Stacey the Math Whiz Read online

  “Hello?” answered her father.

  “Hi, Mr. Spier, it’s Stacey. I —”

  “Stacey! You just missed Mary Anne. She called from the Rosebud Café. Are you going to be there?”

  “I can’t go now. If she calls back, would you tell her I’m at Renwick’s with my parents? I’ll explain another time.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  “ ’Bye.”

  Ugh. I could picture the Rosebud now. My two sets of friends, all sitting around, not knowing what to say to each other.

  All because of my father and his stupid job.

  Whoa. Ease up, I told myself. Be mature. Jobs are good. I should be happy. And my friends are not babies. They’ll adjust. They’ll party together or party separately. Either way, they can have a good time. I’ll tell them everything later, and they’ll understand.

  As I headed back to the table, Dad raised a glass. “A toast! To bright futures.”

  “To bright futures,” my mom echoed.

  I lifted my glass, too. But I didn’t say anything. I was afraid of what might come out.

  “Step right up!” yelled Buddy Barrett. “Can you beat the odds?”

  Buddy was standing in front of a small table. On it was a quarter next to a handwritten report entitled PROBABILTY BY BUDDY BARRETT. (Spelling by Buddy Barrett, too.) Behind him, tacked onto the wall of the SES gym, was a chart that looked like this:

  It was Sunday, and the SES math fair was in full gear. Throughout the gym, kids from third to sixth grade had set up booths on long tables. Families milled around, gathering in clumps at the exhibits.

  Abby and Jessi were baby-sitting for the younger Barrett/DeWitt kids, while Buddy and Lindsey demonstrated their projects. (Yes, Lindsey. She had insisted on having a booth, with Claudia’s help.)

  “Buddyyyyyy!” squealed Marnie, clapping and jumping, as if she were seeing her brother on TV.

  “You better watch where you leave your change,” Abby remarked, pointing to Buddy’s quarter.

  Buddy rolled his eyes. “You’re supposed to flip it and call heads or tails!”

  Abby tossed the coin upward. “Tails!”

  It landed tails, and Abby whooped. “Yyyyes! What do I win?”

  Buddy put a mark in the Tails column. “Nothing. It’s probability. You see — fourteen heads, fourteen tails. Just the way I predicted.”

  “No-o-o-o, Ryan!”

  The scream made Abby spin around. Ryan DeWitt was reaching over the top of Lindsey’s table. His little paws were toppling over small plastic bowling pins.

  Claudia began picking them up, and Abby helped. They placed the pins on circles Lindsey had drawn on a place mat. From above, the pins looked like this:

  The title of Lindsey’s booth was REARRANGEMENTS: FUN WITH GEOMETRY.

  “This looks cool,” Abby said. “Do I get to bowl?”

  “No, silly,” Lindsey replied. “Rearrange the pins so they point toward you, but you can only move three of them.”

  Abby chuckled. “Piece of cake!”

  “That’s what you think,” Claudia said.

  Abby moved and moved and moved and moved. Five minutes later, Lindsey was practically on the floor laughing. “And you’re thirteen?”

  “I give up!” Abby cried.

  Lindsey quickly moved the pins. Here’s how:

  “Come on, Ryan,” Abby said, taking his hand. “She’s too smart for us.”

  Lindsey was glowing. (So was Claudia.)

  Down the aisle, Vanessa Pike was performing for an audience that included Jessi and Suzi.

  Behind Vanessa was a poster entitled Poetry and Number Combinations, with all kinds of number sequences underneath. “Choose from any of these combinations,” Vanessa announced, “and see what kind of poetry I can make!”

  “That one!” Suzi cried out, pointing to 9–9–6–6–9.

  “That’s a limerick,” Vanessa said. “Each number tells you how many syllables in a line.” She thought a moment, then recited:

  “There once was a young girl named Suzi,

  Whose pimples were getting all oozy,

  One zit was so loaded,

  The poor girl exploded,

  And that’s what became of young Suzi.”

  Vanessa’s audience cracked up. Well, except for Suzi. Her face crumpled.

  “It was a joke,” Vanessa explained.

  Too late.

  “Waaaaah!” sobbed Suzi, running away.

