t see why not,” their dad said. “And then we can find out whether a small, low tent really is better for camping in the wind.”

  “Boys, you need to let your father eat his supper,” their mother said. As if Wilson had said or done a single thing so far to distract anybody from eating anything. “Wilson, have you come up with an idea for your project?”

  “I’m going to teach tricks to Pip and see how long it takes her to learn them.”

  “When is the science fair?” his dad asked, swallowing another meatball.

  “In two and a half weeks. On a Friday.” The same day as the big horrible fractions test. If only Wilson could pass that test and never have to go to a math tutor again.

  “Good luck,” his dad said. He made it sound as if two and a half weeks wasn’t going to be enough time. Well, his dad might know a lot about tents and sailboats, but this showed how little he knew about hamsters.

  “May I be excused?” Wilson asked.

  “Your dad is still eating,” his mother said.

  “Just let him go,” his dad said.

  As Wilson was heading away from the table, his father called after him, “Oh, Wilson? I forgot to ask: what happened with the math tutor today?”

  Wilson pretended that he hadn’t heard. Off he raced to start training Pip.

  5

  Sit. Stay. Roll over. Shake paws. Those were the tricks people taught their dogs. Wilson decided to start with shaking paws.

  He took Pip out of her cage and placed her on his bed.

  “Pip,” he s
aid. “Shake!”

  Then he took her little paw and shook it.

  He did it a few more times so she would get the idea and learn what the command sounded like. Each time, he said it slowly and clearly: “Sh-ake!”

  He knew he was forgetting something. Oh, he needed to have treats, to reward her whenever she did it right.

  Into her cage Pip went. Wilson ran down to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic bag of baby carrots, and ran back.

  This time he offered Pip a nibble of a carrot right after he shook her paw.

  “Shake!”

  He shook her paw.

  He gave her a nibble of carrot.

  “Shake!”

  He shook her paw again and gave her another nibble of carrot.

  But Pip never offered him her paw, and that was what the trick was all about. The trick wasn’t shaking hands with a hamster. The trick was getting the hamster to shake hands with you.

  “Shake!”

  Pip darted across Wilson’s bed.

  “Shake!” Wilson shouted after her.

  Maybe two and a half weeks wasn’t going to be enough time, after all—either to train Pip or to learn fractions. Two and a half years wouldn’t be enough time to learn fractions.

  At Josh’s house, after school on Thursday, Josh and Wilson selected the largest pickle from the jar of kosher dill pickles that Josh had made his mother buy. This was the pickle that was about to meet its doom.

  “I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Josh’s mother said.

  “That’s what Einstein’s mother said,” Josh told her. “Right before he discovered … What did Einstein discover?”

  “The theory of relativity,” Josh’s mother answered automatically, as she gazed down at the pickle.

  “Well,” Josh said, “your son is about to discover the theory of explosivity.”

  Josh’s father appeared in the doorway. Both of Josh’s parents worked at home, doing something on their computers.

  “Ramon, what if it does explode?” Josh’s mother asked Josh’s father.

  “Well, it’s just a pickle,” Josh’s father said. “I don’t think it will make a very big explosion.”

  “The atom bomb was just an atom!” Josh’s mom shot back. “And it made a very big explosion!”

  Wilson was surprised that even as they kept telling Josh what a bad idea this was, they didn’t tell him not to do it. His parents would have said, “No exploding pickles!” just as they said, “No video games! No TV on playdates! No fighting with Kipper!”

  “Are you ready?” Josh asked his pickle.

  The pickle didn’t answer.

  Josh apparently took that as a yes.

  He put the pickle in a pan and slid the pan into the oven. Then he set the temperature to 350 degrees. That was the temperature for baking cookies, Josh had told Wilson. Since cookies didn’t explode, that would be the temperature to start with.

  Luckily, Josh’s oven had a glass window in the door. Josh and Wilson pulled up two kitchen chairs and sat down in front of the oven to watch. His parents watched for a while, too, and then they drifted away.

  When fifteen minutes had gone by, and the pickle hadn’t exploded at 350 degrees, Josh turned up the oven to 400 degrees. He wrote down the temperatures and times in his science fair notebook.

  Wilson saw Josh’s title on the cover of the book: “At what temperchur does a pickel explod?” Josh was as bad at spelling as Wilson was at math.

  When the pickle didn’t explode at 400 degrees, Josh turned the oven up to 425, and then to 450, and 500, and 550. Through the glass, the pickle was starting to look shriveled and shrunken in the middle, with brown patches all over it, as if it had a skin disease. But it still didn’t look close to exploding.

  “Maybe we should go play some video games in the basement,” Josh suggested. “If the pickle explodes, we’ll hear it.”

  “I think we should stay here,” Wilson said. “Besides, don’t you think the pickle is starting to smell? Like it’s burning, or something?”

  The boys peered more closely at the pickle through the glass window. It was definitely turning black. Smoke was pouring out from it, too.

  Josh’s mother ran into the kitchen, his father close behind her. The next thing Wilson knew, the oven had been turned off, the charred body of the pickle was in the sink under cold running water, and all the kitchen windows had been flung open to get rid of the smoke before the smoke alarm could go off.

