Wilson wasn’t sure he liked the wind, either. The sides of the tent shook as if the Big Bad Wolf were huffing and puffing to blow the tent down. The wind definitely felt worse in Snappy’s taller tent than in Peck-Peck’s low-to-the-ground model.
“Snappy doesn’t have to sleep here,” Wilson pointed out. “He could sleep in Peck-Peck’s tent with Peck-Peck.” For that matter, Snappy could sleep in the house.
“He’ll be okay,” Kipper said, but he sounded uncertain. “You’ll be okay,” he told Snappy, in a more confident voice. “See you later, alligator!”
Kipper had just learned that saying. Wilson knew he thought it was funny saying it to Snappy because Snappy was an alligator.
The wind was so fierce all night that Wilson had trouble sleeping. He wondered if Pip was frightened, too, listening to the wind from her cage. Maybe hamsters didn’t hear sounds the way people did, just as hamsters couldn’t see the colors people saw. He hoped so.
Wilson dreamed that he was doing fractions. In his dream, he was taking the big fractions test, and he got all the problems wrong, and Mrs. Porter marked a huge red zero on the top of his paper, and then she thumbtacked it to the bulletin board for the whole class to see.
By morning, the wind had died down. Still in his pajamas, without waiting to put on a jacket, Kipper ran outside to rescue Peck-Peck and Snappy and bring them into the warm, snug kitchen for breakfast.
A moment later, Wilson heard Kipper’s piercing wail. This wasn’t Kipper’s ordinary kindergarten crying. Something terrible must have happened to Kipper.
Wilson’s parents raced outside, with Wilson right behind them.
Apparently unharmed, Kipper was standing with his eyes squeezed shut, sobbing as if his heart would break, as if it had already broken.
Two of the tents were there, looking none the worse for their night in the storm. One of the tents was gone, the big, tall one, gone completely, vanished without a trace.
Snappy’s tent.
And with it, Snappy.
Wilson’s dad drove around the neighborhood looking for the tent while Wilson and Kipper got dressed and had breakfast, or tried to have breakfast. Kipper was crying too hard to eat.
“It can’t have blown very far,” Wilson’s mother said, pulling Kipper onto her lap as they all sat at the kitchen table. “Daddy will be back any minute now, telling us he found it.”
Wilson was the first to hear the car in the driveway; Kipper was first out the front door. But their father’s face was grim with disappointment.
“I didn’t see it anywhere,” he confessed. “Lots of tree limbs on lawns, and even one whole tree blown down. No tent.”
“We’ll have to go on foot and walk through people’s backyards,” Wilson’s mother said. “No, not now, Kipper. I’m sorry, honey, but you boys have to go to school. I’ll take a long walk this morning, as soon as you leave, I promise. And if I find the tent, I’ll come to school and tell both of you. So come on, honey, get Peck-Peck, and off you go.”
“Peck-Peck doesn’t want to go to school without Snappy!”
Wilson felt like crying himself. His mother’s eyes were glistening, and his dad was suddenly very busy clearing the breakfast dishes from the table.
As the boys were getting ready to head out the front door, without any little beanbag animals, Kipper ran back and grabbed Peck-Peck. The three of them trudged off to school.
Please, please, please, please let us see the tent on the way, Wilson prayed. He’d even forgive Kipper for telling Josh about the math tutor, if only they’d find Snappy.
But they didn’t.
10
On the Friday morning of the big math test that would decide whether Wilson was going to be free from the math tutor forever, Wilson stood in the gymnasium next to his science project board as the judges came by to ask questions. It was good to have something else to think about besides 3/8 + = 7/8.
“What made you decide to study hamsters’ sense of smell?” one judge asked.
Wilson explained that he had first tried to teach his hamsters tricks and then to find out their favorite color. He could tell that the judge was impressed he had tried so many things that didn’t work.
“That’s what science is all about,” the man said. “Sometimes we learn more from failure than we do from success.”
It was an interesting thought. Maybe the judge would like Josh’s project best of all: Josh had had nothing but failure.
Josh and his pickle had never ended up coming over for a playdate with Wilson and Kipper. Wilson couldn’t tell if Josh had been avoiding him ever since Josh found out about Wilson’s math tutor; maybe he, Wilson, was the one who had been avoiding Josh. Either way, they hadn’t seen much of each other.
Wilson noticed that Josh had brought his oven-baked pickle to the science fair. The poor pickle deserved that much, at least.
Kipper’s board had turned out to be cute and funny, with Kipper’s own drawings of the three tents and Kipper’s big kindergarten printing: The tll tnt bloo awa. Kipper’s spelling was even worse than Josh’s spelling, but Josh was in third grade and Kipper was only in kindergarten.
