Stacey the Math Whiz Read online

  “I don’t understand that!” Lindsey exclaimed.

  Claudia took a deep breath. “Neither do I.”

  “See?”

  “Let me teach it my way.” Claudia wrote 837 on a sheet of paper. “What’s this closest to?” Under the number she wrote 820, 830, 840, and 850.

  “I hate math!”

  “The answer is eight hundred twenty.”

  Lindsey glared at her. “Is not. It’s eight forty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because thirty-seven is close to forty.”

  “Okay, that’s if you round to the tens. What about these numbers?” Claudia scribbled 700, 800, 900. “Which is it closer to now?”

  Lindsey exhaled. “Eight hundred. That’s easy.”

  “You just did exactly what Stacey was saying.”

  “I did?”

  “Yup.” Claudia scanned my notes again. “ ‘Addition and subtraction, using estimation.’ Hmmm … Let’s do this Claudia-style.”

  (Okay, time-out. I ask you, was my description that awful? Precise is the way I would put it. But when I told that to Claudia, she just laughed. She said I was much better at understanding than explaining. Hmmph.)

  Anyway, “Claudia-style” seemed to work fine for Lindsey. In a few minutes, she was adding and subtracting three-digit numbers, using estimation.

  Next unit, subtracting three-digit numbers for real. Claudia copied down problems I had written and gave Lindsey a quiz. This is how she answered:

  “Now can I go downstairs?” Lindsey asked.

  “Uh, Lindsey, hasn’t anyone told you about borrowing?” Claudia said.

  Lindsey scowled. “I didn’t want to!”

  “Well, you have to!” Claudia dove into a big box of LEGOs near Lindsey’s bed. “Okay, each yellow LEGO equals one. Red LEGOs equal ten, blue a hundred. Let’s set up problem one.”

  She lined up enough blocks to form the number 457. “Okay, start with the ones column. We have seven yellows and we have to take away eight. What do we do?”

  “Start in the hundreds column. That one’s easier.”

  “Neeeahhh, Doc,” Claudia replied in a Bugs Bunny voice. “Right to left. Dat’s the rule.”

  Using the LEGOs (and silly voices), Claudia demonstrated the concept of borrowing. (The tens were a family of Elmer Fudds, the hundreds were Yosemite Sams.)

  Claudia went through every cartoon character she could think of. Then she started singing the rules, to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey”:

  “If you can’t subtraaaact it,

  Then borrow a one,

  And in the next co-o-olumn,

  Reduce it by one!”

  No, it won’t make the Top Forty. But Lindsey loved it. In fact, she made Claudia go to the third-grade textbook for more problems.

  That video? Forgotten. Lindsey was so excited to be finding answers, she wouldn’t stop.

  When the front door opened, Lindsey bolted downstairs.

  Claudia followed her, past the family room, which still echoed with bleating and barking from the movie.

  Franklin and Mrs. DeWitt were standing with the rest of the Barrett/DeWitt brood inside the front door. “Mom! Dad!” Lindsey shouted. “I can borrow!”

  “Uh, excuse me, honey?” Franklin said.

  “Come on, Claudia,” Lindsey urged, bursting into song. “Don’t borrow a zeeero … just turn it to niiiine … skip to the next co-o-olumn … the number you’ll find …”

  Mrs. DeWitt looked totally baffled. “Uh, very nice.”

  “We can prove it with LEGOs!” Lindsey continued. “I’ll show you!”

  As she ran upstairs, Claudia squirmed. “It was the only thing I could think of. I mean, I know we were supposed to use Stacey’s notes …”

  Franklin carefully took off his coat. He and Mrs. DeWitt exchanged a Look.

  “I can ask Stacey to come back,” Claudia blabbered on. “Maybe now that she knows her schedule —”

  “Not necessary,” Franklin cut her off. “Claudia, I’ve never seen Lindsey like this about math.”

  Mrs. DeWitt was beaming. “You’re a miracle worker. When can you come back? Strictly as a tutor, I mean. We’d be here to take care of the rest of the kids.”

  Claudia nearly died. She signed up two more sessions on the spot.

  How did I feel about that? Did I mind being forgotten like an old toy? All my hard work tossed aside?

