My Homework Ate My Homework (7 page)

Sure enough, he digs his notebook out of his backpack.

“Here,” he says, not looking at me. “Today’s is in there, too.”

“
Nine
assignments to copy? Are you kidding me? My homework will give me carpal tunnel!”

I won’t do all the homework at once because, one, it hurts my wrist too much, and two, Mr. O. might think I cheated if I showed up tomorrow with it all finished. He might even test me to see if I really knew how to do it. I have a few days before I have to turn it in, so I’ll pace myself, turn in the homework a little at a time. That will help my wrist, too. I’ll need it to play Calam: to snap reins and twirl pistols. I might even need to throw faux punches. You can’t do any of that with a bad wrist.

“So how’s it going with the math?” my father asks at the dinner table.

“Fine,” I say.

He faux-furrows his brow. “Can you be more vague?”

“I’ve done two assignments. Only seven to go …”

“Don’t forget, you’ll be getting new homework each day,” Mother adds. “So you’ll have
ten
due by Friday.”

“Thanks for reminding me.” I push my plate away. “I just lost my appetite.”

“You need to work on it tonight,” she goes on. “Right after dinner. Nothing but math till bedtime.”

“But that’s not fair!” I bang my fist on the table. “All I do is math. It just isn’t my thing.
Drama
is my thing!”

“No kidding,” Mother says under her breath.

Abalina grunts, then bangs her fist on the table. It hits her spoon, which sends the peas in it flying. One lands in my milk.

My father cups his hands around his mouth, making a megaphone, and announces, “Step right up! Step right up! Try your luck at games of skill! That’s right—games of skill!”

“One pea in a glass wins!” I chime in.

My mother leans her head onto her hand and wilts.

“Mother, why don’t you go in and rest?” Father says. “You’ve had a trying day. Our eldest daughter and I will clean up in here. Right, eldest daughter?”

“We will?”

Father elbows me.

“I mean, we will!”

Mother nods, then climbs slowly to her feet.

“That’s it!” Father says as she plods out of the room. “You go in and lie down and leave everything to us.”

“You’re welcome, Mother!” I call after her.

“It’s not easy being a stay-at-home parent,” Father whispers to me after Mother is gone. “I know. I stayed home with you.”

Which is probably why I’m fun and a good actor, and not a grump like Mother.

Poor Abby.

She’s sitting in what we call her director’s chair, which attaches to the table. It’s like a real director’s chair, only it’s small and doesn’t have legs. When Abby sits in it, she looks like she’s
floating above the ground. It used to be mine when I was little. I bet it was fun to sit in it. Now I’m too big, and my feet reach the floor.

Father stands up and starts clearing the table, so I help. I don’t even wait till he asks me, like I do with my mother. It’s more fun cleaning up with him. He makes it fun.

“After we clean up d’is mess, we gotta set up ten tables,” he says with a New York accent, like the cab drivers in movies. He faux-chews a wad of gum. “Big convention in town. Extoyminatahs, I hear.”

“I heard it was teachahs,” I say, getting into the act.

“Heh. What’s duh diff’rence?”

We faux-guffaw.

“When we’re done heeah, I can help you with d’at homework a’ yuhs. I’m not too shabby at math. I got all the way up to the t’oid grade, you know.”

“I was t’inkin’ mebbe we could watch a movie tuhgedda tonight. Whaddya say?” I nudge him. “I’ll buy ya a box a’ popcorn. I hear
Calamity Jane
is playin’ in da livin’ room.”

“Gee, d’at would be swell! But is it suitable for a baby? Ain’t d’ere a lotta shootin’ an’ guns an’ whatnot?”

“D’ere is. It prolly ain’t appropriate fer young’uns.”

“Tell you what. I’ll put d’is one to bed while you finish up in here. Deal?”

“Deal.”

He leaves with Abby, and I go back to the table for more dishes.

That’s when my mother walks in.

“No movie,” she says. “Not till your math is done.”

“But I
did
my math, Mother! Remember? All day!”

“No movies till you’re caught up. Responsibilities before fun.”

“Watching
Calamity Jane
isn’t fun. I need to watch it to prepare for my role in the play. It’s research. It’s homework!”

“No movie,” Mother says. “Math.” And she leaves the room.

I sit down at the table, fuming. I know she’s going to go talk to Father. He’ll listen to her, too.
We won’t watch the movie. I’ll spend the night copying Wain’s homework instead.

I can’t wait till I’m famous. Then I’ll write my memoirs and tell the world all about how my mother tried to sabotage my career. I’ll make her the villain in my life story. That’ll show her.

Father comes into the kitchen, his head hung low, like he’s about to tell me bad news. He faux-punches my arm. “Rain check on duh movie?”

