“Wait. I can do an impression of her,” said Jordeen. “Okay, I'm Wigglesmith on a date.” She made her voice sound like a robot. “Excuse me, young man. It would give me pleasure if you would relocate the fleshy folds surrounding your mouth to the fleshy folds surrounding my mouth.”
It sounded so much like the kind of clueless thing Professor Wigglesmith might actually say, I laughed a little even though it felt wrong.
“Like Wigglesmith would ever have a date,” said Veronica. “Who would want to get close to that weirdo?”
“Excuse me,” said a soft voice. “I have a 7:30 appointment with Professor Loft.” Professor Wigglesmith stepped forward. She was wearing dark pink pants and a pastel pink jacket, and was carrying a bulging black leather briefcase.
Veronica, Summer, and Jordeen turned and clomped down the steps before I could even think of a way to explain the “Professor Loft” thing without it sounding stupid. I wasn't sure if Professor Wigglesmith's face had turned pink because she had overheard us or if it was just part of her monochromatic outfit.
After the girls left and Professor Wigglesmith and I got settled inside, Mom brought a tray of tea and cookies into the living room. I picked up a chocolate chip cookie and nibbled around the edges, trying my best not to notice that Professor Wigglesmith looked like the victim of an explosion at a pink paint factory. It was strange, because when she taught she wore gray suits all the time. Now here she was in a getup that made her look like a giant pink hot dog waiting for a bun. You'd think she'd know better than to dress like Oscar Mayer when she's trying to get a boneheadâI mean “Professor Bonehead”âlike me to take her seriously.
“No offense,” I said, “but can I ask you a question? I mean, do you think you look good in that outfit?”
She examined her clothes like she was looking for a stain.
I rolled my eyes. “I mean, the whole thing is just so . . . so . . . pink.”
“It's my favorite color,” she explained.
“That doesn't mean you need to wrap yourself in it from head to toe. You look like a piece of bubblegum stuck in a cotton candy machine.”
She gave me one of those polite half smiles that aren't really smiles at all, and I felt a little bad about leveling with her. That's when I noticed I was wearing a blue T-shirt with my blue jeans. Of course, in my case, the single-color thing was just a coincidence. I didn't know how to explain why it looked cool when I did it by accident but weird when she did it on purpose, so I decided to ask her another question. I picked at my cookie. “So, do you really believe that stuff about none of us being dumb?”
“Why else would I say it?” She broke her cookie into four equal bites. “I've looked at your tests. The longer you do a particular type of problem, the more you get wrong.”
“So I
am
stupid.”
“No. Making mistakes doesn't mean you're stupid. It means you're human.”
“Then why have I been failing?”
“Students who second-guess themselves often get the right answer but erase it because they don't trust themselves. I've seen a lot of that on your papers. Plus, your fundamentals are a bit rusty, but that's something we can work on. The real focus in secondary mathematics these days is not on memorizing formulas or facts. It's on nurturing a deeper understanding. You're best at word problems, and that's meaningful because word problems require one to delve deeper into the central mathematical concept being explored.”
“Um, could you translate that for me?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she said. “It just means word problems can be tricky, but you have a knack.”
“A knack, huh?” She looked totally serious when she said it, like she wasn't just pretending so she could turn around and make fun of me. It made me feel I was special when she said it, like the way I felt when I pulled off a perfect routine and won a trophy, and that gave me an idea. I stuffed the last of the cookie into my mouth. “There is
something
that I know I'm good at. Want to see?”
I led her down the steps and through the beauty salon, grabbed a baton, and slipped out the back door. The alley was just a dump, but I liked it for baton practice because there were only nine feet between the buildings, making it easier to tell if my baton was flying straight when I threw it. The smell in the alley was a combination of peanut shells from the Irish pub across the way, used animal litter from Sid's Pet-O-Rama a few doors down, and whatever else happened to be in the Dumpster. I was afraid Professor Wigglesmith might say something mean about it, but she said the alley smelled like her baby brother.
