Nilly Does Simple Math
WHEN LISA WALKED out the door the next morning, Nilly was standing across the street with his backpack on, kicking rocks.
“What are you waiting for?” Lisa asked.
Nilly shrugged and said, “To see if anyone walks by who’s going the same way as me.”
“No one’s going to come by,” Lisa said. “This is a dead-end street and we live at the end of it.”
“Well then,” Nilly said, and they started walking down Cannon Avenue together.
“Proctor invited us to come over after school for the Last Big Powder Test,” Nilly said. “Are you coming?”
“Of course,” Lisa said. “Are you excited?”
“As excited as a little kid,” said Nilly.
When they’d made it almost all the way down to the main road, Lisa stopped and pointed at the house at the bottom of Cannon Avenue.
“That’s where Truls and Trym live,” she said. “If I see them come out, I usually wait here until they’re gone. If I don’t see them, I run quickly past. Come on …”
Lisa took Nilly’s hand and was about to run, but Nilly held her back.
“I don’t want to run,” he said. “And I don’t want to wait, either.”
“But …,” Lisa began.
“Remember, there’s two of us,” Nilly said. “There’s just as many of us as Truls and Trym. At least. It’s simple math.”
So they walked past Truls and Trym’s house. Nilly was walking really, really slowly, Lisa thought. She could still tell that he was a little scared, though, because he was constantly looking over at the house. But luckily neither Truls nor Trym came out, and Lisa looked at her watch and realized they must have gone to school already.
“Do you know what time it is?” she exclaimed in alarm, because she was a good girl and wasn’t used to being late.
“I don’t have a watch,” Nilly said.
“Mrs. Strobe is going to be super pissed. Hurry!”
And they ran so fast that they got there in the time it took you to read from the beginning of this chapter to here.
UNFORTUNATELY, TIME DIDN’T pass as quickly the rest of the day. Nilly was so impatient to get home for the Last Big Powder Test that he sat there in the classroom counting the seconds as he watched Mrs. Strobe’s mouth moving. He wasn’t paying attention, so when he suddenly realized that Mrs. Strobe was pointing at him and that everyone else in class was looking at him, Nilly figured that Mrs. Strobe had probably asked him a question.
“Two thousand six hundred and eighty-one,” Nilly said.
Mrs. Strobe wrinkled her brow and asked, “Is that supposed to be the answer to my question?”
“Not necessarily,” Nilly said. “But that’s how many seconds have passed during this class. Well, now four more have gone by, so now two thousand six hundred and eighty-five seconds have passed. It’s simple math.”
“I understand that,” Mrs. Strobe started. “But Nilly …”
“Excuse me. That isn’t the right answer anymore,” Nilly said. “The right answer is now two thousand six hundred and eighty-nine.”
“To me, it sounds like you’re trying to talk your way out of what I asked you about,” Mrs. Strobe said. “Because you heard what I asked you, right, Nilly?”
“Of course,” Nilly said. “Two thousand six hundred ninety-two.”
“Get to the point,” Mrs. Strobe said, sounding a little irritated now.
“The point,” Nilly said, “is that since there are sixty seconds in a minute and forty-five minutes in each class, I won’t have time to answer your question, since sixty seconds times forty-five is two thousand seven hundred seconds, and that means the bell is going to ring right …”
No one heard the rest of what Nilly said, because the bell started ringing right then, loud and shrill. Mrs. Strobe tried looking sternly at Nilly, but when she yelled, “All right, everyone out!” he could see that she couldn’t quite help but smile anyway.
AFTER LISA AND Nilly had spent sixteen thousand and two hundred seconds together in the classroom and two thousand seven hundred seconds on the playground, they ran away from the school as quickly as they had run toward it. They parted on Cannon Avenue, each opening their own gate, each running up their own front steps, and each flinging their backpack in their own hallway. Then they met again in front of Doctor Proctor’s gate.
“I’m almost dreading it a little,” Lisa said.
“I’m almost looking forward to it a little,” Nilly said.
Then they stormed into the yard and through the tall grass.
“There you guys are!” called the doctor joyfully in his remarkable accent. He was sitting at the picnic table under the pear tree. In front of him lay three tablespoons and a teaspoon, an ice hockey helmet, two knee pads, a mason jar full of powder, a pair of motorcycle pants, and a two-foot-long, rectangular, homemade Jell-O bathed in caramel sauce. “Are you guys ready for the Last Big Powder Test?” he asked.
“Yes!” Lisa and Nilly shouted in unison.
“But first, Jell-O,” said the doctor.
They sat down around the table and each grabbed a spoon.
“On your mark, get set …,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Go!” Nilly yelled, and they flung themselves at the Jell-O. If Nilly had been counting, he wouldn’t have gotten any further than thirty seconds before the two-foot-long Jell-O had vanished completely.
“Good,” Nilly said, patting his stomach.
“Good,” Lisa said, patting her stomach.
“I’ve made a few tiny adjustments to the powder mixture,” Doctor Proctor said.
“I’m ready,” Nilly said, taking the lid off the mason jar.
“Hold on!” the professor said. “I don’t want you to ruin your pants again, so I made these.”
He held up the motorcycle pants. They were very normal, aside from the fact that the seat of the pants had a Velcro flap.
“So the air can pass through unobstructed,” the doctor explained. “I remodeled my old motorcycle gear.”
“Niiice,” Nilly said once he’d put on the pants, which were way too big for him. Lisa just shook her head.
“These, too,” the doctor said, and passed Nilly the hockey helmet and the knee pads. “In case you get knocked over again.”
Nilly put everything on, then crawled up onto the table and over to the mason jar.
“Only one teaspoon!” Doctor Proctor yelled.
“Yeah, yeah!” Nilly said, filling the spoon he was holding in his hand and sticking it into his mouth.
“Okay,” the doctor said, looking at his watch. “We’ll start the countdown then. Seven. Six.”
“Doctor Proctor … ,” Lisa said warily.
“Not now, Lisa. Nilly, hop down from the table and stand over there so you don’t ruin anything. Four. Three,” the doctor continued.
“He didn’t use the teaspoon,” Lisa practically whispered.
“Two,” the doctor said. “What did you say, Lisa?”
“Nilly used that big tablespoon he ate his Jell-O with,” Lisa said.
The doctor stared at Lisa with big, horrified eyes. “One,” he said. “Tablespoon?”
Lisa nodded.
“Oh no,” Doctor Proctor said, running toward Nilly.
“What now?” Lisa whispered.
“Simple math,” Nilly yelled happily. “Zero.”
And then came the bang. And if the earlier bangs had been loud, they were nothing compared to this. This was as if the whole world had exploded. And the air pressure! Lisa felt how her eyelids and lips distorted as she was peppered with dirt and pebbles.
When her eyes settled back into place, the first thing Lisa noticed was that the birds had stopped singing. Then she noticed Doctor Proctor, who was sitting in the grass with a confused look on his face. The leaves from the big pear tree wafted down around him as if it were suddenly fall. But she didn’t see Nilly. She looked to the right, to the left, and behind her. And finally she looked up. But Nilly was nowhere to be seen. Then the first bird cautiously started singing again. And that’s when it occurred to Lisa that she might never, ever see Nilly again and that that would actually be almost as sad as Anna having moved to Sarpsborg.