  Not moi. When Claudia told me, I was gracious, calm, and grateful.

  I only snarled after she hung up.

  Oh, well, I guess sometimes you gotta have a gimmick.

  “Do you have a packet of honey?” Mom asked, pushing open the front door of Stoneybrook Day School.

  “Yes, Mom,” I replied.

  “Did you eat enough lunch?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Did you finish studying that review sheet Ms. Hartley gave you?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “I don’t know why I’m so nervous. You should be the one who’s nervous. Are you nervous?”

  I did not answer the question. I couldn’t. My teeth were clenched in fear. Besides, at that moment, Mom was swallowed up by the huge throng in the school lobby.

  Well, maybe not a throng. But many more people than I had expected.

  Okay, Ms. Hartley had warned me. She’d said it was an important event. But somehow I imagined a few parents and siblings sitting around, checking their watches every few minutes. Not Oscar night in Stoneybrook.

  How did I feel?

  Petrified.

  I looked around for familiar faces. None. Zippo. Frankly, I don’t know any Kelsey Middle School kids. And my only SDS friends are Shannon Kilbourne, our BSC associate, and Bart Taylor, Kristy’s friend. Oh, and a few elementary-age kids (unlike SMS, Stoneybrook Day goes from kindergarten through twelfth grade).

  A lobby full of strangers. All there to see me perform. Like a seal in the zoo.

  The front door beckoned. Escape. A list of excuses ran though my mind. I forgot my calculator. I had a diabetic reaction. Part of the school ceiling fell and conked me on the head.

  “Heyyyy, there’s the champ!”

  Honestly, if I hadn’t heard my dad’s voice, I might have bolted. He was elbowing through the crowd, holding a bouquet of flowers.

  I unclenched my jaw. “Hi, Dad.”

  “Darn,” he said, frowning at the bouquet. “You’re so beautiful, you make these look ugly.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “You are so corny.”

  Dad took my arm and we walked through the auditorium entrance together. Mom and Ms. Hartley were chatting behind the last row of seats.

  As we approached them, the famous Kristy Thomas two-fingered whistle sounded.

  PHWEEEEEEET!

  The room fell silent for a moment.

  “Yo! Over here! I saved seats!” yelled Kristy, waving to us from the front row. Mary Anne, Logan, Jessi, Mallory, Claudia, and Abby were sitting with her. Behind them, coats were draped over a few seats.

  Everyone was staring at us. I was mortified.

  Mom, Dad, Ms. Hartley, and I exchanged a flurry of good-byes and good lucks. As my parents sat in the audience, I walked onto the stage.

  Way in the back of the stage, custodians were setting up a huge Wheel of Fortune–type contraption. It was divided into math categories: geometry and measurement, number patterns, logic, factors and divisibility, fractions, and odds ’n’ ends. On the far left of the stage was a table with an overhead projector and screen. The three team tables formed a rough U shape in the center of the stage. Each contestant’s place was marked with a tented placard, a pad of paper, and several pencils. In the middle of each table was a large, old-fashioned handbell.

  SMS was in the middle. As I approached the table, Emily, Gordon, and Rick were hunched together, poring over sample questions.

  Emily was the first to see me. “I am so glad you’re here,” was her greeting. “What’s a Fibonacci sequence?”

  Gulp.
r />   We’d gone over that in the practice session. But did I remember it? No. “It — isn’t it — uh, wait —”

  While I fumbled, Bea walked onto the stage. Emily repeated the question, and Bea quickly wrote down the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13. “Add the first two numbers to get the third,” she whispered. “The second two numbers to get the fourth, and so on.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”

  Brilliant, Stacey.

  I calmly sat in my seat, trying to keep my knees from knocking.

  “Sta-cey! Sta-cey! Sta-cey!” Kristy shouted at the top of her lungs.

  Abby was punching the air in rhythm. Claudia was doing a little dance. Jessi was staring at them as if they’d lost their minds. Mallory and Mary Anne were blushing. Logan looked as if he wanted to barf.

  Behind them sat Mom and Dad, deep in conversation. I wondered what they were talking about. Me? Dad’s job prospects? My loud friends?