I had her stand against the wall and started doing my routine from when I'd won second place at the Mid-Atlantic Junior Twirl Finals. I threw the baton up, spun three times, and caught it with the hand behind my back. That opening always got the crowd excited. Then I did some rolls and aerials, all while dancing and tumbling to the routine's theme song in my head, “I'm Walking on Sunshine.” I wasn't sure I would get the timing right without my music, but by the time I got to the end, I hadn't made a single drop. I did a double walkover, threw the baton all the way to the third story, did another double walkover, then stretched out my right hand and closed my eyes. The baton landed in my palm. I flung it across my chest and bowed. “So? What do you think?” I asked.
Professor Wigglesmith clapped so hard I thought she might hurt herself. Then she walked around me staring up and down at the walls, as if calculating their height. “How did you know the baton would land in your hand without looking?”
“Practice,” I said, twirling from hand to hand. “It's easy to do tricks if you practice every day. I've been practicing my throws in this alley two hours a day since I was six.” Out of habit, I twirled as we talked. Whenever I held the baton, it felt like it should be in motion.
“If you can get that good at baton through practice,” she said, “you can be a math wiz. Math and baton aren't that different. They both require dedication and hard work. Might I try?”
I handed her the baton, and she examined it like it was an alien. “Turn up, turn under, like this,” I said, showing her how to do a simple twirl.
She tried to mimic, but the baton clunked against her elbow. I showed her again, and this time she managed not to whack herself too bad. She had this droopy elbow thing going on, but once we fixed that she actually got it going a bit. It felt cool to be the teacher for a change. I went inside to get another baton so we could twirl together. I came out just as Professor Wigglesmith spread her legs out for balance, lowered the baton, and flung it in the air. It flew crooked, crashed into a window, and broken glass rained down. The baton hit the pavement on the ball end and bounced up.
“Omigosh! You broke my window!”
“I forgot to take into account the difference in our arm strengthsâand that I haven't developed the ability to throw it straight,” she said.
“You forgot to take into account that my mom is going to kill me,” I replied.
Professor Wigglesmith reached into the pocket of her jacket and fished out a wad of cash. She peeled off two one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to me. “Do you think that's enough to cover the cost?”
“What are you, rich or something?”
She shrugged. “Every time I win a math contest, I get a prize. Plus, now I get money for teaching at the middle school. My parents have asked me to stop buying them things, and Hermy already has every toy in the store. I don't have anything else to spend it on, so I always have a lot of ready cash.”
I held a bill up close for inspection, in case she was trying to pull something on me. The name under the picture said FRANKLIN. The only hundred-dollar bill I had held before was beige and printed with the word MONOPOLY. “How do I know it's real?”
“You can soak it in a solution of one part isopropyl alcohol to one part water and then try to set it on fire. A chemistry professor showed me once. If it's real money, it won't burn.”
I put the bills in my pocket. “Thanks, but I'll just take your word for it.” We pushed the broken glass to the side of the alley near a wall. Then I helped her with a wrist roll.
“You know, you're not half bad for aâ”
“Weirdo?” she asked.
I was going to say teacher, really I was, but as soon as she filled in the blank like that, a picture of the VJs insulting her on the porch came zooming back to me. I felt bad that we had hurt her feelings, and I didn't know what else to say. “It's just that you're different,” I told her.
“Not as different as people often assume.”
“But you're a genius.”
“At math. That doesn't mean I'm good at everything. Besides, you can catch a spinning baton dropping three stories with your eyes closed. Isn't that different?”
“You totally got me there,” I admitted.
It made me think. Maybe I didn't have to settle for the short end of the baton. This meeting with Professor Wigglesmith could be a sign of good things to come. If I practiced, I would pass math, win first place at the Twirlcrazy Grand Championship, and maybe, just maybe, Miss Brenda wouldn't sell the Baton Barn after all. Everything was going to be cool. My stupid, rotten luck was all bridge under the water.
