The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl
Page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Stacy McAnulty
Cover art copyright © 2018 by Jim Tierney
Math problem on this page printed with permission from the Mathematical Association of America. To learn more about the Putnam Competition, visit amc.maa.org.
Photo on this page © iStock.com/joingate
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McAnulty, Stacy, author.
Title: The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl / Stacy McAnulty.
Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2018] | Summary: A lightning strike made Lucy, twelve, a math genius, but after years of homeschooling, her grandmother enrolls her in middle school and she learns that life is more than numbers.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017021152 | ISBN 978-1-5247-6757-0 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6758-7 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-0-525-64457-6 (int’l) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6759-4 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Savants (Savant syndrome)—Fiction. | Obsessive-compulsive disorder—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.M47825255 Mis 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781524767594
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
For the Love of Pi
All About Fibonacci
The Thank-You Section
About the Author
For Cora,
finally!
I don’t remember the moment that changed my life 4 years ago. Call it a side effect of being struck by lightning. That bolt of electricity burned a small hole in my memory. It also rewired my brain, transforming me into Lucille Fanny Callahan, math genius.
I’ve been told the lightning-strike story 42 times, so it’s almost like my own memory. I see it perfectly: I’m at the Crystal Creek Apartments, where Nana and I lived then. (There’s not really a creek, just a big dirty fountain in front.) I’m playing outside with a girl named Cecelia when the thunderstorm starts. We live in North Carolina, and storms happen all the time in the spring and summer. We watch from behind a toolshed. For some reason, I climb on the chain link fence. Maybe 8-year-old me was a daredevil; 12-year-old me definitely is not.
Lightning strikes the fence, and the electricity runs through the metal links and then through me. Some of the current even jumps from me to Cecelia. I’m knocked out. Cecelia is just knocked over. She runs and gets help. Joe, the maintenance man, uses a defibrillator on me because the electricity from the lightning stopped my heart. The electricity from the defibrillator starts it back up.
I do remember the hospital and the black burns on my pale hands. I remember pretending to be asleep while Nana prayed next to my bed. I only stayed in the hospital 1 night. The doctors did all their tests. They said my heart took a 2- to 5-minute nap. (I hate that no one knows the exact number.) They said I was lucky and I’d be fine. Back to normal in a few days. But doctors are wrong sometimes.
A week later, Nana and I were watching TV, and a commercial came on for a used-car dealership. The man was screaming, so I had to pay attention.
“That’s $359 a month for 48 months, folks.” He was really loud. “Nobody beats Frank Fontana. Nobody.”
I yelled back, “17,232.”
“What?” Nana asked.
“That’s how much the car costs,” I said.
“Did you read it on the TV?”
“I just know. 359 times 48 is 17,232.”
Nana frowned and shook her head. But then she got up and went to find a calculator.
“What were those numbers again?” she asked.
I told her, and she punched them in. “And the answer?”
“17,232.”
“You’re right.” She sounded surprised. I wasn’t surprised, but I guess I should have been. I mean, I was only in 2nd grade, and we were still learning addition and subtraction.
Nana turned off the television.
“What’s 99 times 88?” she asked.
“8,712. Can we have McDonald’s for dinner?” I asked.
Nana ignored me and asked another math problem and then another. She kept using bigger numbers, more digits. But it never got harder.
The doctors call my condition acquired savant syndrome. Savant means that my math skills are far beyond normal, and acquired means I wasn’t born with this wacky ability. I got it because I was holding a metal fence during a lightning storm. Cecelia didn’t get any special powers. We stopped being friends soon after that. I was busy trying to understand my new brain, and in the fall Nana and I moved.
Acquired savant syndrome is caused by brain damage. I can’t say that in front of Nana. She thinks it’s a miracle. My uncle Paul likes to think of it as a superpower, something from a comic book or a movie. But really, I’m brain damaged. Part of my left lobe has been turned off, and now my right lobe works overtime.