  In this atmosphere, how was I supposed to think?

  I tried to keep calm. I chatted with my teammates. I greeted the others as they walked onto the stage. I must have been forming coherent words, because no one took my temperature and rushed me offstage. But I cannot remember one word of any conversation.

  I was a wreck.

  When everyone was seated, the lights dimmed and a stocky man with a bow tie strolled onto the stage. “I’m Reverty Schmidt, head of the math department at Stoneybrook Day,” he announced.

  A small cheer went up from the crowd.

  “Reverty Schmidt?” Rick whispered.

  I could see shoulders bobbing to my right and left. I tried not to crack up.

  As Mr. Schmidt read from a pad of paper, his hands were shaking. “And so, in conclusion …” He squinted and shuffled the papers around. “Sorry. Er, welcome to Stoneybrook Day School.”

  The audience burst into laughter. Mr. Schmidt smiled and shrugged. “I’m much better with numbers,” he muttered.

  Somehow, watching Mr. Schmidt stumble through his speech calmed me down. He was more nervous than I was.

  “Uh, the contest today involves sixteen problems altogether,” Mr. Schmidt droned on. “In groups of four. Now, how many groups is that, folks?”

  “Five!” Claudia shouted. “I mean, four!”

  “Uh, give that person a rubber chicken,” Mr. Schmidt read from his sheet. He looked up as if he expected laughter. (No such luck.) “Ahem. The teams take turns spinning the math wheel. I will read a problem in whatever category the wheel stops on. The players work in silence for three minutes, then show their answers. Each correct answer is one point for the player’s team, and one point for the individual player. Every fourth problem is ‘Mathmania’ and has no time limit. Team members can consult with one another. Five points go to the first team that rings the bell and gives a correct answer, and each player on that team receives an individual point. And now, without further ado, I will ask a member of the Stoneybrook Middle School team to step to the wheel.”

  I felt Ms. Hartley nudge me from behind. “Go ahead, Stacey.”

  “Whup ’em, Stace!” cried Kristy from the audience.

  I swallowed hard. I stood up, walked to the wheel, and spun.

  It stopped at geometry and measurement.

  As I went back to my seat, Mr. Schmidt read: “ ‘George has three rods that are seven inches, ten inches, and twelve inches long. How can he use them to measure something fifteen inches long?’ Okay … go!”

  Huh?

  My snowy, short-circuited mind creaked into action.

  If you put the ten-inch and seven-inch rods together, they measured seventeen inches. Too long.

  Quickly I drew the rods in different configurations. By the time the bell rang, I’d drawn this:

  “Okay, sign your answers and place them in front of you,” Mr. Schmidt said.

  When we did, he posted the correct answer on the overhead projector.

  My answer!

  “Yay!” I shouted.

  “Gimme an S!” Kristy shouted. (Someone must have calmed her down, because she didn’t reach T.)

  Mr. Schmidt hurried around the stage, marking down all of our scores. “Stoneybrook Day … five. Kelsey … four. Stoneybrook Middle … three.”

  Jason and Emily looked upset. I, however, was feeling much better. I leaned over to them and whispered, “Hang on, we’re going to win this!”

  Someone from Kelsey spun next. The category was number patterns. Mr. Schmidt put these numbers on the overhead projector:

  “Figure out what process goes in the square,” Mr. Schmidt read. “Hint: it may be more than one operation. Use that process to solve the last statement.”

  I could hear Claudia muttering, “No way.”

  Looking at the first problem, I figured the box could mean multiply the first number by two, then add the second. But if that were true, then the answer to the second problem would have to be 9, not 17.

  I fiddled around some more, and then it dawned on me. Can you figure it out? (If you said, square the first number, then add the second, you were right.)

  This time, four SDS students answered correctly, four from Kelsey — and all five of us. We were gaining!

  The rest of the meet shot by. We lost the first Mathmania problem, which really set us back. Then SDS picked up steam. By the last problem, SDS had 65 points, we had 61, and Kelsey had 61.

  The last problem was Mathmania. Five points. The winner would take the game. We all leaned in toward each other as Jason spun.

  The wheel stopped on geometry and measurement again.