It had been three days since the windy night, and the tent hadn’t been found. Snappy hadn’t been found, either. Kipper never let go of Peck-Peck now, but he had stopped making Peck-Peck talk. Without Snappy, Peck-Peck had nobody to talk to. Wilson felt a lump in his throat whenever he saw Kipper clutching his shabby, lonely little penguin.
The science fair judging lasted all morning. Wilson hardly touched his pizza at lunch, even though pizza was his favorite, cut in eighths. He saw that Josh ate two pieces: , or ¼. Lucky Josh didn’t have to worry about passing the fractions test.
Finally, after lunch, Mrs. Porter told the class to clear their desks and make sure they each had a sharpened pencil. Then she handed out the tests.
Scribbling furiously, with his pencil as sharp as sharp could be, Wilson kept his thoughts on groups of hamsters: comparing groups of hamsters, adding groups of hamsters, even subtracting groups of hamsters. No longer was he confused by nice numerators and dumb denominators. Maybe he’d let Mrs. Porter have one of his hamster drawings to put up on her bulletin board next year, when he was safely down the hall in fourth grade.
Mrs. Porter graded the tests while the class was at art, so Wilson had his to take home by the end of the day: only three problems wrong, out of twenty! He couldn’t wait to show his parents. He was done with the math tutor forever! He could do his times tables! He could do fractions! What else was there left to do?
The P.A. system clicked on for the announcement of which science fair projects had been chosen to go on to the district science fair, three for each grade. The principal read the results in order, from little kids to big kids.
For kindergarten, one of the winners was “Tents” by Kipper Williams!
For third grade, one of the winners was “How Far Can a Hamster Smell?” by Wilson Williams!
Laura’s batteries project won, too, of course.
Josh’s pickle project did not.
Josh made his pickle pretend to cry. As the pickle continued to wail with disappointment, Wilson burst out laughing with mingled amusement and relief. Now that he wouldn’t have to spend Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning with the math tutor, he and Josh could be friends again. He wouldn’t even mind if Josh was nice to Kipper sometimes. Wilson wanted to be nice to Kipper himself, he felt so sorry for his little brother.
If only the big, tall tent hadn’t blown away.
If only Snappy hadn’t been in the big, tall tent when it blew away.
It was wonderful waking up Saturday morning: no math tutor! Wilson almost missed Mrs. Tucker, who had been so kind and encouraging, and who had let him sit at her table drawing hundreds of hamsters. But not enough to want to go see her ever again.
At nine-thirty, when Wilson would have been dressed and ready to leave for his tutoring session, he was still lying on the couch watching cartoons with Pip
and Kipper and Peck-Peck.
Wilson’s mother appeared in the family room. “Wilson! What are you doing? Why aren’t you dressed? You have to be at Mrs. Tucker’s in half an hour!”
Wilson stared at her in disbelief. “Fractions are over! I passed the fractions test! I did great on the fractions test!”
“Because you had a math tutor,” his mother said. “You’re doing better in math than you ever have. Why would you stop seeing Mrs. Tucker now?”
“But—” Wilson didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
Did his parents expect him to go to a math tutor for the rest of his life? Would he be ninety years old and hobbling off with his cane to see his math tutor, while all the other old people were watching cartoons and playing with their hamsters?
“Wilson,” his mother said in her low warning voice. “Get. Dressed. And. Go.”
America might be a free country, but Wilson’s house was not a free house.
He got dressed and went. He heard his mother calling to Kipper to hurry up so they could leave on a morning bike ride around the neighborhood before it got too hot. Wilson stomped out the door without waiting.
Everybody else in the world except for Wilson was out riding bikes, washing cars, playing ball in the street, having yard sales. Even Mrs. Tucker’s next-door neighbor was having a yard sale—lots of baby stuff, racks of clothes, and camping gear spread out all over the lawn. One of the tents set up for sale looked just like their big, tall tent that had blown away. Maybe Wilson’s dad would want to come over and buy it to replace the other one. But there was no replacing Snappy.
Wilson plunked himself down on Mrs. Tucker’s front porch to wait for the kid before him to come out. He could hear Mrs. Tucker talking to somebody inside the house, by the front door, so he could tell they were almost finished. He was glad there was at least one other kid in the world going to a math tutor. He and the other kid could grow old together.
Mrs. Tucker’s door opened, and the other kid came out.
Wilson stared at the other kid.
The other kid stared at Wilson.
It was Josh!
11
“But you’re good at math!” Wilson said.
“I’m not good at spelling,” Josh said. “So last weekend my parents told me I had to have a spelling tutor, starting today.”
Josh gave Wilson a huge, sheepish grin. Wilson’s grin was even bigger. No wonder Josh had looked so embarrassed when Kipper had spilled the secret about Wilson’s tutor.
