by Greg Pincus
“It’s not that. I just don’t see what you see, O. I wish I did.”
“No, you don’t,” O said as he placed a final plate in the drying rack. “You just wish it didn’t matter.”
As his brother walked off, Gregory slapped the soapy dishwater in frustration. The power of dessert had deserted him in a time of need. That left a bad taste in his mouth that even the memory of the apple pie couldn’t make disappear.
“One good idea to help me move forward, but I took two steps backward,” Gregory moaned to Kelly on the phone later from the safety of the foot well under his desk.
“Why didn’t you just say, ‘No. I don’t want to be on the stage’?” Kelly asked.
“Would you have said that with my mom and dad staring at you?”
“Yeah.” Kelly didn’t even pause before she said it.
“Okay, fine, you would’ve. But that’s because you’re not their son.”
“True. And impossible on a lotta levels.” Kelly’s voice was sympathetic and laughing simultaneously, and it made Gregory smile for the first time since the nonmeat hit the table.
“Can I have more time?” Gregory asked quietly as he crawled out from under the desk.
“More time?”
“I promised I’d tell my parents about the poetry today. I know. It didn’t go right, and now I need another day or maybe a week or two because I have to go work on my math.” Gregory paced as he talked.
“Work on your math? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard you say, Gregory K.!” Kelly said as she tried and failed to suppress her giggles.
“I’m teaching class, Kelly. And doing City Math. It’s not funny.”
“Of course you can have more time. And you’ll do great in class. I guarantee you’ll know more about Fibonacci than anyone in the room. Except maybe Mr. Davis. It’s gonna be fine.”
Kelly always managed to calm Gregory down … at least when she wanted to. So after he hung up, he was relaxed enough to spend time getting stressed out working on his math.
Yet the funny thing was, even with the stress, he kind of enjoyed the work.
Mr. Davis had given him lots of freedom when he said “teach the class about Fibonacci.” Gregory figured this was because it would never show up on a test, so there was no specific concept he had to get across. It was like a free day … only with a lesson and a kid teacher. Still, the lack of restrictions helped him a ton.
Over the next two weeks, he worked hard, focusing on Fibonacci and writing up what he could. Kelly had been right again, he noticed: Preparing to teach got him to put together his City Math presentation too. Sure, it wasn’t a very complex thing to create — after all, even he could understand the math in it — but it was more than he’d ever expected to get done. Plus, he still had a few days left to write up the speech he’d have to give there. Perhaps total embarrassment wasn’t the only option after all.
As the days passed, he also kept up with his math journal, writing about what was going on in class again as Mr. Davis had requested. He worked with Kelly and Alex on a big English project. He even managed not to get annoyed with O, though part of that was because his brother never left the Lab except for meals.
The night before he was due to teach, Gregory reviewed his work: He had props, notes, and even a poem. Best of all, as Kelly had said, no one in the room was going to hassle him about the math. In fact, he thought, he might even know more about Fibonacci than Mr. Davis did at this point.
He was going to be the expert, and it felt good. He felt good. All was good.
Until the next day when he walked into the classroom.
“Dad? What are you doing here?” Gregory asked with alarm as he pushed open Mr. Davis’s classroom door. There could be nothing worse than this — an actual Fibonacci expert in the room … and his dad on top of it all.
“He was just leaving,” Mr. Davis said, clearly urging Gregory’s father to head to the door.
“I had some meetings cancel, son, so I wanted to check in with Mr. Davis to see how you were doing,” his dad said. “Sounds like everything’s going well.”
“It’s fine. I told you that. Remember?” Droplets of sweat formed on Gregory’s forehead. “I told you that, Dad.”
“Although he hasn’t seen your City Math project,” his dad continued. “And you only have four days left.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about,” Gregory said with a thin smile. “I should’ve guessed.”