  “You have ten rosebushes,” Mr. Schmidt read. “Plant them in five rows, with only four bushes in each row.”

  The other teams started yakking and scribbling furiously.

  Jason plopped back down in his seat. “Trick question,” he said.

  “No kidding,” Emily replied. “Five rows, four bushes? That makes twenty bushes!”

  “You have to double up,” Bea offered.

  “Duh,” was Jason’s response.

  Rick drew a triangle shape and placed dots on it to represent bushes. Jason drew a kind of double X. Bea worked on a six-sided star.

  “That’s it!” I said. I experimented with star shapes until I drew this:

  “Five sides, each with four dots!” I exclaimed.

  Bea picked up the bell and rang.

  You should have seen the looks on the other two teams’ faces. A guy on the Kelsey team banged his table. A girl from SDS groaned so loudly I thought she was hurt.

  Mr. Schmidt ran to me and picked up my sheet. Carefully he looked it over and announced: “Five points for the SMS team. So … the final score is, Kelsey Middle School, sixty-one; Stoneybrook Day, sixty-five; and Stoneybrook Middle, sixty-six!”

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAY!” screamed the front row.

  Mari threw her arms around me, then Bea. Soon the entire team was in a group hug. Jason broke away and started doing a goony, rubber-legged victory dance. (Any other time it would have made me want to puke. This time, I didn’t mind it a bit.)

  “Congratulations to the new Stoneybrook eighth-grade math champions!” Mr. Schmidt yelled over the din.

  Soon Ms. Hartley was on the stage, embracing us one by one. “I am soooo proud of you,” she said into my ear.

  You know what? I was proud, too.

  “For she’s a jolly good Mathlete, for she’s a jolly good Mathlete …” Kristy was singing.

  Abby joined in, and then Mom and Dad. I jumped off the stage and ran to them.

  “You were sensational!” Dad exclaimed.

  “I was so nervous!” I replied.

  “You didn’t look it,” Claudia said. “I mean, after the first question or so.”

  “Before then, I was about to call an ambulance,” Abby remarked.

  We chatted excitedly for a while. Ms. Hartley joined us, and so did some of my teammates’ families.

  I was exhausted as I walked outside with Mom and Dad. It was still afternoon, bu
t the sky had that strange dark whiteness that can only mean snow.

  “Your chariot awaits, my champion,” Dad announced, holding out his arm for me to take.

  “If we go straight home,” Mom said, “I can start the pot roast right away.”

  Dad stopped walking. “Oh. Well, actually, I was going to take Stacey into the city. Dinner at Café des Artistes. Remember?”

  Mom looked at him blankly. “You didn’t mention this.”

  “Didn’t I?” Dad asked.

  (He hadn’t. At least I hadn’t remembered it. Typical Dad.)

  Mom chuckled patiently. “Look, Ed, things have been busy. Signals do cross. I propose a compromise: I cook the roast, you stay and eat with us.”

  Dad took a deep breath. “Well … it’s just that my reservation is for three.”

  I knew what that meant. Dinner for Dad, me, and his girlfriend, Samantha.

  Mom knew it, too. I could see her face tighten. “I see. Okay, you go ahead. The roast will last another day.”

  “I knew you’d understand, Maureen,” Dad said. “I’ll be clearer next time. And I’ll bring Stacey back first thing tomorrow.”

  “Have a wonderful time.”

  Dad took my arm and led me toward his car. “ ’Bye, Maureen.”

  “ ’Bye, Mom!” I shouted.

  “ ’Bye.”

  Mom’s mouth was smiling. But her eyes weren’t.

  As I climbed into the car, my great victory feeling was already starting to grow hollow.

  Honnnnnk! Honnnnnk!

  “Ed, please, slow down,” said Samantha Young.

  “Did you see what that cabbie did?” Dad shouted. “He cut off three lanes to make that turn!”

  In the backseat, I was clutching the armrest. My knuckles were turning white. As we zipped down Central Park West, the trees of the park were a blur.

  I have trotted down the New York City streets in horse-drawn carriages, with drivers speeding all around. I have zoomed across town in cabs that somehow weave and jerk through bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’ve narrowly avoided accidents at least a dozen times.