The Golden Rectangle

by Gillian Neimark

  Flor’s mouth had dropped open. The voice boomed on:

  Little Flor and Dr. Pi. The time has come for you to die! My angle’s right, it’s always right!

  “Run home for now,” Dr. Pi had said, handing her an umbrella. “Check your magic book tonight and you’ll know what to do. I’ll see you in a few hours. And give your mom a kiss on the cheek for me.”

  Flor looked at her mom now. She loved her so much, but she couldn’t tell her another thing. Grounded or not, she was going to meet up with Dr. Pi tonight.

  “I forgot to give you a kiss on the cheek,” said Flor.

  “A kiss on the cheek?”

  “From Dr. Pi. He told me to give you one. You want it now or later?”

  “Later will be fine. You’re grounded, you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  And with that, they went on eating spaghetti-squash pasta, as if nothing unusual had been said.

  SQUARE MAN PAYS A VISIT

  The wedding cake had all been eaten. The television crew had gone home. The snow had long ago melted. Matt had carried Nell over the threshold and off to their honeymoon. Buddy and Lucy sat on the porch swing as the moon rose on this early summer night. Wisteria vines wrapped around the porch timbers, filling the air with sweetness.

  “It’s just you and me now, Pip,” said Buddy.

  “What are we gonna do without Nell, Daddy?”

  “It’s going to be very hard,” he admitted.

  “We’ll be eating cheese sandwiches for dinner,” said Lucy.

  “That’s true. Neither of us can stand to cook, and Nell is practically a self-trained chef.”

  “And our house is gonna be a mess. Because you hate cleaning as much as I do, Daddy.”

  “I know,” he sighed. “We’re going to have to try, though.”

  After a brief silence Lucy said, “I just can’t stand the thought.”

  “Of what? Missing Nell, or cleaning and cooking?”

  She could hear the smile and the gentle tease in his voice.

  “All of it. Actually, I don’t mind cheese sandwiches a bit, especially with mustard. It’s just that Nell and I should have been in a sisters’ hall of fame. Don’t you think? I mean, we got along so well. I still remember her cheering me on when I fed fish to our baby alligator. She’s the one who tied a rope to the oak tree so we could swing out over the sinkhole even when you ordered us not to. She cried and ran away when you shot the rattlesnake, and I had to comfort her.”

  “Remember when she lip-synched songs using corn on the cob as a microphone?” her dad said.

  “Yeah. You built her that little stage.”

  “She did all of Patsy Cline,” her father said. “Then she did Alicia Keys.”

  “We were up past midnight,” Lucy remembered. “She taught me to make sit-upons out of oak leaves in the backyard. We tied the stems together and made a cushion to sit on out back by the creek. Then we brought them in and used them as placemats.”

  “Actually, it was your mom who taught Nell how to do that when she was young”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “She teased me sometimes, though,” said Lucy with a frown. “Like when she told me the Spanish moss hanging from the trees out back was actually the hair of witches who had flown by in the night, slept in the trees, and left. But I knew she was teasing, so one night I pulled down some moss and draped it over my head and wore a white sheet and woke her. She practically jumped up to the ceiling she was so scared.”

  “She believed in ghosts, most definitely,” said Buddy.

  “Do you think ghosts are real?” asked Lucy, surprised.

  “They might be.”

  “Are you serious? Really?” She was excited. “Have you ever seen one?”

  “I have to wonder. Every so often your mother comes and visits me in my dreams, and tells me about things that are going to happen.”

  “Like what kind of things?”

  “She came to me last night, actually, and told me you were about to take on a big challenge. And that I had to watch over you but let you do what you were meant to do and had always been meant to do.”

  Lucy thought about that for a minute.

  “That’s kind of weird,” she said finally. “I hope it has something to do with horse rustling. I wonder if she’ll ever visit me.”

  “One day she just might. But tonight it’s time to turn in for bed, Pip. You’ve got school tomorrow, remember? And it’s nearly nine o’clock.”