  Vanessa and Jessi ran after her. They found her hiding behind a pile of wrestling mats.

  After a lot of hugging and comforting, they brought Suzi back.

  They found Adam, Jordan, and Byron behind Vanessa’s table.

  “Vanessa Pike loves to do math,” Adam chanted, “but we wish she would go take a bath …”

  “Get out of there!” Vanessa shouted.

  Now Suzi was laughing.

  As the triplets ran away, giggling, Jessi caught a glimpse of Charlotte, Haley, and Matt — or Madam Math, Countess Countsworthy, and the Duke of Digits. They were sitting behind their table, scowling.

  Jessi elbowed Abby. They herded Marnie and Ryan toward the booth.

  “How’s it going?” Abby asked.

  “It’s unfair,” Haley mumbled.

  “Bruce Cominsky’s booth stinks,” Charlotte said.

  Across the aisle, Bruce was setting up an exhibit with the same title as Charlotte and Haley’s: NUMBER TRICKS.

  “Maybe his tricks are different,” Jessi suggested.

  Charlotte shook her head. “We checked.”

  “He doesn’t have costumes and cool accents,” Abby said.

  “We sound dorky,” Haley replied.

  That was when Jessi spotted me walking through the door. “Stacey!” she yelled.

  I ran to her. The girls explained the situation, and I went to work. (Don’t worry. I just suggested and hinted. They came up with some new number tricks that were pretty cool. Soon the Madam, the Countess, and the Duke were back in business.)

  Next Jessi and Abby visited Margo, who was belting out, “Come visit Margo’s Money Madness!”

  “Mine is more fun!” Buddy shouted from across the aisle. “Come flip a coin, everybody!”

  “That’s not even math!” Margo said. “I make change. I show how much foreign money is worth.”

  Buddy made a loud snoring noise. “How interesting.”

  “Truce!” Jessi yelled.

  “Toos!” Marnie echoed.

  “Doos!” Ryan demanded. (That’s his word for juice.)

  Buddy and Margo started laughing. Jessi went digging around in the diaper bag for Ryan’s bottle.

  Abby wandered off with Madeleine and Ryan. They found Taylor, ripping off paper towels at Nicky Pike’s “Estimation” booth.

  “Yo, Taylor, that’s part of the exhibit!” Abby warned.

  Nicky waved her off. “Doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid project, anyway.”

  “Looks pretty good to me,” Abby said. “What do I do?”

  On Nicky’s table were a glass jar full of marbles, a coiled string of Klixx, rolls of various paper products, and a rectangular building made of LEGOs.

  “Just estimate,” Nicky mumbled.

  Abby eyed the marble jar. “Um … five hundred?”

  Nicky shook his head. “Uh-uh. Best thing to do is count the ones on top. Then try to figure out how many layers of marbles there are, top to bottom. Multiply those two numbers.”

  Abby counted sixteen marbles on top and figured the pile must have been about twelve marbles high. “Let’s see … I think … one hundred ninety-two?”

  “Two hundred and one,” Nicky said.

  “Yaay!” Abby said. “Great technique, Nicky. This is terrific.”

  “It stinks,” Nicky said, glowering at a nearby booth.

  Uh-oh. Another case of low math esteem.

  Abby turned to see Sophie McCann and a very professional-looking poster that said MATH AND GENETICS/DOMINANCE AND RECESSIVENESS AS PREDICTED
BY THE MENDELIAN MODEL. Behind her table were complicated charts, fancy printouts of family trees, and glossy photographs.

  Gulp.

  “This isn’t a competition,” Abby said. “You don’t need to be jealous of that.”

  “I know,” Nicky snapped. “But hers is better.”

  As Sophie grinned triumphantly at them, a gray-haired man walked up to her. “Ah, I remember Mendelian boxes. So, tell me, what are my chances of having blue eyes if only my maternal grandmother has them?”

  Sophie’s face reddened. “Well, um, I have to check with my mom,” she squeaked. “She’s a scientist, and, well, I’m not totally sure, but the charts explain it.”

  Abby gave Nicky a Look.

  “She doesn’t know what it means, either!” Nicky whispered. Then, with a big smile on his face, he began shouting, “Impress your friends! Learn how to guess right! Step right this way!”

