by Greg Pincus
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
1 THE FIRST FIB
2 FAMILY GEOMETRY
3 THE CORRECT EQUATION IS …
4 SIMPLE ADDITION
5 WRITING ABOUT MATH WON’T BE EASY AS PI
6 I LEARNED THE COMMUTATIVE PROPERTY BACKWARD
7 HOW MUCH DO I LOVE MATH RIGHT NOW?
8 SOLVE FOR X
9 A SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
10 ANOTHER FIB
11 HOW MUCH DO I HATE MATH CLASS RIGHT NOW?
12 THAT ISN’T WHAT I WAS EXPECTING….
13 ME + CARING = NOT
14 WHERE’S THIS GOING TO TAKE ME?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Some days you just need pie.
The creeping realization that this was a pie day began at breakfast for Gregory Korenstein-Jasperton. As he made his way toward food, he could hear conversation in the dining room, and while his brain told him that meant it was a day to go straight to the breakfast drawer in the kitchen, his nose smelled bacon. The nose won.
“I’d be the best superhero ever,” his nine-year-old sister, Kay, said as Gregory entered the dining room, “because I’d use the power of the hypotenuse! By taking the correct angle, I’d always be a step or two ahead of the bad guys.”
“Excellent!” Gregory’s father said from his seat at the head of the table. His dad always sat in the same seat … and so did everyone in the family, even if they found themselves alone in the dining room. “And, Owen? How would math help your superhero’s superpowers?”
Gregory’s older brother, Owen, finished writing a formula on a slightly dirty napkin, then silently shoved it across the table to his dad. Gregory pulled his eyes away from the napkin’s progress and a heaping plate of silver-dollar pancakes to search for something far more important — bacon. Unfortunately, he found it moments after his brother nabbed the last piece.
“Oh, Gregory K., I’m sorry. Were you looking for this?” Owen asked with a crooked grin as he dangled the perfectly crisp rasher.
“That’s not fair, O! How many pieces did you have already?” Even as he said it, though, Gregory knew that his brother didn’t care about fairness, particularly not when it came to an eleven-year-old brother.
Outside, rain dripped down the windows of the dining room as if crying at the bacon injustice. Gregory tried not to let his mood match the gloom outside the room. Instead, he focused on the raindrops hitting glass and ground, popping like bits of bacon fat in a pan. It was hard, though, because O was talking … and that meant there might be hope.
“All right, G. I’ve had x pieces where x equals three y plus seven minus y squared where y equals x plus one and x and y are positive integers less than ten. If you can solve for x, I’ll give you this piece.” O balanced the bacon delicately on his fingertip and put his nose right above it, inhaling the smoky, joyful flavor.
There were now two options for Gregory, and neither of them involved solving the equation. In fact, he knew he could go to the store, buy a pound of bacon, and learn how to cook it before he’d get the proper solution. So, option one was to make a grab for the smoky slice. O wasn’t speedy — one might even call him an uncoordinated dweeb if one was in a bad mood — but he had the high ground in this battle. That left option two: guess.
“Five,” Gregory said firmly. Kay’s giggle told him he was wrong.
“I came up with three,” Kay said.
“And I came up with bacon!” O said gleefully between bites.
“You’re an uncoordinated dweeb,” Gregory muttered under his breath as he listened to his brother’s happy crunching.
Just then, their father let out a low whistle and put a hand in his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair as if trying to keep his brain inside his head.
“Your work’s incredible, Owen. Your superhero’s math would give him control over the passage of time.”
“I’m playing fast and loose with relativity, as you can see, so it’s only theoretical.” Owen paused as his father took it all in. “At least for now.”
“And Gregory?” his father said. “Since you’ve joined us, how would math make you a better superhero?”
Gregory glanced at the clock on the wall above his father’s head. Although its numbers and hands ran in reverse order, something that amused his dad daily, everyone in the family could read it easily. And since he could see that he only had a minute or so until his mom came to shoo them all off to school, he went for the stall instead of the answer or the flee.
