Numbed!

by David Lubar

  Benedict and I raced down the hallway. Behind us, Dr. Thagoras called, “Wait a minute. I just realized something.”

  “I’m sure it’s not important,” I told Benedict as we headed up the stairs.

  It’s amazing how often I’m wrong.

  CHAPTER

  1 × 2 × 3

  “Feeling better?” Mom asked when Benedict and I got back to the car.

  “Absolutely,” Benedict said.

  I held my watch in front of Benedict’s face. “Hey, if it takes fifteen minutes to reach your house, what time will we drop you off?”

  He gave me the right answer and said, “I wonder how many telephone poles we’ll pass on the way. Let’s count them. One, two, three …”

  I counted along. We got up to 92 when we reached his place. Before he stepped out of the car, he said, “If you bring 12 toy soldiers to school tomorrow, and I bring 15—”

  “We’ll have 27,” I said.

  Mom gave me a strange look. “You shouldn’t bring toys to school.”

  “We’re not. We’re just practicing for our math test.” Actually, I was enjoying the ability to do math. When we got home, I thought about studying for the test, but I figured the matheteria had pumped me so full of fresh math skills that I really didn’t need to do any more studying. So I went over my social studies lesson instead since I sometimes have a hard time remembering all those facts and dates.

  A while later, I heard Dad come home. Then Mom called me for dinner. My nose told me the good news even before I joined my parents and my little sister, Kaylee, at the table. It was takeout night. Dad had picked up chicken wings from Wingy Dingy. As it said on the side of the bucket, this was the 30-piece family pack!

  Dad took the tongs, grabbed a wing, and dropped it on his plate. Then he gave one wing to Mom.

  That leaves 28, I thought. I was having fun doing math.

  “Now we can divide the rest evenly.” Dad handed me the tongs. “I heard you didn’t keep your mother waiting at the mall. Good for you. You can take your share first, Logan.”

  I reached toward the wings. Then I froze.

  “Go ahead, Logan,” Mom said.

  “Sure …” I stared at the bucket. There were 28 wings. I knew that. And there were 4 people at the table. But I had no idea what my share was. I could add and subtract without trouble. If I took a wing, there’d be 27 left in the bucket. If I took 5 wings, there’d be 23. If Mom put hers back with the 28, there’d be 29. But I didn’t see how adding and subtracting could help me figure out my share.

  “Is there a problem?” Mom asked.

  As one part of my brain was telling me I should pretend there was an emergency and make a sudden dash to the bathroom, another part was actually thinking about math. I realized subtraction could actually help me, as long as I got everyone to play along. “We should take turns. That’s fairer.” I plucked one wing from the bucket and then passed the tongs to Kaylee.

  “Yea!” Kaylee said as she grabbed a wing. “This will be fun.”

  We went around the table, taking one wing at a time, until they were all gone. I counted the wings on my plate. I had seven of them. So that was my fair share out of twenty-eight pieces. But I had no idea why. Even worse, I didn’t know why I didn’t know why, if that makes any sense.

  I ate the wings, along with the green beans, mashed potatoes, and salad. Nothing tasted very good. All the food seemed to sit in my stomach like pieces of brick.

  As soon as we finished dinner, I ran for the phone and called Benedict.

  “We still have a problem,” I said.

  “I know. I was trying to study math so I won’t wreck the ice cream party. All that multiplying and dividing stuff doesn’t make any sense. I really don’t understand how fractions work either.”

  “I’ll bet we’re still part numbed.” I thought back to the matheteria. “There was a door on each side of the room. Remember? We went into the Give and Take Room. I guess it was just for addition and subtraction. The other room must be for multiplication and division.”

  “We have to go back,” Benedict said.

  “They’re closed. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “School isn’t going to be fun,” he said.

  “I have a terrible feeling you’re right.”

  After I hung up the phone, I took out my math book to see for myself how bad it was. Just like Benedict, all I knew how to do was add and subtract. If I had to take my share of anything tomorrow or figure out a fraction, I’d be in big trouble.

