by Greg Pincus
“Ahhh, yes. Classic G,” Kelly said with a grin. “I won’t even offer to help you with City Math. I’m sure that’s under control too. Just like last year’s Halloween costume.”
“Hey! We promised never to mention that again!” Gregory spontaneously started itching where he’d gotten a November-long rash after ignoring Kelly’s fabric suggestions for his costume.
“Or your fourth grade solar system project.”
“Like I was supposed to know that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore? Or, umm, Venus and Neptune still are? Come on, Kelly, that’s totally different.”
“Or when you thought you could learn your lines for the class play by putting the script under your pillow.”
“It’s nothing like … well … fine,” Gregory said reluctantly. “Maybe it’s a little like that. But it’ll be okay.”
The two ate a few bites of cobbler in silence. Then Kelly spoke again. “I wish I didn’t have to move,” she said softly.
Gregory wished it too. He decided to make the thought go away by paying closer attention to the plate and the spoon and the rivulets of melting ice cream in the cobbler and anything that kept him out of the moment.
“Boy, this cobbler’s good,” Kelly said after a few awkward seconds.
“You know … this is great,” Gregory said, closely examining a spoonful paused on the way to his mouth.
“Okay. It’s great.”
“No, no. I mean, yes. But check it out — this is my math homework! Mr. Davis wanted me to write about math in my life today.”
“But that’s peach cobbler.”
“It’s one third cobbler crust, one third peaches, and one third ice cream. It’s fractions again. It’s math!” Gregory filled his mouth with the wondrous trio. “My math homework is great.”
“Look at you go. I’m gonna call your father,” Kelly said. “You’re officially a math whiz.”
Mr. Davis loved the cobbler story so much he asked for the recipe so he could try the fractions out himself. He also gave an actual assignment in the journal: For the next few weeks, Gregory had to write about each day’s class. Gregory tried to protest that this changed the rules, but Mr. Davis pulled his “I’m the teacher” card and prevailed.
As days zoomed by, Gregory noticed that his parents seemed more and more nervous, and it had nothing to do with O having taken a vow of silence (currently at day three).
“Gregory,” his mother said one evening at dinner, “how’s math class going?”
“Great!” Gregory said, and for once actually meant it.
“We haven’t seen you doing any extra work sheets or anything, and you don’t seem to be staying after school….” His mother looked conflicted. “I believe you, but …”
“Do you need help on the work, son?” his father asked kindly, though even Gregory could see his dad was gripping his knife and fork with tense hands.
“No! I don’t need help. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
O looked like it was painful for him not to respond.
“Say it, O. Come on.” Gregory savored having the advantage for once. O remained silent. “Boy, you’re weird.”
“Gregory!” his mother chastised.
“Sorry. But he hasn’t spoken in three days, Mom. What would you call it?”
“I’d call it Owen being Owen,” Mom said, which Gregory translated as “Owen being weird” in parent speak.
“To me,” Kay said, “the silence is a form of experimental theater. Like Beckett.”
Everyone turned to Kay. “Are you sure you’re only nine?” Dad said, smiling.
“If I’m older, I really shouldn’t be in third grade, should I, and you’d’ve failed terribly in your parental duties,” Kay said.
“Point taken.”
Even though he felt he was right about his brother, Gregory decided not to push things. Besides, he had the perfect way to end the conversation. “May I be excused? I have to go do my math homework.”
Down in his room, Gregory pulled his math journal from its envelope. Write about class? Most of class had been boring, but there was one sidelight that Gregory felt deserved to be written about. Heck, it even deserved a title.
The Fibonacci Sequence and Me
I know you just kinda mentioned this Fibonacci sequence thing during class today and weren’t spending the whole period on it, but I gotta ask you something. I’m supposed to care about this because … ?
Start with the fact that I figure anything you have to spell for us is something I just don’t need. Like pneumonia or cauliflower. Next, it’s just like one of those things that I’ve seen my dad get all ooky about, but then he can’t make me understand WHY.
