Fractions = Trouble! (5 page)

Read Fractions = Trouble! Online

Authors: Claudia Mills

As soon as the boys got home from school, Wilson told his mother what Kipper had said to Josh on the playground. For once, Wilson's mother wasn't mad at him, but was mad at Kipper.
His mother's face looked very serious as she sat Kipper down and said, “Kipper, Wilson can be the one to tell his friends about his math tutor, if he wants to.”
“But Josh asked.” Kipper's face twisted
into its most pathetic expression. “He wanted to come over on Wednesday afternoon, and I said Wednesday afternoon wasn't good, and he asked why, and so I told him.”
“Having a tutor is private,” their mother explained.
Wilson couldn't agree with her more. But he also knew that if having a math tutor was as wonderful as his parents claimed, it wouldn't be private. His mother was practically admitting that having a math tutor was embarrassing.
Which it was. So embarrassing that Wilson's own best friend couldn't look him in the face once he found out.
“I'm sorry, Wilson,” Kipper sniffed in his most pathetic voice. “Peck-Peck and Snappy are sorry, too.”
What could Wilson say? “That's okay.”
Wilson's mother gave him a reassuring smile. Snappy and Peck-Peck tried to kiss him.
Wilson pushed them away.
Alone in his room, he lay on his bed for a long time, holding Pip and petting her small, soft head. Pip didn't care that Wilson went to a math tutor.
Why couldn't everybody else in the world be more like Pip?
 
That evening the wind rattled the windows and roared down the chimney as Kipper headed out to the backyard with Peck-Peck and Snappy to put them into their sleeping bags. Wilson was glad that Pip wasn't sleeping in the empty third tent.
“Go with Kipper, Wilson,” his mother said. “It's so windy out there.”
As if Wilson could do anything to make the wind stop its howling and shrieking.
First the two boys crawled into Peck-Peck's low tent, and Kipper slipped Peck-Peck into his sleeping bag. He shone the beam of his flashlight onto Peck-Peck's beak.
“Good night, Peck-Peck!”
Then the two boys unzipped the flap to Snappy's tall tent. Kipper gave Snappy a good-night kiss before tucking him into his sleeping bag.
“Snappy's afraid,” Kipper said. “Snappy doesn't like the wind.”
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.
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!

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