“Math? I’ve got superspeed, superstrength, and X-ray vision. I’ll crush you without math.”
“Nope. I’m a superhero too, and I have the power of average, so I’ll toss that at you and your powers will pale compared to mine.” His father wasn’t going to let go. “So … ?”
Pushing his dark, shaggy hair out of his eyes, Gregory looked straight at his father. “You’ll throw average at me? That’s your superpower? What’s that even look like, Dad? A pretty and powerful, but not too pretty or powerful lightning bolt?”
“Wait. Would you throw average or would you throw the mean at him?” Kay asked with a giggle. “Mean Man is a better-sounding hero than Average Man.”
“Ooooh. I’m so scared. Average Man is here!” Gregory grabbed a pancake from the table. He rolled it up, dipped it in syrup, and swallowed it down. “I don’t see the upside of averaging. Or the downside.”
“I don’t know, bro. I bet you’d be pretty happy if someone threw average on your math homework.” O grinned again as he cleaned his glasses on his shirt.
“Time to go!” Mom’s enthusiastic cry shattered the tension in the dining room. Gregory had always thought his mother was pretty, but she never looked better than when she came to his rescue. He pushed away from the black-and-white checked linoleum table and practically skipped to his mom, feeling as light as the day was drab. “Oh, Gregory, I love how much you love going to school!”
“I love it in ways I can’t even express,” Gregory said. “So, I’m gonna go. Like. Right. Now.”
Grabbing his bright red anorak on his way out of the room, he realized bacon and he had a lot in common, since both had managed to get out of the frying pan that morning. Now he hoped his next stop would be better than the inside of O’s stomach, although since his next stop was going to be school, he just couldn’t be sure.
On this particular day, school started out promisingly enough. By the middle of second period English class, Gregory found his need for pie being replaced by his admiration for Parson Mason Weems, a man who instantly had become one of his heroes.
Mason Weems was a part-time minister in Virginia in the early 1800s. He was also an author, and he wrote a story that every sixth grader at Warren L. Lee Elementary School, including Gregory, was currently studying.
The story was simple: As a young boy, George Washington chopped down his father’s cherry tree, but then came clean and told his father that he had done the terrible deed. His father embraced George, thrilled with the youngster’s honesty. “Run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold,” Papa Washington said.
Gregory loved this story. He loved it because it was completely and utterly made up.
“It’s called a parable,” said Mrs. Harris, his English teacher. “It’s a story designed to illustrate a point. Do you understand the point, class?”
“It’s okay to lie if you’re telling the lie to illustrate a point about lying?” Gregory answered.
“No. That is not the point the author intended,” Mrs. Harris said without a smile. O claimed that no one had seen Mrs. Harris smile in a decade, and
that the last time she did smile, it was because she saw the tears of a sixteen-year-old she was failing for the fourth straight year. O said lots of peculiar things, it’s true, but this one felt right. “I ask again — what was Parson Weems’s point?”
“It’s about lying, I know that,” said Gregory with a small grin forming. “And it’s about how …”
Gregory’s best friend, Kelly, raised her hand as she kicked him under his desk. Even back in kindergarten, Kelly had intentionally sat next to Gregory to keep him from getting himself too deeply in trouble. Kelly claimed she averaged 2.4 kicks a day during the school year, though Gregory only knew that it happened a lot. In general, he didn’t mind, but he was always happy when it was Monday, the day Kelly had dance class after school and wore her ballet slippers all day.
Today was a rainy, dreary, wear-your-steel-toed-mud-shoes Wednesday. Still, Kelly didn’t hesitate. She kicked him in the calf. Gregory stifled a yelp with well-practiced ease and fell silent, wondering again how a wide-eyed, cheerful, wispy girl who would never hurt a fly could consistently cause him such pain yet still be his favorite person. Mrs. Harris, oblivious to the kick and the thoughts, called on Kelly.
“Was Parson Weems saying that if you are honest with those who love you, in the long run you’ll be better off?”
“Yes, Kelly. Yes, he was. The story is not meant to be taken as the literal truth. It is a parable. Is that clear, class?”