The popcorn Father made for me is gone except for some unpopped kernels. I lick my finger and mop up the rest of the salty butter at the bottom of the bowl. Then it’s gone. There’s nothing to do now but my homework.

I sigh and look at the next problem.

I know how to do it. I just don’t know
why
I should to do it. Don’t most normal people use a calculator for problems like this? Who even subtracts numbers like this in real life?

“I put in a hundred ninety-one thousand,
three hundred and forty-nine kernels of popcorn into the popper. A hundred and forty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-two popped. How many didn’t?”

Wouldn’t a person just say, “a
lot
of popcorn”? Or even “a ton of popcorn”? How much is a hundred ninety-one thousand, three hundred and forty-nine kernels anyway? Did I eat that many?

This is all Mr. O.’s fault. He’s so detail-oriented. I bet he counts every kernel as he fills his popper.

I take out Wain’s homework notebook and start copying. I can’t simply copy the problems though. I have to make it look like I did them. So, technically, I’m not cheating. I’m acting. I write down random numbers, then pretend I made a mistake and erase them, then write new random numbers, and pretend they weren’t right and erase them, too. I do this till I’ve made a nice gray smudge. That’s what my actual work looks like: smudgy. I also doodle a lot, so I draw stars, some with five points, some with six, some with more, but the minimum is five. Less than five isn’t a star. It’s a square. Or a diamond.

I’m trying to make a star with four points when my mother asks, “What are you doing?”

I scream a bloodcurdling scream, my favorite kind. I don’t like them as much, though, when they’re real.

“Stop sneaking up on me like that!” I yell, clutching my heart. “You almost killed me!”

“What are you doing?” she asks again. She sounds suspicious.

Oh, right—Wain’s homework is on the kitchen table in front of me next to mine. I stand up, blocking the evidence with my body.

“What do you think?” I ask, pretending to be outraged as I reach back and try to slide Wain’s notebook under my textbook. “My math. Didn’t you say I had to?”

She scrunches her face up like she doesn’t believe me.

“Okay,” I say, slouching like I’m about to come clean. “You caught me. I was
doodling
.”

“You’re copying Wain’s homework.”

“
What?
How dare you? I’m insulted! I mean really!”

She reaches around me and snatches Wain’s
notebook, then she holds it up in my face so I can see the name
WAIN WEXLER
written on the front.

I’m ready for this. “You think I’m copying his work? I’m not copying it. I’m
consulting
it. It’s something we do in Mr. O.’s class. When we need help, we
consult
another student who understands it. In my case, that’s usually Wain.”

“Wain’s not here, Zaritza,” Mother says, and turns to leave—with Wain’s notebook! My ticket to the auditions!

“Where are you going with that? Wain entrusted that notebook to me, not you.”

She stops and slowly turns around. Mother can be a drama queen herself sometimes. You can’t live with my father and me without it rubbing off.

“Do your homework, Zee. Your
own
homework.”

“But I was consulting—”

“You will come home directly from school tomorrow and work on it. You will do nothing in your free time except math until you have caught up. That means no movies. No Wain. No drama. Do you understand?”

“But—”

“
Do you understand?
”

I plop down onto my chair as if all my bones have turned to jelly. I’m a jellyfish in a chair. “Yes.”

“And you are
never
to copy the work of another student. It is wrong and you know it. If I ever catch you doing it again, I will take away all your theater privileges. That means no plays, no acting classes—”

“What?” I shriek.

“—for the rest of the school year.
And
you and I will need to sit down with your teacher and have a conversation. You could get suspended, you know—”

“Okay, okay! I get it! Will you stop yelling?”

I hate it when she gets so mad. It’s like homework. It makes it hard to breathe.

She plops down onto the chair next to me, closes her eyes, brings her hand up to her forehead, like she’s taking her own temperature. I bet it’s over a hundred.

Finally, she opens her eyes and looks at me. “So do you need help?”

I give her a naughty puppy face. “Yes.”

She leans over to look at my textbook. “Show me where you were before you started copying Wain’s work.”

“Are you kidding? I have to go
back
?”

It’s now Thursday night. I’ve done more math in the past three days than all the days in my whole life put together.

I start right when I get home from school and have to sit in the dining room so that my mother can check that I’m not cheating or fooling around. There is nothing in the dining room but a table, some chairs, my homework, and me. Mother keeps Abalina and Wormy out and periodically brings me “brain food,” which sounds like something you feed brains, not people. It’s actually carrots, walnuts, apples, and ants-on-a-log (raisins on peanut butter on celery sticks). I don’t eat ants. I’m not an anteater. I don’t eat logs. What am I, a beaver? I flick off the raisins
and lick out the peanut butter. She also brings me water, but not too much. She doesn’t want me “rushing off to the bathroom every other minute,” as she puts it.