  “Okay, sure,” said Lucy, hardly paying attention. She was thinking about ghosts and visits from the dead.

  And then she remembered the odd, special key. The one she’d found in her hayloft and stuck in the peanut butter jar.

  “I’ll be right up,” she said suddenly. “I just have to go get something in the barn.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you do, don’t you?”

  “You don’t know what it is,” she said instantly.

  “I guess not.”

  “Anyway, I forgot it and I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll see you inside in a few minutes, then.”

  “Catch you in five,” she said.

  A few minutes later she was in the hayloft, digging her hands into the gooey peanut butter in the dark. She found the key, wiped it clean with her sleeve, slipped it into her pocket, and then began licking peanut butter off her fingers.

  Suddenly she heard a voice. “What a wonderful place you’ve got here,” it said.

  A ghost, thought Lucy. I’m being visited by an actual ghost!

  “You like my hiding place?” she said pleasantly.

  “In all my travels through the entire galaxy I’ve never seen anything like this. Why, you’ve made a perfect golden rectangle out of old hay! The most divine rectangle among rectangles. The rectangle with the most exquisite proportions. The rectangle that can nest infinite rectangles inside itself.” The speaker paused, and Lucy could sense disapproval. “It’s a bit impertinent of you, though. You do realize I would never authorize dead grass for building such a beautiful thing. Grass simply won’t last.”

  Lucy fumbled for her flashlight and switched it on. In the corner of her hideaway was the ghost, in the shape of an incredibly tiny man about four inches tall. He was wearing a black leather jacket and shiny yellow pants, with a pink bow tie at his neck, and his tiny feet were encased in thick shoes with tightly bound shoelaces. He looked like a cross between a thug, a factory worker, and a dancer in a Las Vegas casino.

  The tiny fellow stuck out his hand. She hesitated, then shrugged and offered her pinky. He clasped it enthusiastically.

  “I’m Square Man,” he said. “I’m the master of rectangles throughout the universe, which includes squares, of course. Squares like myself! Yes, I am very square!”

  And he laughed quite a long time, as if he found himself too amusing for words. Then he grew serious.

  “Who made this absolutely gorgeous, fantastic rectangle? This very one in which you are sitting and I am standing. It popped up on my intergalactic radar this morning, and I had to pay a visit. Of course, no ten-year-old girl could ever make such a perfect rectangle. I want to know who helped you.”

  “This is not a rectangle. It’s my secret hideaway, but now that you’re here, it’s not secret any longer. You can have it. You can even have my peanut butter to snack on if you get hungry. Do you have any important messages for me from the other side?”

  He seemed confused. “What other side?”

  “Well, you’re a ghost, aren’t you?” she said impatiently. “Daddy said one might visit me and here you are.”

  “I’m no ghost,” the little man said, offended. “I’m the future master of the entire universe! A universe that is turning to squares and rectangles even as I speak.”

  “Huh?” Lucy shook her head. “Look, it’s nice of a real, genuine ghost to visit me, but if you don’t have any special message for me, I’ve got to go to bed.”

  But when s
he tried to stand up, she bumped her head.

  “What was that?” she muttered, and tried to stand up again, but this time she banged her shoulder.

  “I told you I’m the master of rectangles,” said the teeny man. “I just packed an invisible rectangle into that opening to close it. Now answer me, please. Who helped you build this rectangle of hay?”

  Lucy did not like this ghost at all.

  “Nobody,” she said.

  “Somebody,” he insisted.

  “Me, myself, and I.”

  “That’s not very funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “What is his name?”

  “What is whose name?”

  “The man who built this.”

  “My dad helped me a little,” Lucy finally admitted. “He said he’d made the same hiding place when he was a kid. So he made it nicer and bigger for me. If that’s what you mean.”

  Square Man jumped onto her knee. He seemed wildly excited. Lucy was about to swat him off, but he jumped to her other knee.

  “He’s just the man I need! Where is he?”