I tossed my baton, did a backflip, closed my eyes, and held out my hand, waiting for the baton to return. I would catch it, Professor Wigglesmith would applaud, and life would be good.
I opened my eyes just as the stupid baton shifted its path and landed with a whack on her head.
9
Aphrodite Calls for a Showdown
T
he best way to avoid a news reporter is to climb up a tree and act like a nut. Don't ask me how I know this. Even if I had done it, I would never admit it. And Bernie, my squirrel friend from Harvard, would not testify against me for all the Tootsie Rolls in town. I will admit I hate being interviewed. Most reporters don't know enough math to understand my work, so they focus on personal details. They think it's funny that my mother's a plumber and make up headlines like PLUMBER'S CHILD HAS GREAT MATH PIPES and UNCLOGGING THE MYSTERYâHOW A PLUMBER'S DAUGHTER DRAINED THE MATH POOL.
Principal DeGuy waved from the back of the classroom. He was visiting again and had brought a guestâa reporter who was doing a feature story on me. The reporter was himself a graduate of Carnegie Middle School, where he was best remembered as the soloist who sang “Hark the Hairy Angels Sing” at a Christmas concert.
The reporter was staring at Roland, who was in the front of the classroom making pistachio ice cream. Roland measured out one cup of milk, two teaspoons of sugar, and one tablespoon of imitation pistachio extract into a small freezer bag. Then he took a larger freezer bag, filled it with four cups of ice, and added 1/4 cup of salt. He placed the small bag inside the big bag, sealed it, and danced like a crazed rock star to shake the concoction.
It was not exactly what I had expected when I announced today would be a “Why Math Matters to Me Day,” but I couldn't have been more pleased. After Mindy had demonstrated her baton skills for me in the alley, I realized that math affects my students' everyday lives as much as mine. So I challenged each of them to think about a favorite hobby or interest and do a presentation for the class that showed the mathematics involved (for extra credit, of course). Roland had been my first volunteer.
“Math matters to me because without it I couldn't make ice cream,” he had said when he began. “Cooking is a very mathematical thing. It uses fractions, ratios, weights, volume, temperature, and time. You multiply a recipe when you're in a sharing mood and want to make enough for everyone, and you divide when you're feeling like a pig and want to make just enough for yourself.”
When Roland stopped shaking, he opened the bag and squirted a mushy helping of hand-shaken pistachio ice cream into his mouth. Then he grabbed his heart as if to suggest the ice cream was so good it could kill him. “In conclusion, math tastes good.”
The bell rang and the students sprang for the door, but the reporter caught me before I could steal away.
“I'm Stanley Butera,” he said. “Delighted to meet you, Professor Wigglesmith.”
“I hope you enjoyed the class,” I replied, inching toward the exit.
Principal DeGuy took me by the arm. “Stan covers all the school activities for us.”
“My favorite is the Great Math Showdown,” the reporter said. “It's a quiz-type competition for the eighth-grade math classes here at the middle school, sponsored by Right Type Office Supply Store. The winning team gets two hundred dollars. Last year's team used it to buy new calculators and give their classroom a makeover. Mr. Ripple, your honors math teacher, runs the competition.”
“How interesting,” I said. And I wasn't just being polite. It was the most exciting news I'd heard since I began teaching. New calculators would be a well-deserved reward for all the work my students had been doing, and my classroom could certainly use a makeover. But, more important, if my remedial math class entered the Great Math Showdown and won, it would prove my theory that anyone could be a math wiz.
“You should encourage your students to watch,” the reporter added. “It would probably be a thrill for them to see the smart students solving equations.”
It made me want to give him a thrill in the nose, the way he said “smart students”âas if my students were stupid. I would speak to Mr. Ripple, but not about getting my students good seats so they could watch the competition. I would talk to him about entering my students in the Great Math Showdown as an official team; the only watching they would do would be to watch the judges hand them the trophy.