  “Can I guess the toilet paper roll?” Taylor asked.

  Abby smiled as a small crowd began to form around Nicky. That was when she noticed Marnie’s face reddening. A sudden, unexpected aroma wafted upward.

  Jessi approached, crinkling her nose. “Uh-oh, Marnie’s involved in a little math project of her own, huh?”

  “What’s that?” Abby said.

  Jessi shrugged. “The process of elimination.”

  On the way to the rest room, Abby could not stop giggling.

  “Good luck, Stacey!”

  Claudia gave me a big hug. A bus was rumbling up to the front of SMS, and a small group of kids pressed toward it.

  “I wish you guys could come,” I said.

  Claudia nodded. “Me, too. Bad timing, huh?”

  It sure was. The second meet was to take place at a “neutral site”: an old theater near New Haven, halfway between Eastbury and Stoneybrook. (Originally the meet was supposed to be in the SMS auditorium. But because of snow day postponements, a couple of other groups were using it.) The meet was at an unusual time, too — four-thirty. Which meant a lot of parents couldn’t attend.

  Not to mention students. The only kids boarding the bus were my Mathletes teammates and some of their best friends.

  Not mine, of course. The meet was too close to BSC meeting time. (I’d talked it over with Kristy long ago, and she’d said it was okay for me to miss a meeting.)

  No dad, no mom, no BSC. I had to admit, the meet was beginning to feel like an anticlimax.

  Plus, I was tired and cranky. I couldn’t help noticing that Claudia was the only BSC member who’d bothered to see me off.

  Kristy had acted pretty weird around me all weekend. So had the others. Even at the math fair, I felt they’d been avoiding me.

  I figured I’d sit with them at lunch on Monday, but Rick Chow had practically pulled me over to the table where the Mathletes were sitting.

  “Claudia,” I said, “are you guys mad at me?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. Ever since Saturday, I’ve had this funny feeling. You told everyone why I didn’t go to the Rosebud, right? The way I explained it to you on the phone?”

  Claudia and I had had a long conversation on Saturday night. She’d listened to my complaints about Dad, and she’d promised to let everyone know why I hadn’t joined them that night.

  “I did explain it,” Claudia said.

  “Then why are they acting so weird?”

  Claudia shrugged. “They were a little annoyed. They’ll be okay.”

  Honnk! Honnnnnk! “Come on, Stacey!” yelled Ms. Hartley from the bus door.

  “We’ll talk later,” I said, running off.

  “Good luck!” Claudia called after me.

  I could barely concentrate on the trip to Eastbury. What a change from the last meet. My mom was at work. My dad was off in Atlanta, probably too excited even to be thinking of me. And now my best friends were mad at me.

  I climbed onto the bus and sat next to Mari. “Hi,” she said. “We missed you on Saturday.”

  “You’re annoyed, too?” I asked.

  “No. I just said we missed you. That’s all.”

  I felt like a jerk. “I’m sorry. It’s just that a bunch of my other friends went over to the Rosebud, too. And they’re not talking to me.”

  Mari nodded. “I saw them. They didn’t look too happy. Kristy Thomas kept snapping at the waiter.”

  “What did you guys do?”

  “We said hi and talked a little. But we couldn’t fit any more at our table. Besides, we wanted to be together and talk about the meet.”

  “So what did my friends do?”

  Mari shrugged. “Nothing. They hung out for a while. Then I looked up and they were gone.”

  Jason turned around from the seat in front of us. “Why are you so worried about them?” he asked. “We were the ones you stood up.”

  “I didn’t stand you up! I had to go out with my mom and dad. I mean, is that so hard to understand?”

  “Touchy, touchy,” Jason said.

  I hardly said another word all the way to Eastbury.

  I don’t want to go into all the gory details about the meet. Let’s just say it wasn’t one of my all-time favorite experiences. For one thing, my stage fright struck again. Looking into an audience of strangers was terrifying. For another, the whole place went crazy every time George Singh scored a point.

  Halfway through, I made a stupid mistake on a problem and answered it wrong. You should have heard the cheering. I mean, how rude! I realized then that a lot of people were keeping a running score between George and me. They were waiting for me to fail.