  “Inside our house, getting ready for bed, like I should be doing.”

  “Take me to him now! I need someone to make lots of golden rectangles,” said Square Man. “And I’ll pay him well. Dollar bills are rectangles, so I rule them, too. They’ll just fly into his pockets. He’ll be the richest man in Puddleville!”

  Like a motorized grasshopper, Square Man leaped out of the hideaway. He must have removed that invisible ceiling she’d bumped up against.

  “Come on!” he exclaimed.

  Lucy hauled herself after him.

  “I am so lucky I noticed your golden rectangle on my radar this morning,” Square Man was saying. “Your father is the answer to my dreams. You see, I am faced with a serious emergency. I need help to defeat Dr. Pi.”

  “Dr. who?”

  “Dr. Pi, an evil wizard whose heart is black with hate.”

  “Dr. Pie? Is he a pie maker?”

  “He pretends to be, no doubt about that. A long, long time ago, he and his friends discovered a special property of the golden rectangle. If you start at the corner of the rectangle and draw a curve, and just keep following that curve around and around, bigger and bigger, that curve turns into a spiral. He wants to ruin all my rectangles. And turn them into circles and spirals!”

  He stopped, waiting for her to make an exclamation of heartfelt sympathy.

  “I don’t understand,” said Lucy.

  “I think I’ve mentioned that I am completely square? My hands are square. My face is square. How long do I even have to live before Dr. Pi turns me into some ugly round thing? Do you see now why he’s my enemy?”

  Lucy was interested in spite of herself. “But how could anyone get rid of all the rectangles? There are rectangles everywhere. Like tables, and Kleenex boxes, fudge brownies, windows and doors and bedrooms and beds. I mean, you can’t really hate a rectangle. I don’t get it.”

  Square Man shook his head. “He says nature prefers a curve.”

  Lucy thought about that for a minute. “I guess most things in nature are curved, when you get down to it. Like the moon and sun and trees and . . . ”

  “Not where I live,” Square Man said. “My moon and sun and trees are square as can be. Take me to your father, please. If he truly made this rectangle, he will surely want to join me in my battle.”

  “What do you think you’re going to say to him? You’re a four-inch ghost.”

  “I’m not a ghost.”

  “If you’re not a ghost, then a bullfrog has wings.”

  Square Man laughed. “Think what you want. And I may be small, but my power is practically infinite. You have no idea what I can do.”

  With that, he took a flying leap out of the hayloft and landed on his feet somewhere below.

  “One, two, three, four, nevermore and nevermore!” she heard him chanting as he left. She could not believe the strength of the voice that came out of that teeny fellow. She was sure he would wake the whole neighborhood. He went on chanting: “Lines and corners, let’s unite! Squares and rectangles, let’s go fight! My angle’s right, it’s always right!”

  “Daddy will know what to do,” Lucy said to herself as she climbed down the ladder and ran after the tiny man. When she caught up to him, out of breath, he was waiting by the back door, tapping his foot impatiently.

  “Open it,” he demanded, pointing up to the doorknob.

  She did, and he strode across the doorjamb, calling out for her father.

  THE PIE SHOP CALAMITY

  Flor opened her closet door and reached up to the top shelf. There it was. Just where she’d put it months ago. The magic book. She sat down on the bed, her hands moving slowly over a soft, peeling calfskin cover. The title of the book was long: The History of the Bernoulli Family from the Seventeenth Century Until Present Times. It not only told the story of her famous ancestors in Switzerland and France, but it actually recorded events as they happened. The print just appeared on the blank pages. “Present Times” really meant present times.

  She’d taped her magic key to the inside cover, and she pulled off the tape now, holding the key in her palm. It looked like the key to an ancient castle door. She turned it over, saying aloud the words engraved on it:

  “Eadem mutata resurgo semperdem.”

  And then she translated the saying. “I shall arise again the same, though changed. Always.”

  Those were the words that one of her ancestors, Jakob Bernoulli, had carved on his gravestone. It was a saying about the Spiral. The Spiral could be found in everything from seashells to galaxies.

