CHAPTER TWENTY

APPREHENSION

ap·pre·hen·sion

noun \ap-ri-hen-shǒn\

—fearful expectation or anticipation

The next morning at the playground, I pulled Jonathan aside. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I hung my head and rearranged the gravel with my shoes.

“What?”

“Chewy ate your thumb drive,” I said and then bit my lip.

“He what?”

“He ate your thumb drive,” I repeated. “But we got him to throw it up again by feeding him my mom’s meatloaf.”

Jonathan’s face contorted to an odd combination of amusement and shock.

“My aunt ordered another Incredible Hulk thumb drive last night to replace yours—but please tell me there wasn’t anything else on it besides the spreadsheets.”

He thought for a minute and then shook his head. “Nope. This was my first school project since I got it.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “I am so sorry, Jonathan. That dumb dog eats everything.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I think it’s funny you fed him your mom’s meatloaf to make him throw up.”

“You haven’t tried it,” I said.

He laughed and started to walk off.

I grabbed his arm. “Wait. That’s not all.”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows.

“He ate the spreadsheets, too.”

“But they were saved on the thumb—”

I put both hands up. “It’s okay. My aunt and I redid them. I just didn’t want you wondering why the spreadsheets I had today weren’t the ones you did yesterday.”

He shrugged. “As long as we have them, I don’t care who did them.”

“Thanks for being so nice about the whole thumb drive and spreadsheet mess.”

He smiled. “No problem.”

The bell rang for the start of the day and we headed to Ms. Carpenter’s room. During math time, as the class assembled their projects, Ms. Carpenter told us both our principal, Mr. Morris, and the librarian, Mrs. Gottry, were going to be the judges. “They will choose one Best of Show project from the whole fifth grade. Everyone in the winning group will receive a trophy and a free ice cream sundae at Peghiny’s Ice Cream Parlor,” Ms. Carpenter said.

Peghiny’s Ice Cream was the best in the world. They had some of the craziest flavors I’d ever heard of, like Pink Mud Pie, Alien Gloop, and my personal favorite, Banana-Coco-Choco-Loco. Any prize from Peghiny’s was a prize worth fighting for.

“It’s hard to believe tomorrow’s the big day,” Jonathan said, looking around the classroom. Glue bottles, markers, scissors, scraps of construction paper, poster boards, and foam core displays littered the desks and floor.

Tomorrow.

It could spell the beginning of the end of my summer if things didn’t go well. I had no crazy expectations about the judging. One group in our class, whose topic was fractions, was bringing in pizza to share. I also heard the division group was going to be using Hershey bars as part of their display. Our photographs were awesome, but how could we possibly compete with pizza and chocolate?

Jolina followed my gaze toward the fractions group.

“Everybody does pizza with fractions. And if they don’t do pizza, they do apples or pie. It’s way too predictable,” she whispered. “They may have the math lesson down, but I doubt they’ll score high creativity or originality points. Their display doesn’t look much fun, anyway.”

“I don’t know,” said Jonathan. “Free pizza? I mean, holy cow! That’ll make fractions fun for anyone!”

Lucille giggled. “Don’t you mean whole-y cow? Get it? Whole-y? As in whole.”

I gave Lucille a blank stare. Obviously I wasn’t the only one affected by all the math.

Our display was a large tri-fold board of foam core into which I had poured all my creativity and energy. I had cut it to look like a giant tombstone and was meticulously gluing down letters to spell out MORTY’S MATH MEMORIAL across the top of the board. The twelve beautiful photos Aunt Willa had given us were lined up perfectly under the words. And under each photograph was the spreadsheet listing the animal’s average life span in different time units ranging from seconds to years. I had to admit, it was kind of fun to discover that a Galapagos land tortoise lived, on average, 5,581,872,000 seconds.

The surprise prop Jolina brought was perfect. It was a stuffed opossum her mom found at the toy store. Jolina placed it on its back and arranged its paws to hold a small ball.

Lucille traced her finger around the edge of the board. “I’m so excited! I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight. It’s a good thing the math fair is first thing in the morning, or I’d go nuts waiting!”

“I know what you mean,” I said, rubbing the glue from my hands. “Only I’m more nervous than excited. I mean, two test grades? That still freaks me out.”

Jolina stood up the board. “You have to admit your feelings about math have changed a little, though, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, a little, I guess. But that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about something as major as this. All my summer fun rides on this project!”

Jonathan picked up the stuffed opossum and tossed it back and forth in his hands. “If you’re going to worry about something, Ella, worry about Harry. He’s in the same group as Jimmy and Jean-Pierre and their topic is estimation. Last I heard, Jean-Pierre will be taking bets on the number of Triple-Fire Fireballs Harry can eat within a two-minute period—without throwing up, of course—and Jimmy is going to write everyone’s estimations down. The student who’s closest will get to take home a bag of Fireballs!”

We all turned to look at the daring Fireball trio. The title of their booth said it all: HARRY’S TRIPLE-FIRE FIREBALL ESTIMATION EXTRAVAGANZA. The boys were huddled around their booth, leaning over a bowl as Jimmy dumped in bright red candy from a large bag. Harry took a piece, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.

“What’s he doing? Practicing?” Jolina asked.

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. “With Harry, you never really know.”