  Well, I didn’t upset them. I blew the last answer, and Eastbury won, 71–69.

  Did my dad call that night from Atlanta to ask about the meet? No. And I didn’t know the name of his hotel, so I couldn’t call him.

  Not that I wanted to. I didn’t call anyone. I was feeling pretty miserable. When Claudia phoned me, I told her the score and said I had to go to bed.

  The moment I hit the pillow, my eyes sprang open. I was angry at Dad. I was angry at myself for blowing the meet. I was angry at my BSC friends for not being more understanding.

  I fell asleep grumpy, and I woke up the next morning even grumpier.

  I grumped my way through breakfast, and then I walked grumpishly to the corner to meet Claudia and Mary Anne.

  I could tell they’d heard about the meet. They were giving me pitying looks.

  As we walked to school, Mary Anne finally said, “I was sorry to hear about last night.”

  “Me, too,” Claudia added.

  I nodded. “It’s okay.”

  That was it. Neither of them brought the subject up again. When we reached school, Kristy, Abby, Mallory, and Jessi were standing just inside the front door, gabbing.

  They stopped when they saw me.

  “Hi, Stace,” Jessi said quietly.

  “I guess you all heard, too, huh?” I said.

  “We couldn’t believe the genius squad actually lost,” Abby replied. “What’d they do, slip in a couple of social studies questions to throw you off track?”

  I was not in the mood for Abby’s humor. “They’re not geniuses.”

  Abby shrugged. “You have to admit, Stacey, they are kind of brainy.”

  “I couldn’t understand half the things they were saying at the Rosebud,” Kristy added. “It was like being at a nerd convention.”

  “I thought they were talking another language,” Claudia said.

  “Well, they happen to be my friends,” I snapped. “And at least they understood why I wasn’t there that night. Unlike you guys.”

  “Whoa, Stacey —” Kristy began.

  “I didn’t ask to go out with my parents, you know. My dad just said we were going. Do you think it’s easy having a parent like that? Someone you never see who drops out of the sky and suddenly wants to do stuff with you all the time? What are you supposed to do, say no? None of you knows what that’s like. And if you can’t get that into your head
s, I quit the BSC.”

  My friends were looking at me as if I’d gone loony.

  “Uh, Stacey,” Abby said, “one problem. No one’s mad at you.”

  “Yeah,” Kristy added. “And I know exactly how you feel about your father — that’s the way mine was.”

  “Then why were you guys so weird at the math fair?” I asked.

  “We hardly saw you,” Mallory said. “You were helping Charlotte and Haley.”

  “Some of us were baby-sitting,” Abby reminded me.

  “You sound angry, Stacey,” Mary Anne said softly. “Are you sure you’re not angry at us?”

  I slumped against the wall. Boy, did I feel ridiculous.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Once, right after my parents’ divorce, I flew into a huge rage over an outfit that had ripped. Mom tried to calm me down, but I was so angry, I couldn’t see straight. Finally she said, “Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and tell me what you see.”

  I saw myself in a dry, parched field. My mom and dad were off in the distance, on two high, snow-capped mountains. I knew then what I was really angry about — the split.

  I closed my eyes.

  This time I was falling through a trapdoor in an airplane, screaming. Looking up through the little black square in the bottom of the plane, I could see Dad at the controls. He was happily fiddling around, having fun, totally oblivious to me.

  Tears sprang into my eyes. “I’m sorry, guys,” I said. “I think I’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

  I felt arms wrapping around me from all sides.

  “Hello, everybody,” said Ms. Hartley into a mike, “and welcome to Stoneybrook Middle School for the final meet of the Connecticut State Mathletes Championship!”

  PHWWEEEEEET! “Wooo! Wooo! Wooo! Wooo!”

  This was it. Tuesday night. Full auditorium. And yes, that reaction belonged to Kristy. (Who else?)

  She wasn’t the only one cheering and whistling. Just the loudest. You’d have thought this was a basketball tournament or a rock concert.

  Kristy had arrived early and saved the usual front-row seats for the BSC members and my family. Dad had called to say he might be late, so Kristy had stuffed her coat into his seat to save it.