  “You could have set the house on fire!” Josh’s mother said.

  “That’s what Einstein’s mother said, too,” Josh said.

  After his parents returned to their computers, Josh rescued the pickle from the sink. It was amazingly lightweight, a black pickle skeleton. He took a picture of it with his dad’s digital camera.

  “To put up on my science fair board,” he told Wilson. “I’ll bring in the actual pickle, too. As evidence.”

  “So I guess pickles don’t explode,” Wilson said.

  “Pickles don’t explode in the oven,” Josh corrected him. “I’m going to give my parents a couple of days to get over this, and then I’ll try it again in the microwave. Can you come over on Saturday morning?”

  “Sure.” Then Wilson remembered. He had to go see Mrs. Tucker on Saturday morning. “I mean, no. I have something else I have to do.”

  Josh looked suspicious. Wilson knew Josh knew that he didn’t take piano lessons or play a spring sport, and he wouldn’t have a dentist appointment on the weekend.

  “What are you doing on Saturday?” Josh asked.

  Wilson couldn’t tell him.

  “Just stuff.” Wilson gazed down at his feet. “Just some stuff my parents are making me do.”

  Now Josh looked hurt.

  “Okay,” Josh said stiffly, as he patted his burned, soaked pickle dry with a paper towel. “I guess I’ll have to explode my pickle without you.”

  6

  By Saturday, Pip still hadn’t learned how to shake paws or roll over.

  At ten o’clock on Saturday morning, just as Josh’s pickle was probably exploding in the microwave, Wilson presented himself at Mrs. Tucker’s door. At least this time his mother and Kipper had stayed home to work on Kipper’s science fair project, busy setting up all three tents in the backyard; the weather forecast was for a windy night.

  Wilson had wondered if Mrs. Tucker would ask him to draw hamsters again, and she did!

  This time he drew a group of eight hamsters and a group of two hamsters. He could see that in the group of eight hamsters, one little hamster wasn’t a very big part of the group. That was why 1/8 wasn’t a very big fraction. But in the group of two hamsters, one hamster was half of the whole group. That was why ½ was a bigger fraction than 1/8 even though 8 was a bigger number than 2.

  The bottom number in the fraction was for the size of the whole group—how many total hamsters. The top number told how many members, or parts, of the group you were talking about.

  “Which one is the numerator?” Wilson asked.

  “The numerator is the top,” Mrs. Tucker said. “The denominator is the bottom. Some people remember it this way. Since the numerator is on top of the denominator, this means that N for numerator comes before D for denominator. So you think of the words Nice Dog.”

  “I wish it was Nice Hamster,” Wilson said.

  “Well, that could still be a good way to remember it, because nice comes first either way, and nice stands for numerator.”

  “I’m going to think that the Nice Numerator is on top, and the Dumb Denominator is on the bottom.”

  “Wilson, that’s wonderful!” Mrs. Tucker said.

  As he was getting ready to go home, Wilson told Mrs. Tucker about the science fair. Pip was Nice, of course, but when it came to learning tricks, she was Dumb.

  “What if instead of trying to teach her to do something, you just observed what she was doing naturally?” Mrs. Tucker suggested. “You could bring Squiggles home from school for the weekend and s
tudy both hamsters together. Try to find out what hamsters like and dislike. Are they affected by color? By sound?”

  Wilson was impressed. “Do you tutor science, too?”

  Mrs. Tucker laughed. “I tutor everything. The student who comes before you on Saturdays is coming for a few weeks for help with the science fair; the student who comes after you comes for help with writing. Just the way you like to watch Pip, I like watching the different ways that kids learn.”

  Wilson felt better as he walked home. During his tutoring time he hadn’t heard any deafening explosions anywhere. Maybe he hadn’t missed out on Josh’s exploding pickle, after all.

  When Wilson got home, the backyard looked like a campground. Three tents were lined up in a row: the big, tall, family-sized tent; the medium-sized tent; and the small, low-to-the-ground tent moved from Kipper’s bedroom. Wilson’s mother was trying to explain to Kipper why he couldn’t sleep in the tent now that it was set up outside.

  “Tents are supposed to be outside!” Kipper said.

  “At night little boys are supposed to be inside,” their mother said.

  “But I have it all planned out. Snappy is going to sleep in the big tent, and Peck-Peck is going to sleep in the medium-sized tent, and Pip and I are going to sleep in the little tent.”

  “Pip isn’t sleeping in a tent!” Wilson interrupted.

  “Pip isn’t sleeping in a tent,” his mother agreed. “Pets like what is safe and familiar.”

  Kipper pushed out his lower lip.

  “Don’t start that, Kipper,” his mother said. “Snappy may sleep in a tent. Peck-Peck may sleep in a tent. Pip is sleeping in her cage. You are sleeping in your bed.”

  Then she turned to Wilson. “How was your time with Mrs. Tucker?”

  “Okay.”

  His mother had that hopeful look on her face again. “Do you think she’s helping you start to understand fractions any better?”