“Come on in, Wilson,” Mrs. Tucker said. “I want to hear all about the fractions test and the science fair. Josh told me that congratulations are in order.”
“See you later, alligator,” Josh said.
Wilson felt his grin fade. He was remembering how Kipper had tucked Snappy into his little felt sleeping bag on that cold, windy night.
If only the tent next door were really their tent.
Wilson’s heart clenched like a fist inside his chest.
Maybe …
It was worth asking.
“Can you wait one minute?” he asked Mrs. Tucker.
Without stopping to explain, he raced over to look more closely at the big, tall tent set up at the yard sale.
The tent had a little rip by the front door exactly like the little rip by the front door on Snappy’s tent. It had a broken zipper pull just like the broken zipper pull on Snappy’s tent.
Wilson peeked inside: there was no little alligator in a sleeping bag.
Wilson found the man in charge of the yard sale, who was sitting in a folding chair by a card table with a cash box.
“Excuse me? The big, tall tent over there? Where did you get it? It didn’t blow here that night when it was so windy, did it?”
The man gave a loud belly laugh. “It sure did. There was no name on it, and no way I could find out whose tent it was. And I sure couldn’t figure out why anybody would be camping on a night like that. Is it yours?”
Wilson nodded. But he didn’t care about the tent. He cared about what had been inside the tent. He was almost afraid to ask his next question.
“There wasn’t—there wasn’t a little beanbag alligator in it, was there?”
“You bet. It’s around here somewhere.” A worried look creased the man’s face. “Unless somebody bought it already.”
Wilson’s heart stopped beating.
“I put all the stuffed animals in that bin over there.” The man pointed. “Go and check.”
“Wilson!” It was his mom, calling over to him as she rode by on her tandem bike, with Kipper pedaling behind her. “It’s past ten! Why aren’t you at Mrs. Tucker’s?”
Wilson didn’t answer. Frantically, he dug through the bin, pushing aside a Barbie with only one leg and a broken toy soldier.
He could hear Kipper’s piercing voice: “Mom! That looks just like our tent!”
If someone had already bought Snappy, Wilson would die.
Kipper came running toward Wilson, as Wilson tossed aside a bear with torn overalls and a stained pink elephant.
Then Wilson saw a bit of faded green, alligator green, and then a whole little familiar alligator body.
The next thing Wilson knew, Kipper was hugging him, and his mother was hugging him, and Peck-Peck and Snappy were hugging him. He knew that if his dad and Pip had been there, they would have been hugging him, too.
Wilson had a funny thought, a thought he wanted to remember to tell his math tutor.
A family was like fractions, really.
Kipper and his mother and his father and Pip and Snappy and Peck-Peck were the parts.
And they made Wilson’s happiness whole.
ALSO BY CLAUDIA MILLS
Dinah Forever
Losers, Inc.
Standing Up to Mr. O.
You’re a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman
Lizzie at Last
7× 9 = Trouble!
Alex Ryan, Stop That!
Perfectly Chelsea
Makeovers by Marcia
Trading Places
Being Teddy Roosevelt
The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish
How Oliver Olson Changed the World
One Square Inch
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Everybody is bad at something. I have always been bad at math.
Part of the reason that I was bad at it was that I would spend my time in math class writing poems all over my math papers. That certainly didn’t help. But I also never felt comfortable with numbers the way I did with words. Even worse than numbers were letters in equations like x and y. To this day I feel stressed whenever I see any equation that has x or y in it. I had an easier time mastering my times tables than Wilson does, because I have a pretty good memory and could learn them by rote. But, oh, fractions were hard!
Unlike me, my younger sister was good at math—very good at math. (Actually, she is good at almost everything.) For a while, that bothered me. But then I realized that she could help me with my math homework, and all throughout high school she did. (She was also a math tutor—as good as Mrs. Tucker—for other students at school.)
Now I am the mother of two grownup sons. One of them is a math whiz; the other one, well, he takes after me and struggles with it. For him, as for me, fractions were—and are—trouble!
Text copyright © 2011 by Claudia Mills
Pictures copyright © 2011 by G. Brian Karas
All rights reserved
mackids.com
eISBN 9781429965101
First eBook Edition : August 2011
First edition, 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mills, Claudia.
Fractions = trouble! / Claudia Mills ; pictures by G. Brian Karas.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: 7 × 9 = trouble!
Summary: While trying to decide on a science fair project, third-grader Wilson struggles with fractions and, much to his embarrassment, his pa
rents sign him up to work with a math tutor.
[1. Fractions—Fiction. 2. Science projects—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Karas, G. Brian, ill. II. Title. III. Title: Fractions equal trouble!
PZ7.M63963Fr 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010008395
Fractions = Trouble! Page 4