My condition is really rare. I’ve never met anyone with it. It’s even rarer in females, and superrare in kids. 1 of my doctors, Dr. Emily Bahri, specializes in savant syndrome. She’s worked with a lady who can make a drawing so realistic it looks like a photo, and with a guy who can speak any language after hearing it only a few times. I’m her only acquired savant patient. Years ago, Dr. Bahri did have a guy who, after hitting his head on the bottom of a swimming pool, could suddenly p
lay the piano. He’d never taken a single lesson. But that guy is dead now from old age.
My supercomputer brain can do more than add, subtract, multiply, and divide (which is no more impressive than a $3 calculator). I can also do calendar math. January 14, 1901, was a Monday. July 2, 1975, was a Wednesday. September 30, 2055, will be a Thursday. (Google can do this, too, and almost as fast.)
I also see math. Every number has its own color and shape. Take the number 5—it’s a jelly bean shape, red-brown, like the color of Carolina mud. The number 12 is a set of cream-colored squares. The number 47 is a fluorescent-orange oval. Prime numbers have curves. Non-primes have hard edges.
These colors and shapes make it fun and easy to play with numbers, and I can find patterns in anything from the stock market to baseball games to the price of cereal. Nana likes to bargain shop.
And then there’s my number memory ability. I remember every set of numbers I hear or see, like license plates or phone numbers or the digits of pi (π).
Pi is my favorite mathematical constant. But because the digits of pi after the point go on forever, I only let myself recite the numbers to the 314th decimal place.
π=3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631
These digits repeat in my brain even when I don’t want them to. It’s like getting a song stuck in your head. Only for me, it’s always the same song. Incredibly annoying, but still beautiful.
Being a savant does have its downsides. Like the guy who hit his head in the pool and could play the piano? He was blind after the accident. I’m not blind, but I do have my own issues. When people meet me, they expect Einstein or Maryam Mirzakhani (if they’re familiar with recent mathematical geniuses). But instead, they get the 1 and only freaky-strange Lucy. The girl who can’t sit down without making you stare at her because she needs to do it 3 times. The girl who would rather calculate your age down to the hour than talk about your hobbies. The girl who never leaves the house without a supply of Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer.
Lucky for me—and everybody else—I rarely have to meet people. I’m a reclusive genius.
Nana and I sit on the couch and pretend we aren’t waiting for the doorbell. Uncle Paul said sometime after 4:00 p.m. It’s only 4:11. So, technically, he’s not late, and he won’t ever be, even if he doesn’t show up for days.
We watch a game show where people run around a grocery store. I like game shows. There are always points or prices to calculate.
A knock. Finally.
I’m off the couch and opening the apartment door before Nana gets up.
Uncle Paul stands in the doorway with a duffel bag. He’s wearing regular clothes—T-shirt, jeans, sneakers—not his marine uniform.
“There she is.” He drops the bag. “My favorite genius and future Nobel Prize winner.”
I jump into his arms. “I missed you.” He smells like soap and trees. “And there’s no Nobel Prize for math. I’m going to win the Fields Medal.” I’ve told him this before. I think he forgets on purpose.
When I let go, Nana moves in for her hug. Her gray-blond head doesn’t even reach his shoulders.
“Hey, Ma.” He squeezes her so tight her feet come off the floor.
As he steps into the living room, I offer him a squirt of hand sanitizer from the bottle I keep by the door. I use some, too.
“Thanks.” He looks around the apartment. Nana and I have only lived here since January. 193 days.
Nana pulls Uncle Paul to the couch. She studies him like she’s checking for damage. He looks the same to me, except his white skin is red from the sun.
I take the chair, giving them some space.
I sit.
Then stand.
Then sit.
Then stand.
And finally sit.
“You still do your funny dance,” Uncle Paul says.
“Don’t tease her.” Nana squeezes his arm.
“I’m not teasing. It’s cute. Like the way she used to say spaghetti. Pa-sket-ee.” He winks at me.
“I can say spaghetti fine.” Now that my front teeth have grown in. But I can’t just sit down, or stand still.
“So…,” Nana says, asking a question she can’t put into words.
“I’m going to Twentynine Palms. In California.”