  CHAPTER

  (18 ÷ 3) + 1

  The next morning, even before I reached the kitchen, I could tell by the clangs and clatters that Dad was whipping up a batch of pancakes. When I got there, he was beating some eggs in a metal bowl. “Hey, just in time to give me a hand.” He nodded his head toward an empty measuring cup on the counter. “Pour 8 ounces of milk in there for me. Okay?”

  “Sure.” I felt a jolt of panic as I grabbed the milk from the fridge. But when I looked at the measuring cup, I realized I didn’t need math for this. I just had to fill the cup up to the number 8. The cup could just as easily have been marked with letters of the alphabet or pictures of fruit.

  “Great. Thanks,” Dad said.

  As I started to walk away, he added, “Now pour half of it into the mixing bowl.”

  Half? I came back and stared at the cup. What’s half of 8? I had no idea. My only hope was to knock over the cup when I reached for it. That would make a mess, but it would also help keep my secret.

  “Hurry up, I need 4 ounces,” Dad said.

  I felt the tension run out of my body like spilled milk. I knew 8 – 4 = 4. I’m sure Cypher would have something clever to say about the two fours. I didn’t. I poured the milk and scurried upstairs. I figured I’d stay out of sight until it was time to eat. And then I’d keep my mouth stuffed as much as I could, so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions.

  “Is this enough?”

  I turned and saw Kaylee holding out a handful of pennies and nickels. I didn’t tense up at the question—I could count the coins. That was no problem now.

  “Enough for what?” I asked.

  “For six pencils at the school store,” she said. “That’s how many colors they have. Six. They cost 12 cents each.”

  Oh, no … The panic started to come back. I couldn’t tell my little sister I didn’t know the answer. Think! One pencil costs 12 cents. She wants six pencils.

  “Do you really need more than one?” As I asked her that, I realized I didn’t need to multiply. Just like I’d managed to divide the wings by subtracting over and over, I could add the cost of one pencil at a time, until I’d counted up the price of six of them.

  “You can count to six, right?” I asked Kaylee.

  “I can count to nine million zillion,” she said.

  “Great. I’ll count the money for each pencil,” I told her. “You count how many pencils.”

  That’s how we figured it out. One pencil cost 12 cents. The second one added another 12 cents. That was 24. The third added 12, again, making 36.

  “You need 72 cents,” I told her. “And you have 85 cents. So do you have enough?” I knew the answer, but I thought it would be good for her to think about that part.

  “Yeah! Thank you, Logan. You’re so smart.”

  Wow—adding was like multiplying, except a whole lot slower. That was sort of like what Dr. Thagoras had told us—you could write any number just using slashes, or zeroes and ones, but it would be a lot longer.

  I got through breakfast without any more math problems and then grabbed my backpack and headed for school. Benedict met up with me on the way.

  “Last night was terrible,” he said. “Who knew you needed so much math to play video games? Then I tried to play Scrabble with my dad. I was doing great until I played on a triple-word-score square.”

  “Class is going to be terrible if Ms. Fractalli wants us to work on multiplication,” I said.

  �
�We don’t have math until the end of the day,” Benedict said. “I’ve got it all figured out. You’ll have to break your leg right before then. But at least you won’t miss lunch. I’ll help you to the nurse’s office. And then we can go to the museum right after school.”

  “On my broken leg?” I asked. “Are you planning to carry me?”

  “Good point,” Benedict said. “Make it an arm.”

  “I’m not breaking an arm or a leg,” I said.

  “Finger?” he asked.

  “No way.”

  “Fingernail?”

  “No! Stop it. I’m not breaking anything. We’ll get through this, somehow. It’s not like you’ve never been in trouble. Come on, I want to get to class before Ms. Fractalli does.”