“Actually, Gregory, your father really did stop by to see if there was anything he might be able to do to help you, in class or in City Math,” Mr. Davis said. “And I told him to listen and answer any questions you have and not to bury you in math books even if you ask.”
“Ummm. I’m not likely to ask, ya know,” Gregory said with a shrug.
“Better safe than sorry!” Mr. Davis exclaimed. He once again gently led Gregory’s father toward the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a class to teach.”
Gregory was amazed — Mr. Davis had just told a little fib. And it wasn’t just that he fibbed, but that he fibbed to try and help. Because Mr. Davis wasn’t teaching today. Gregory was. Yet there was Mr. Davis doing everything he could to get the surprise visitor out of the class.
And it was working!
“I’ll see you at dinner, Gregory?” his dad said as he moved toward the door. Gregory slowly exhaled and nodded, relieved to see his father heading off.
But right then, the door opened as more of his classmates piled in, Alex front and center among them.
“Hey, hey, hey, G. You invited your dad to watch you teach? You rock!” Alex said, temporarily oblivious to how unlikely that really was.
And so it was that Gregory’s father stayed in class and watched him sweat, shake, and pace as the room filled up.
And so it was that Gregory pulled Kelly aside and said, “You promised I’d know more than anyone!” and all Kelly could do was shrug helplessly and take her seat.
And so it was that when Gregory began talking about Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Fibonacci, and described the number sequence that bears the mathematician’s name … his father raised his hand, timidly at first, before waving it broadly from side to side.
“Yes, Dad,” Gregory said with a sigh. “Do you have a question?”
“Did you say that Fibonacci discovered the sequence because he thought it would explain how rabbit populations grow?” his dad asked.
“No, I didn’t say that,” Gregory said.
“But it’s true, isn’t it? He thought that rabbits would have babies in a set pattern. You’d add the numbers of one generation, and that would tell you how many would be in the next generation.”
“Yes, Dad,” Gregory said. “And I had been saving that information until later. Because I wanted to show that even with math, your favorite follow-the-rules thing, sometimes you just barge ahead and try and fail and find something anyway.”
A bit of nervous, excited murmuring filled the room as a few students enjoyed the “gotcha” moment. Gregory’s dad looked like he was going to reply, but Gregory didn’t give him a chance. “Now, I’m gonna go on, and if you want to add more when I’m done, I’ll give you time. I promise. But I learned a lot of this from you, Dad, okay? So can I just go on? Please?”
Without waiting for an answer, Gregory continued with his Fibonacci lesson, talking and walking through the class as if following in his teacher’s daily footsteps. It took him a little bit to get back into his groove, but by the time he held up a single daisy he’d had Mr. Davis get for him, he knew the class was into it.
“Fibonacci numbers are everywhere in nature. Most daisies have thirty-four petals, and some of them have fifty-five or eighty-nine. Those are all Fibonacci numbers. Weird, huh? But it’s true!”
Led by Gregory, the class counted the daisy’s petals. When they finished at thirty-four, the class “ooooohed” appropriately. From his unfamiliar position at the front of the room, Gregory could barely believe w
hat he heard, let alone what he saw: One of his classmates was writing down notes; another was slack-jawed in amazement as if Fibonacci numbers on a flower were the most magical thing ever; many other students were leaning forward in their seats, utterly engrossed.
“But it’s not just the numbers that matter,” Gregory said, driven by a new burst of adrenaline. “It’s the space between them. Okay, this is complicated and I’m sure my dad or Mr. Davis could explain it in detail, but here’s what’s important.”
Gregory walked over to the rolling chair behind Mr. Davis’s desk and grabbed a giant sunflower they had stashed there. The class “oooohed” again when they saw it.
“You see the spirals in the center of this sunflower? Those are because of Fibonacci numbers and something called the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean. The math is about dividing the numbers by the previous one in the series and finding a value called phi and how curves kinda can follow that ratio and in a … way … it kinda … divides and … like …” Gregory thrust the flower toward the class. “Like this!”