Look, I see how the sequence thing works. Start with 0 and 1 and add ’em to get the next number, then keep adding the last two numbers together to get the next. That’s not hard, even for me. The Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55. See? I can do it. I’m an addition genius!!!!!
But seriously, the next time I play basketball, how does this help me? Or when Mom says “set the table,” am I gonna say “It’s Kay’s turn for another three days because you promised our schedule was based on Fibonacci, and now you’re trying to switch after ten days! NO, MOM! NO!”? Right. I didn’t think so.
When he finished writing, Gregory grabbed his phone and called Kelly. He paced around his room as he read her what he’d written, his voice and foot speed rising and falling with the story and with the sounds of Kelly’s laughter. When he finished, he threw himself onto his bed.
“So? What’d you think?” The way Gregory asked, it was clear what answer he wanted to hear.
“It’s great, G,” Kelly said simply. “And you know … I was thinking about that sequence today too.”
“Okay. I’ll bite,” Gregory said. “Why?”
“Because we’re moving exactly one hundred forty-four miles away.” Kelly said it as though it didn’t need an explanation, but Gregory knew that after a moment she’d remember who she was talking to. “One hundred forty-four is a Fibonacci number.”
Every time Kelly had mentioned moving the last couple days, Gregory had had the same reaction. This time was no different. His throat closed up. His grip on the phone tightened and he grabbed a handful of blanket and twisted it tight. Beads of sweat dotted his face.
“I gotta go. It’s, like, you know, bedtime, right? See you in the morning!” Gregory’s voice came out rushed and pinched, and as he hung up, he had to concentrate on breathing deeply.
He laid his head back on his pillow. He was exhausted. It had been a while since Gregory had slept well. He had come up with lots of reasons why it might be that way, but if he’d ever decided to really think about it, he would not have been able to deny that the problems started the day Kelly said she was moving.
The next morning, tired though he was, Gregory turned in his math journal first thing. At the end of the day, much to his surprise, he noticed he had a lot of energy as he waited to meet Mr. Davis. He knew, absolutely knew, that he would get a smiley face or something like it.
Mr. Davis handed Gregory the journal inside its envelope. He also handed Gregory another packet.
“What’s this?” Gregory asked.
“A City Math application. I know you said you were changing your project, so I gave you a new one since they’ll want you to refile.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Always glad to help. Remember, it’s due Monday.” Mr. Davis waved as he walked away. “Make it a great weekend, Gregory K. Do some math!”
The extra boost of excited adrenaline Gregory had felt moments ago was gone. Suddenly, he didn’t even have the energy to check his math journal.
That night, Gregory did not sleep well. At least this time he knew why.
“I need your help,” Gregory said to Kelly.
“It’s eight o’clock on Saturday morning!” Kelly groaned at him through the screen door of her front porch. Her eyes were barely more than slits, as if she were
trying to keep the sleep from escaping them. “I can’t even help myself.”
“Can I come in? I need a City Math project.” The worry lines on Gregory’s forehead cast shadows in the morning sun.
Kelly rubbed her eyes and opened the door. “I thought you had one.”
“It didn’t work out.” Gregory flung himself onto a giant beanbag chair in the shape of a baseball mitt. It had caught Gregory so many times, it looked like it was formed to his body.
“Didn’t work out? What do you mean?” Kelly sat in her favorite overstuffed armchair facing him.
“Please don’t ask that.”
Kelly stretched and yawned. “I think I’m going back to bed.”
Gregory spoke up quickly before Kelly could leave. “I mean that it didn’t work out because I thought that Mr. Davis would take pity on me and give me a project or that my mom and dad would say, ‘You don’t need to do City Math. Just focus on your work.’”
“They didn’t tell you to do City Math, G. It was your idea.”