  I had a reason for that. When I reached my desk, I sat down and watched Ms. Fractalli come in. After she put her purse in the locker, she started to put her key on her desk, but then she went to the whiteboard and picked up a marker. She left the key on the tray. After she wrote a reminder about the test, she put the marker down right on top of the key. That was good. The more times I found her key for her, the better chance I had she’d take it easy on me if I ever got into big trouble.

  Benedict was right that we didn’t have our math lesson until the end of the day. But we were both wrong if we thought there’d be no math until then. I never realized how much math we did in school. Here are just some of the things we had to figure out before it was time for our actual math lesson:

  In social studies, we had to figure out how many weeks Columbus’s first voyage lasted. Luckily, I could do that.

  For our science lesson, we watched a film about how they calculate the number of calories in different foods. It involved a lot of multiplying and dividing. Luckily, we didn’t have to do the math ourselves.

  We practiced the long jump in gym class. Each of us jumped three times. Our teacher, Mr. James, told us the average length of our jumps. Luckily, he did the math.

  For lunch, they had tacos in the cafeteria. I wanted to buy three. Luckily, I’d already learned I could add things instead of multiplying. Even more luckily, I didn’t want twenty.

  In art, we had to divide a circle into eight equal sections before we colored it. Luckily, I was able to watch the other kids at my table and do what they did, even though I didn’t understand how I ended up with the right number of sections.

  In music, we learned about 3/4 time. Luckily, Ms. Fourier likes to talk so much that she didn’t have us do anything. Even so, my head was starting to hurt.

  And then, unluckily, it was time for math. Ms. Fractalli grabbed a marker—but not the one that hid her key—and wrote a multiplication problem on the board: 127 × 12 = ?

  “All right, class, who wants to solve the problem?”

  Hands shot up around me so fast that I figured it had to be an easy problem. But all I could do was stare at the numbers. If I had to, I could add 127 to itself until I had 12 of them. But there’s no way I could do that in front of the class. I looked around the room. Only two hands weren’t up and waving—mine and Benedict’s.

  Maybe it was better to lose myself in a sea of raised hands than stand out as someone who didn’t want to go to the board. I lifted my hand but made sure not to wave it around.

  Ms. Fractalli looked at me. Pick someone else, I thought. Please pick someone else.

  She looked past me. I relaxed. She spoke. “Benedict.”

  “Me?” he wailed from his seat two rows behind me.

  “You.” She held out the marker.

  He shot me a terrified look as he walked up the aisle. It was bad enough he couldn’t do the problem. It was terrible he’d fail in front of the whole class. He’d be reminded of it for the rest of the year.

  Benedict was almost next to me now. He’d done something amazingly brave last year to save me from a dreadful punishment. It was my turn to save him. I could only think of one thing to do. It was risky, and it would definitely get me in trouble. But he was my best friend. There was no question in my mind. I’d do it.

  I let out a loud yawn, stretched my shoulders back, and stuck my foot out as he went past.

  CHAPTER

  2 × 2 × 2

  It worked. Benedict went sprawling.

  “Hey!” he screamed when he got back to his feet. “You tripped me!”

  “It was an accident.” I shot to my feet. “I was stretching. You should look where you’re going.”

  “You should keep your big feet under your desk.”

  “They’re not as big as your head.”

  Benedict let out a roar and tackled me. We went rolling across the floor.

  “Boys!” Ms. Fractalli shouted.

  Benedict and I sprang apart.

  “Go to the office. Both of you.”

  “That was fun,” Benedict said when we got into the hall. “Did it look like I really tripped?”

  “Totally.”

  “Good thing she doesn’t know we play like that all the time.”

  “Yeah. I hope we didn’t scare her too much.” I knew Benedict wouldn’t get hurt when I stuck my foot out. We play lots of games that involve pretend pushing, tripping, falling, and shoving. We just don’t usually play them in the classroom. “Do you think we’re in a lot of trouble?”

  “No. We’ll just get a lecture,” he said.

  He was right. I guess Principal Chumpski could tell that Benedict and I were friends and that the whole thing had been an accident followed by a misunderstanding.