  Dr. Pi had explained the saying on the key this way: “The Spiral is unique because it gets bigger and bigger without changing its shape at all. Do you know anything else that can do that? And we are all like that Spiral. Though we change and grow and learn through life, something deep in us remains the same.”

  Life had certainly changed her. And it looked like life was about to change her again. And yet Dr. Pi was right—she was still the same Flor Bernoulli, a ten-year-old Brooklyn girl whose dream was to be a fashion designer.

  “Dr. Pi told me to look in the book, and I’d know what to do,” she said aloud now. “So let’s see what clues my future holds.”

  She pasted the key back into the book and opened to the last chapter. It had been a while since she’d looked in the magic book, and she had some catching up to do.

  “There is a cosmic fire of life,” she read. “And it moves and brings alive all the things of this universe. Stars and trees, butterflies and flowers, birds and lions and tigers and grasshoppers and humans, rivers and mountains, everything alive has a fire within. Flor Bernoulli learned how to channel this fire. She followed the directions written on a scroll that was hidden in a magic key and was able to bring a dead man back to life.”

  Flor looked up. Yes, the book was right. She had breathed life into Mr. Bit after he died, and he had come alive again. Her heart was beating so fast. Did she really want to know the rest? She looked down and began to read once more.

  “Dr. Pi was guardian of the Secret Spiral, and for centuries it was safe under his careful watch. But out in the far reaches of the universe, his enemy planned the day he would destroy Dr. Pi, and destroy every last spiral that existed. His name was Square Man. He was made of nothing but squares. His eyes, his hands, his legs, even the heart that beat inside him, all were square.”

  She shivered. Square Man sounded truly creepy. She went on reading.

  “Square Man had great power, though he had not come by that power honestly. He had stolen it. Once upon a time there was a place known as the Beginning of all Beginnings. Therein were points. And the points multiplied, and fell all in a row like beads on a wire. And they became lines. And the lines flowed forward. Some lines curved. They curved until they met themselves again and became circles. Some lines stopped at a length they liked, and met up with other lines and
joined together. They became triangles, or rectangles, or squares, or five- and six-pointed stars. Some lines became beautiful golden rectangles. Golden rectangles gave birth to forever-curving lines known as spirals.

  “Then the shapes went forth and multiplied on planets everywhere. But on one planet, in one house, in one room, something went wrong. It was a lovely planet, round as a glowing glass globe, and everyone in it was soft and curved and cuddly. But then a little boy was born, and he was not round at all. He was square. He was a square that had lost its way. He should have gone to a planet like Earth, where every shape is welcome. Or he could have gone to a planet of rectangles. But he went to a round planet. And they did not want him. They found him very amusing. They laughed and laughed whenever they saw him. They thought he was so funny-looking. Finally they sent him back to the Beginning of all Beginnings, with a note that he should be delivered elsewhere, to a place where he fit in. But when he arrived there, nobody could decide where to send him. The points argued and argued. And while they were arguing, Square Man saw a beautiful line lying on the floor. He could not quite say why it seemed so beautiful to him. He picked it up. And while they were arguing, he left. He had stolen a very powerful wand. It could pull a circle apart and turn it back into a line. It could take a spiral and unwind it into a rectangle. It could take a line and explode it back into points. Once he learned what the wand could do, he was unstoppable. And he decided he did not want to be sent to another planet. He did not ever want to be laughed at again. ‘I will turn the entire universe into squares with this special wand,’ he said to himself. ‘And I’ll start with that planet over there. That will be my home. I will call it Planet Square.’ ”

  Just then Flor’s mother knocked on her door. Hastily Flor shoved the book under her pillow and lay down, pulling her quilt up around her shoulders. Her mother opened the door.

  Flor rubbed her eyes and said sleepily, “I know, I’m grounded.”

  Her mother nodded, satisfied.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, darling. I’m going to watch some old movies on television.”

  Flor yawned.