“Oh, thank God.” She makes the sign of the cross and folds her hands in a quick prayer. Usually, her prayers are much longer. Like when she was praying Uncle Paul wouldn’t have to go back to the Middle East. He’s already been to Afghanistan twice.
“That’s a great name,” I say. “You’re going to live in a prime number.” I’d like to live in a town that has a number in its name. There is a Five Points, North Carolina. But Nana says we can’t move 2 hours away because I love the name.
“Prime number, huh? Must be a sign. Right, Ma?” He winks at her.
Nana likes when the universe gives her signals that good things are coming.
Uncle Paul tells us about his new post and his girlfriend, who lives near D.C. He shows us pictures on his phone—mostly of the girlfriend. He gives Nana a silk scarf and a bag of her favorite licorice from the base commissary—it’s German. I get a lightning-bolt charm on a silver chain.
“Lightning. It’s your good-luck symbol.” Uncle Paul helps me put it on. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Right?”
“I wouldn’t recommend getting struck. Lightning kills an average of 47 people in America every year and severely injures hundreds, maybe thousands.” To my disappointment, the government only keeps an accurate count of those who die.
“Good to know,” he says. “Do you not want the necklace?”
“No, I love it. Thank you.” I rub the charm between my finger and thumb. It needs to be wiped with Clorox, but that seems rude. I do it anyway.
“So, ladies, what’s happening here on the home front?” he asks. “But wait. 1st, Lucy, how old am I?”
“11,881 days.”
“And?”
I look at the clock. “19 hours, 7 minutes.”
He laughs. If it were anyone else, I’d be insulted he thinks my math skills are some kind of party trick.
“You’re freakin’ amazing.”
“Watch your language,” Nana warns.
“I was watching my language.” He kisses her cheek. “Sorry, Ma. Now, seriously, what have you been up to?”
“I just graduated from high school.”
“Really? You’re only 10.”
“I’m 12.”
“Impressive.” He gives me a thumbs-up.
“An impressive exaggeration,” Nana says. “Shouldn’t you go to high school before graduating from high school?”
I roll my eyes, though Nana is sort of right. I didn’t technically do every grade and every class.
“I’ve finished all the homeschool requirements. I’ve passed the GED and—”
“She got a perfect score on her SATs.” Nana finishes my thought.
“Yes! Well, on the math section.” I did okay with the reading and writing parts.
Nana shakes her head. “She’s a good test taker.”
“Congrats, Luce. What’s next for the young genius? Harvard?”
“Don’t get her started,” Nana says.
“I want to take college classes online. I mean…well, I’ve been taking them for 2 semesters already, but under Nana’s name. For fun.”
“I have 15 college credits.” Nana sits up straighter.
/> “But now I can take them in my own name.”
“That’s amazing, Luce. Maybe you could go to NC State. That’s where I would have gone if I was smart like you.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Nana says. “Can you imagine a 12-year-old living in the dorms?”
“But I can do everything online. If Nana will let me.”
She breathes out a loud sigh. “You can’t do everything online.”
“Whatever.” I don’t want to have this argument again.
Uncle Paul looks at Nana and then at me. “What’s going on?”
“Nana wants me to go to public school.”
“She’s too smart for regular school. I went to regular school.” Uncle Paul acts like he’s not smart, but that isn’t true. He knows geography and history better than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s really good at Jeopardy! I kept track of his score last time we watched. He had $11,500.
Nana shakes her head again. “Ask her when was the last time she left this apartment.”
“Lucy,” Uncle Paul mocks Nana’s voice. “When was the last time you left this apartment?”
I shrug, pretending not to know the answer.
“Lucille?” he says.
“About 4 weeks ago.” That sounds better than 32 days ago. I had an appointment with my brain doctor on June 25.
Nana sighs. “See.”
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
Nana laughs. “That would be a 1st.”
Uncle Paul doesn’t laugh. “You can’t stay holed up in this apartment. What about friends? What about fresh air? She probably has a vitamin D deficiency.”
“I have friends, and I get plenty of vitamin D. I take a gummy vitamin every morning.”