The way the Golden Mean related to a spiral didn’t quite make sense to him yet, despite all his work, but he realized that it probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone else in the room either. And more to the point, they didn’t need to know it right now. They’d enjoy it for what it was without the detailed math. Well, besides his dad and Mr. Davis, anyway.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking. That’s cool, Gregory Korenstein-Jasperton. But can you show me any way I can use the Fibonacci numbers other than counting flower petals?” Gregory walked to his father and handed him the giant sunflower. “Here … you can give this to Mom tonight.”
The class giggled as Gregory turned and headed to the chalkboard. He wrote in big, solid numbers — 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.
“Those are the first numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, okay? At first, I thought they were totally useless too. I mean it’s nice and all … but when would I use them in my life? Like, I subtract all the time, trying to figure out how many minutes are left in Mr. Mason’s history class, so I understand why math matters there. But Fibonacci numbers? Didn’t seem like they’d come up.”
Gregory snuck a peek at his dad. He seemed to be enjoying the show, and Gregory figured that was because his dad knew he’d shared at least a dozen interesting applications of the Fibonacci sequence in architecture and science, not to mention higher math, and was probably wondering which one his son would choose.
“Then one day,” Gregory continued with a big smile, “we wrote haiku in English class.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Gregory saw his father’s face freeze, completely lost. The kids in the class however, moaned and grumbled in recognition.
“And I figured, why do we have to write a poem with that weird syllable pattern? Five seven five? Why not use a real math formula instead of something arbitrary?” Gregory put chalk to chalkboard. “So I started writing poems I call Fibs, using the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence as the number of syllables in each line of my poems. I stopped after the number eight. So …”
On the board, Gregory wrote a Fib. When he was done, he had the class read it aloud, almost like a chant:
Hey
Hey
I say
Want an A?
Make it a great day —
Do math the Mr. Davis way!
When he finally finished up his talk, the class applauded. It felt nice, and he had to admit that in all his dreams up until now, applause in math class had never made an appearance.
As the students gathered up their books to move to the next class, Mr. Davis and his father came up to him. Mr. Davis was beaming, the proud teacher. His father, though …
His father shook his head. “I don’t understand why you’d use that example of how to use the Fibonacci sequence.”
“Dad …” Gregory wanted to enjoy the glow. He gave high fives as the kids in the class headed past him on the way out the door.
“I gave you many fascinating examples of how to use the numbers,” his father continued.
“They were fascinating to you, Dad. But you know what?” Gregory took a deep breath and turned his focus solely on his father. “I like poetry. I write poetry, Dad. So I used that as an example. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it.”
“I see,” his father said, though he clearly didn’t. “Well, it was great to see you talking about math, Gregory. It’s wonderful to share what you love.”
“I love writing, Dad,” Gregory said. And for the second time today, he got applause. This time, though, it was only from Kelly, who was standing at the door waiting for him. In Gregory’s ears, her applause was louder than when the whole class had clapped.
Gregory couldn’t read his father’s face. There was definitely hurt in his eyes, but there was more. Something deeper than he’d expected. He braced himself for whatever would come next.
“I’m glad I came today, Gregory,” his father said with no hint of … well … anything. “We’ll talk more at dinner.”
Gregory, Kelly, and Mr. Davis watched his father leave. They stood silently until the door closed, then Kelly ran over and hugged Gregory tightly.
“I’m so proud of you,” she sort of whispered in his ear.
“Me too,” Mr. Davis whispered loudly from nearby.
“Great. You guys want to come to dinner?” Gregory asked.
But there were no takers. He was going to have to deal with his father, mother, and siblings alone, and somehow, he didn’t think Fibonacci was going to help him.
Kelly walked home with Gregory after school. She was as happy as he was sullen, which meant that she was really, really, really happy.
“You said it out loud, Gregory K.! Don’t you feel great?” Kelly danced around him, pirouetting, spinning, and moving her arms in a mix of ballet and sheer, gleeful spontaneity.