Although Mrs. Harris said the word class, she looked directly at Gregory. He nodded, as he had many other times in the moments after Kelly had dented his leg. In this case, he did understand Mrs. Harris’s point. He just thought it was the wrong one, because he certainly saw another way to view the whole Parson Weems thing … and frankly, he thought his view was more honest.
Without question, English was Gregory’s favorite class in school, and not just because he’d discovered a new hero. He figured it was because he was an expert at making things up, a skill very handy for creative writing, where you could “parable” your way to fame, but when he used that talent in other classes he often ended up having to stay in from recess. Mrs. Harris, however, never chose that path. Instead, when a problem situation arose, she asked Gregory to write about the trouble — either in essay form or, if he preferred, in poetry.
He never minded this type of extra work, though he was disappointed that he never got those papers back. One time he asked Mrs. Harris why.
“Because, Gregory Korenstein-Jasperton, your essays and particularly your poems are wonderful, and I keep them since they make me smile.”
Gregory studied Mrs. Harris’s expressionless face, hoping to see a hint of a smile or frown or anything to know how to take that statement. He found nothing. He figured it couldn’t be true … but he liked to hear it anyway.
Unfortunately, in sixth grade there were different teachers for different subjects, so Gregory had more than Mrs. Harris to contend with. Gone were the days when one warm, loving teacher taught you math, reading, and music, plus yoga every Monday. Now there were days of constant change, more and harder homework, and Mr. Davis.
Nothing ever felt right to Gregory when he was in Mr. Davis’s room. At first, he thought it was because Mr. Davis had long ago decided he’d never turn on the fluorescent ceiling lights in his classroom again and had filled the room with seventeen freestanding floor lamps. Later on, when he realized how much he actually liked the steady lighting, Gregory decided it was the smell of the room: a mix of coffee and chalk that he was sure was the odor of brain cells burning. Or maybe it was the optical illusion posters on the wall?
Eventually, Gregory realized it was nothing physical. It was all about the subject matter, not the setting.
“Let’s make this a great day. Let’s do some math!” Mr. Davis exclaimed as each class began. Today, this made Gregory want pie with a vengeance.
In truth, Gregory felt that by doing math, any day would be ruined, so the two halves of Mr. Davis’s statement simply couldn’t exist together. He had never said this to Mr. Davis, however. Not because it was rude, which it would have been, but because he knew Kelly would kick him if he tried to say it.
So Gregory’s great days didn’t involve doing math, though he did not mention this to Mr. Davis, nor did he mention it at home.
Gregory’s father was an electrical engineer and liked math even more than Mr. Davis did … which didn’t seem possible when you saw how much Mr. Davis loved math. Gregory’s dad could look at any number and figure out its square root or all the numbers you could multiply together to make it. His dad got excited by complex formulas and something called calculus and did sudoku in pen without taking notes.
His dad loved Mr. Davis and math, and so did his brother, O. Gregory did not, though he found it wise to be enthusiastic whenever the subject came up, since his peppiness was interpreted as shared math excitement and usually prevented specific questions. Unfortunately, math class itself was often about specific questions. And usually, it was Mr. Davis who was asking them.
It’s not that Gregory didn’t like Mr. Davis. In fact, he was a hard man to dislike. There was a rumor around the school that one reason Mrs. Harris didn’t have a smile was that Mr. Davis had taken hers. To Gregory, this was obviously false — Mr. Davis wouldn’t take what wasn’t his, and Gregory had seen Mrs. Harris’s face, and it seemed unlikely one could steal a smile without stealing the lips too — but it was true that he’d never seen Mr. Davis unhappy. He also thought Mr. Davis had the friendliest eyes he’d ever seen, framed by squarish, black glasses and always looking as interested and as happy as the man himself.
Mr. Davis also never ran out of patience, bad jokes, or “new and exciting!” math concepts. Really, there was only one problem with Mr. Davis, as far as Gregory was concerned: He taught math.