  We were warned and released.

  We got back to the classroom just in time to miss the whole math lesson. Ms. Fractalli called us to her desk after the bell rang.

  “I expected better behavior from you,” she said.

  “We’re sorry,” I said.

  “Really sorry,” Benedict said. “But we made up, and we learned a valuable lesson.”

  I kicked his foot to stop him from going too far. Ms. Fractalli seemed satisfied. She smiled, went to her cabinet, and reached into her pocket. The smile turned into a frown. “I seem to have misplaced my key,” she said.

  “I’ll look.” I hunted for a moment and then lifted the marker. “Found it!”

  “Thank you, Logan,” she said. “It’s a good thing the principal didn’t make you stay in his office. Well, I hope both of you are ready for the math test.”

  “We’re totally ready. Math is all we’ve been thinking about,” Benedict said.

  Ms. Fractalli gave Benedict a funny look. I dragged him out of the room before he said too much.

  After school, we took a bus right to the museum. Dr. Thagoras wasn’t in his lab, but Cypher was. The robot rotated its head toward us.

  “Uh-oh,” Benedict said. “I don’t want to get zapped again.”

  Neither did I. I didn’t trust the robot. But I knew what it was built to do. If I could keep it busy, it wouldn’t hurt us. So I asked it a question. “Cypher, can you tell me about zero?” I remembered there was an exhibit upstairs about that.

  That did the trick. Cypher started talking. About five minutes later, Dr. Thagoras walked in. “Ah, it’s my two new math fans. You realize you ran out of here yesterday without all the skills you needed?”

  “We sort of figured that out,” I said.

  “Can you fix us?” Benedict asked.

  “I believe so,” Dr. Thagoras said. “You’ll have to go into the Repetition Room. It will restore your multiplication and division abilities.”

  He led us down the hall to the matheteria. When he opened the door to the Repetition Room, we saw a second door at the other end. “This time, there are two rooms to go through,” he said.

  “Why?” Benedict asked.

  “Numbers like patterns,” Dr. Thagoras said. “So do mathematicians. In you go.”

  We walked through the first room into the second. “Good luck, boys,” Dr. Thagoras said.

  The door closed. Math flooded back into our heads in swirling numbers. I looked around. The far wall, opposi
te the door, and the walls on both sides were covered with multiplication problems. Tons of them.

  “This can’t be good,” Benedict said.

  CHAPTER

  9 × 9 × 9 ÷ (9 × 9)

  Like before, there was a small screen in the door. This time, there was no keypad. But there was a message on the screen:

  TOUCH THE ONE PROBLEM THAT HAS THE

  INCORRECT ANSWER. YOU HAVE FIVE

  MINUTES TO FIND IT.

  A counter popped up under the message.

  “You’re kidding!” Benedict screamed. He spun around, as if trying to find the best place to start or maybe to drill his way out of the room.

  “Calm down. It won’t give us a test we can’t pass.” I noticed there wasn’t any pencil or paper. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do most of the problems in my head. I walked to the back wall and looked at the problems in front of me. The first four were right at eye level:

  478 × 18 = 8,604

  27 × 135 = 3,645

  9 × 18726 = 168,534

  58 × 72 = 4,176

  “Think,” I said to Benedict. “There’s no way we can check them all out by doing the math. Not in …” I glanced at the timer, “four minutes and forty seconds. So, how else can we check them?”

  “I know I’ve said this before,” Benedict said, “but WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME?”

  I sighed and let my head slump forward. There were numbers on the floor. I saw a huge 9 by the door. Stretching out from that, crossing the floor, I saw:

  18

  27

  36

  45

  54

  It was multiples of nine. There was something familiar about that. I stepped back so I could see all of them. “Look,” I said to Benedict, “do you see what’s happening with the numbers?”

  He moved next to me and looked down. “Why are you asking—wait! I see it. The numbers on the right go down one at a time.”

  “You got it.” I could see it in my mind.

  9

  18

  27

  36