“No. I feel … I feel …” Gregory shrugged. “Nothing.”
“You need a plan.” Kelly poked Gregory in the shoulder repeatedly as she circled around him. “A plan. Come on. Say it with me.”
“Kelly, I planned this before, and you know what happened? I wasted an apple pie. Today, no plan, and look where we are.”
“Dancing in the streets!” Kelly leapt into the air and landed in front of Gregory.
“Maybe you,” Gregory said as he sidestepped his friend and kept walking.
“Come on, G. Who gets in trouble for telling their parents they like something they do in school? You like writing. Writing’s good.” Kelly skipped alongside her friend.
“I didn’t use his math, Kelly. I wrote poetry instead. Did you see his face?”
Kelly’s skipping might have missed a beat, though Gregory couldn’t be sure. “Okay … but did he like the poem?”
“What’s that have to do with anything?” Gregory asked sharply.
“Well … I … do you care if I liked it?” Kelly asked.
“Of course!” Gregory said. The two moved down the sidewalk in silence until eventually Gregory added, “And did you like it?”
“I did!” Kelly kicked at an aging dandelion in a sidewalk crack and sent its white seeds flying through the air. “I saw Mr. Davis smile too.”
“Good. Because I gave him a handwritten copy,” Gregory said as he tried to catch a few flying seeds. “You know … just in case.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little weird that your math teacher has seen more of your poetry than your parents?” Kelly asked. “I’m just saying.”
Kelly peeled off toward her front porch, heading up the well-worn path in the grass that Gregory had followed so many times. She kept talking as she went, but all Gregory really heard in the fading words was “proud,” “talk later,” and “smadjalate,” though he was not sure about the latter.
As he walked on alone, Gregory’s feet traced out a familiar route, heading from Kelly’s house to his. It was another gorgeous day, light dappling the sidewalk through leaves and fluffy clouds, but it could’ve been storming and
he wouldn’t have noticed. Sometimes, Gregory realized, he got so wrapped up in everything inside himself that he failed to see what was outside. So, he pulled his eyes up from watching his feet and looked around.
The street was lined with nice, neat houses with neat, trimmed lawns. There was order in the layout, and familiarity in it too. Gregory thought about all the times he’d walked this same route — in the morning, after school, late at night when he and Kelly were both supposed to be home but he’d written something he had to show her. These houses, the sidewalk, the grass, and the people around him were all still going to be here, Gregory thought, even when Kelly wasn’t.
He wondered how Kelly was looking at the town now that she was leaving. When she traced out the route to school, did it make her feel good or did the memories make it worse? He wasn’t sure.
Gregory had long ago accepted that he would never see the world the way Kelly did, but somehow, despite their differences, they had stayed friends. And he knew it wasn’t just because they’d grown up knowing each other. He’d had other “default” friends, but now he only saw them on the birthday-party circuit or in school. Kelly was different.
He’d asked her once, about a year ago, why she thought they were friends. “You make me laugh, Gregory K.,” she’d said, “and I love the way your brain works, even though sometimes I wish I could kick it instead of your calf.” For Gregory, the calf kick was a brain kick, but he decided not to parse the difference with her.
Gregory rounded a corner, heading for home. He’d lived his whole life on this street, and his whole life had had Kelly in it. It was hard for him to imagine school without her. And when he did … he decided it was better not to imagine school without her, even though it was clear he was going to have to deal with it next year.
Yet it was even harder thinking about the time outside of school. He knew he’d miss the fun he and Kelly had writing, eating, and talking. And he’d miss how her cheeks pinched when she smiled and her fork moved like lightning when there was only one piece of pie to split.
In truth, he thought Kelly was probably the best mix of smart, nice, and funny that existed anywhere in town and maybe in the world. It was a strong opinion, he knew, but he thought he had proof he was right: Even O liked Kelly.