“I know. I know! Now I need a project, but, like, a real solid one. So, can you help me? Please.” Gregory tried his best sad puppy dog eyes, but he knew he didn’t need to use them. Kelly would give it her all.
“Okay, I’m in. But here’s the thing. I have no clue what a good City Math project is,” Kelly said.
“I’ve seen a lot at my house. Usually they have lots of … numbers and, uh, ohhhhhh.” Gregory punched the beanbag. “They have a lot of math.”
“That makes it easier.” Kelly stood up. “We need paper, pencils, and Alex.”
“You have an idea!” Gregory leapt to his feet.
“Yes. We’re going to the library. We need to do some work.”
“That’s your idea?” Gregory felt the pain in his calf even though Kelly was walking away from him. He called after her, “It’s a great idea! Great!”
The truth was, Gregory loved going to the library. He liked the building itself: the simple, sturdy, two-story front part that had originally been big enough to serve the whole town, and the utterly mismatched, modern brick addition that let the library collection grow. But more than the outside of the building, he loved the inside and its shelves of books. He had spent more time than he could remember leafing through picture books when he was younger, curled up on the children’s room couch. Then he turned to poetry collections, chapter books, and novels as he grew older, often reading for hours at big communal tables.
It had just never occurred to Gregory that the library would help him with math. And for that matter, weekend early mornings and anyplace other than bed weren’t a natural combo in his mind. Still, Kelly, Gregory, and Alex were waiting outside the library in the crisp, March morning light when the door was finally unlocked at nine.
“Dude,” Alex said groggily, “there are some seriously good cartoons on right now.” Alex kept his hands buried deep in his pockets as he led the way into the building.
“You said if I needed help …”
“Yeah, but like at normal times of the … Whoa! Look at all those graphic novels!” Alex started to walk off, but Kelly grabbed him by the arm.
“Focus, Alex.”
“Right. Math projects. That’s Dewey number 510.1. This way!” Alex forged on ahead. “Hi, Mom!” he added as they passed the librarian at the main desk. “You coulda let us in early, ya know? It was cold out there.” Alex’s mom laughed as they walked by.
“So, like, is there a book with what we need? You know, some incredible, clever, really good math stuff,” Gregory said as he followed Alex into the maze of shelving ahead.
“Hey, why don’t we get The Incredible, Clever, Really Good Math Book!” Alex said, veering sharply left.
“This isn’t a time to joke, Alex,” Gregory said before nearly colliding with his friend, now stopped in front of a shelf. “And I …” He trailed off as Alex handed him a book. “Oh. It’s The Incredible, Clever, Really Good Math Book. Do you, like, know every book in this place?”
“I love math, dude, and Mom’s brought me almost everything in here. Lots of times. But I don’t think that one’ll help you much. It’s tricks and cool stuff, but you need projects.” Alex pulled out a handful of books from the tightly packed shelves. “These are your best shot, G. So let’s make it a good day and let’s do some math … even though we’d all rather be in bed or watching TV or doing anything else besides this.”
An hour later, Gregory gently bashed his forehead in frustration against a long, wooden library table. Open books were strewn around him. Kelly sat farther down the table writing in a small notebook. Alex was engrossed in a graphic novel, but he looked up at the sound.
“Dude. I’m reading here.”
“It’s no use. If I understand a project in one of these books, it’s too simple. If I don’t understand it, how can I do it?” Gregory moaned from the tabletop.
“Maybe,” Kelly said as she straightened up in her chair and looked him right in the eye, “you shouldn’t enter City Math?”
“Not an option at this point,” Gregory said as he spun papers with his finger on the tabletop. “Everyone knows I’m doing it, okay?”
“Then ask them for help, dude,” Alex said, “because, and I mean this in a nice way, I don’t believe you are gonna be ready for City Math if you keep trying on your own.” Alex grabbed the discarded books and piled them up. “Now excuse me. I’ve got shelving to do.”