At the start of the year, Gregory had figured he could bluff his way into Mr. Davis’s good graces. “Math’s my favorite subject, Mr. Davis! So glad to be here!” Gregory’s big smile was met by an equal one from his teacher.
“You’re just like your brother, then, aren’t you?” Mr. Davis said. “I am so looking forward to having you in class.”
O had never gotten a single question wrong during the whole year he had Mr. Davis. Sometimes, O had even taught the class while Mr. Davis practiced juggling in the back. Mr. Davis had always been a good juggler, but he won many contests the year Gregory’s brother was in sixth grade.
By the second week of school, Mr. Davis knew he was not going to win as many contests this year. But Mr. Davis didn’t seem to treat Gregory any differently after that anyway.
Even today, wearing rain pants and bright yellow boots as though he were expecting a typhoon, Mr. Davis was friendly as usual as he returned practice tests to each student. Gregory’s had a big red 66 on the top of it.
“As I’m sure you all remember, your test is on Friday,” Mr. Davis said as he squeaked across the floor in his still-wet footwear. “All those who remember, please moan.”
The whole class moaned in unison.
“Glad to see you’ve been paying attention. Now, I don’t want to make you moan again, but during the test, unlike the practice test, you won’t be able to use your textbooks or your friends for help.” Mr. Davis raised his hands like an orchestra conductor and proceeded to lead the class in a long moan in 3/4 time.
“Seriously, folks. You can do this,” Mr. Davis said as he zigged and zagged quickly through the room without ever looking down at the desk layout. “Crack open the books, review your homework, and ask me questions. If you’re doing well, you’ll ace the test. If you’re struggling, I have confidence you can turn it around.”
Mr. Davis stopped at Gregory’s desk and quickly rotated the practice test. Suddenly, Gregory’s grade changed to a 99. For a moment, despite the fact that he knew it was an illusion, he felt good. He felt anything was possible.
Then he realized he was in math class, had relied heavily on friends to get that 66, needed way higher grades t
o avoid failing the class, and pie was no longer a want but an actual need.
Once again, he was grateful that Kelly was his best friend. Because knowing Kelly meant that pie was never out of reach.
Gregory and Kelly did their homework together almost every day after school. And almost every day, Kelly did her homework at her mom’s workplace. Since Kelly’s mom owned the Slice — a combination coffee shop, bakery, and community hangout — Gregory was almost always able to satisfy his need for pie. True, he would’ve gone anywhere to do homework with Kelly, but there was no question that their friendship had many benefits, even ones you can’t anticipate when you first meet in a baby group.
Today, Gregory got through the rest of school by focusing on the reward soon to come rather than the ever-growing sense of math-related doom. The moment the bell rang, he and Kelly made a beeline for the Slice.
When the Slice first opened, it was a little off the beaten path on a small side street most notable for a giant oak tree whose roots made the sidewalk uneven. It wasn’t long, however, before a path was beaten directly to the neon coffee-cup-and-piece-of-pie sign that marked the shop’s entrance. Now, the street had many cozy little stores and was always full of pedestrians and bicyclists, two groups that Kelly and Gregory weaved speedily through.
It was a good thing they moved fast: Apple pie was just coming out of the Slice’s oven.
The Slice’s apple pie was so well known that the school board had actually begged Kelly’s mom not to bake it during school hours, as children (and teachers) kept getting “sick” when the buttery, apply, cinnamony pie smell wafted from the Slice and through the streets and hallways of town. They disappeared ill from school but recovered just outside the Slice’s doorway.
Kelly’s mom stopped making the pie as often … and never baked it too early in the day. But no matter when she made it, word spread, and the pie disappeared quickly. Even a full week of math class was better than watching the last piece of pie vanish as you waited in line. Luckily, that was not Gregory’s fate this time.
As always happened when warm apple pie was in front of Kelly and Gregory, they were silent, neither one wanting to use their mouth muscles for anything other than eating that piece of perfection. Even the clink of the fork hitting the plate as it cut through the crust seemed perfectly tuned, as if the Slice’s just-off-white dishware were made for this one task.