As Alex walked away, Gregory looked across the table at Kelly. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, you have to fill out the application with something. You can always do it one more time, right? You know, like you’re changing your project now …” Kelly said.
“Okay, for starters, Monday is the final, final, final deadline, so I can’t switch. For second starters, I never filled out a form before, even though I meant to, so you wouldn’t technically be right with the ‘one more time’ stuff,” Gregory said.
Kelly leaned forward and studied Gregory, her eyes drilling into him for so long he wanted to hide in the stacks. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why are you doing this?”
The hard wood of the chair suddenly seemed so uncomfortable to Gregory, like it was spikes and he was a balloon. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t answer Kelly, but that he couldn’t figure out which answer to give and it made him uneasy. If he mentioned that he’d never make it to Author’s Camp without City Math, he’d have to tell Kelly about not ever having asked his parents to begin with. And since she kept saying that camp was making the move less miserable, that didn’t seem like the right answer, even though it was the most honest.
So as usual, he went for option two. This reason was also true, though he hadn’t even realized it when he made his big announcement.
“I figure if I can really do this, maybe my mom and dad will lay off with the math stuff for a while.”
“But Gregory K.,” Kelly said, flipping her notebook closed with more force than it needed, “this is math stuff.”
“It’s more than that. It’s City Math. It’s what Dad’s wanted for me forever. And now I’m doing it and he’s let me up into Mathland and he’s excited and he’s looking at me differently and I just want to get it done.” Gregory sighed. “And I wish it was easier.”
“Oh, G,” Kelly said, leaning back in her chair and running her hands through her hair. “I wish I’d been there to kick you and stop this whole thing before it started.”
“If it makes you feel better, my calf hurt right after I said I was in.”
“A little too late, if you ask me.” Kelly got up and walked to Gregory’s end of the table. “Okay, let’s try another approach. What’s the most complicated-sounding math thing you know about?”
“Long division?” Gregory said. Kelly cleared her throat in a way that made him instantly regret his answer. “I mean Fibby … Fibby … Fibonacci.”
“Great. Say you’re doing a project about Fibonacci,” Kelly said.
“B
ut what’s that mean?”
“Just think about it a bit. Fibonacci. Where’s that going to take you?” Kelly said as she grabbed a pencil and printed Fibonacci on the top of a page. “You’ll figure it out. And if not, then it doesn’t matter if you write that you’re doing a project about your mother’s recipes, does it?”
“That would be cool! I could feed the judges!”
“Math. Think math,” Kelly said. “Besides, that would just be cruel.”
Many times over the weekend, Gregory spotted the City Math application sitting on his desk and grabbed a pencil, ready to attack it. But it wasn’t until Sunday night that he finally filled in the description of his project. He called it “The Fibonacci Sequence and Me” and he hoped his summary would be specific enough to please the City Math people and vague enough that if he came up with any presentation that even used the word Fibonacci in it, he wouldn’t get disqualified.
Suffering from a brief case of inspiration, Gregory even went back to the library and checked out books that mentioned the sequence. You have to be prepared, he told himself. He put the books neatly in a pile right beside his bed, certain he’d learn fascinating Fibonacci facts at some point … but City Math wasn’t tomorrow.
With the City Math deadline pressure off, Gregory started going to the Slice after school again. A few times, he worked on his journal while Kelly did her homework, the two of them spreading their work out across a big table. Gregory would pass his notebook over when he’d written something, and Kelly would give him her math problems to look at so he could pass the time.
Gregory felt he got the better of the deal, though he did once catch a multiplication mistake for Kelly. She hugged him and gave him a full strawberry pie to bring home that night. His parents and Kay then hugged him, and even O gave a thumbs up. Not bad for a bit of math work, Gregory thought.
O also made a pleasurable moan when he ate the pie, and much of the after-dinner conversation was about whether or not that violated his vow of silence. O said nothing, though afterward everyone realized that he had eaten another whole piece of pie while the family debated.
