When Christopher woke up Monday morning, his “vacation” was over. He was going back to school. Back to Brady Collins and Jenny Hertzog saying “Floods.” But most importantly, he was going back after missing two whole weeks.
Even Special Ed is going to be smarter than me now, he thought. He looked down. One little Froot Loop floated like a life raft in the milk.
“I will be here to pick you up at three,” she said as she dropped him off. “Do NOT leave this school.”
“Yes, Mom,” he said.
Christopher’s mother gave him an extra-long hug, then he walked to the entrance. Normally, he was ignored until he reached homeroom, but this morning, he was the “missing” kid. When the pigtail girls saw him, they stopped jumping rope and stared. A couple of the kids said “Hey.” Then, the twin brothers ran up to the school. The minute they saw him, something amazing happened.
“Hey, Christopher. Heads up,” Mike said and tossed him their little plastic football.
Christopher couldn’t believe it. Matt and Mike wanted to play with him. He looked up, and saw the ball sailing down at him. He was so bad at sports, but he prayed with all his heart that he wouldn’t miss the ball. It came down, and right before it almost hit him in the nose…
He caught it!
“Hey, Chris. Hit me deep,” Matt with the lazy-eye patch said. Then, he started to run.
Christopher knew he couldn’t throw, so he thought really quick about how to keep himself in the game.
“Flea flicker,” he said and tossed the ball underhand to Mike.
It worked! Mike grabbed the ball and sailed it twenty yards down the sidewalk to his brother. A perfect spiral.
They spent the next three minutes throwing the ball together. But to Christopher, it was as fun as a whole Saturday. He ended up being pretty good at catching the ball.
Mike and Matt, who liked to be called the M&M’s, actually said he was pretty fast, too. Mike was older than Matt by three minutes and taller by two inches. And he never let him live that down. But if anyone else made fun of Matt, look out. Especially Matt’s lazy-eye patch. Jenny Hertzog somehow got away with “Pirate Parrot.” But if anyone else said it, Mike would simply beat them up.
Even fifth graders.
When Christopher got to homeroom, the chatter stopped, and all eyes were on him. Christopher sat down next to Special Ed, trying to blend into his desk. But the M&M’s hovered, asking what happened to Christopher when he went missing.
Christopher was normally very shy when kids talked to him, but the brothers were being so nice. So, as the class waited for Ms. Lasko to be her usual five minutes late, he told them the story. As he spoke, he noticed that no one else in the room was talking. All ears were on him.
Suddenly, Christopher felt a little more confident. So, he started to add details about the hospital and getting to stay up late and watch The Tonight Show, which was very impressive to everyone.
“You stayed up past midnight!? Holy shit,” Mike said.
“Holy shit,” Matt said, trying to be as tough as his brother.
Christopher was in the middle of the story of the old woman in the men’s room when he suddenly felt a voice.
“Shut up, faker.”
Christopher looked up and saw Brady Collins. He got a haircut in the two weeks Christopher was gone. He looked even meaner without bangs.
“You pretended to get lost. I know you met your boyfriend in the woods, you big faker. Now shut up,” Brady said.
Christopher’s face turned red. He immediately got quiet.
“He’s telling us a story, Brady,” Mike said.
“Yeah, he’s telling us a story,” Matt echoed.
“So, shut up,” Special Ed said with newfound bravado, knowing that Mike was there to back him up.
The room got pin-drop tense.
Christopher immediately tried to keep the peace. “It’s okay, guys. I’ll stop.”
“No, Chris. Screw him,” Mike said.
“Yeah. Screw him,” Special Ed said, beating Matt to the punch.
Mike finally smirked and whispered, “Sit your ass down, Brady, before I give it a new crack.”
Brady’s eyes narrowed to slits. He looked violent. Until the girl with the freckles laughed. And then, the geek with glasses laughed. And pretty soon, everyone was laughing. Except Brady. He looked angry and embarrassed and suddenly small. But he was still as dangerous as seventy-five pounds could be. Christopher had seen that kind of violence in someone’s eyes before. Jerry was just a lot bigger.
“So, what happened after the old woman?” Mike asked.
Christopher started to tell the story again, and he was so grateful for new friends that he did something daring. He did his impersonation of Leonardo di Pinchy from Bad Cat 3D.
“Were you going to finish that story?” he finished, doing his best Bad Cat.
All the kids laughed. Story time was over when Ms. Lasko finally came into class with her thermos and bloodshot eyes. She fished out a couple of aspirins from a tin in her desk, then said the worst two words in the English language.
“Pop quiz.”
The kids groaned. Christopher’s heart fell. First period was math. Dreaded math.
“Come on now. We’ve spent the last two weeks working on addition. You can do this, boys and girls,” she said as she gave a small stack of quizzes to each kid in the front row. The tests moved back like a wave at a football game. Christopher sank in his chair. He felt Ms. Lasko’s manicure on his shoulder.
“Christopher, I don’t expect you to know how to do this. Just give it your best shot. You can always retake it. Okay?” she said.
Christopher nodded, but it wasn’t okay. He was always terrible at math, and now he was two weeks behind. He was going to fail, and his mom was going to have to say, “Don’t worry. Keep trying. You’ll get it.”
He wrote his name in the upper-right-hand corner with a big green pencil. Then, he looked up at the clock. The red seconds hand swooshed past the twelve, and it was exactly eight o’clock in the morning.
Christopher looked at the first problem.
2 + 7 = ____
Ms. Lasko always liked to start with a really easy one to give the kids confidence.
2 + 7 = 9
He was sure that was right. Christopher looked down at the test. Only six more problems. He was determined to get at least one more right. At least one more.
24 + 9 = _____
Christopher stopped. Normally nines were really tricky because it never got all the way to ten. If it were twenty-four plus ten, that would be pretty easy. Thirty-four. No problem. But then Christopher figured out something. Just add ten and take off one. That made sense. That was easy. His big green pencil put down the answer.
24 + 9 = 33
He couldn’t believe it. He got the first two right. If he could just get one more, that would be three of seven. Three plus seven is ten. Ten minus seven is three. He looked at the next problem. It was a money problem.
If you had two nickels, one dime, and one quarter, how much money would you have? ______ cents.
Ms. Lasko always liked to challenge them on the third one. And normally, this was the time Christopher would feel stupid. But not this time. Christopher realized the money was just numbers. And if he could add two numbers, he could add four numbers.
45 cents!
Christopher was so excited, he almost jumped out of his chair. He never got the first three on a pop quiz. Never.
36 - 17 =
Ms. Lasko was being smart again, but he knew what to do now. Thirty-six minus sixteen plus one.
36 - 17 = 19
Slowly, he got this feeling. A small quiet hope that maybe, just maybe he could get a perfect for his mom. He never got a perfect on a test. Not in any subject. Not in his whole life. His mom would buy him Froot Loops for a year.
If you were at the baseball game for 1 hour and 6 minutes, how many minutes is that?
This was Ms. Lasko being nice again. Any kid could look up at the clock and count around the clock face if they wanted to. But Christopher didn’t need to. Sixty tick tick ticks. With six more.
66 minutes
Two more to go. He wanted that perfect so badly. He wanted his mom to be proud of him. He didn’t even care about the Froot Loops. He looked at the next problem, tap tap tapping the green pencil.
There are 91 people on a boat, but only 85 life jackets. How many more life jackets are needed?
Christopher took the numbers out of the words and saw ninety-one minus eighty-five. And this time, he didn’t even need to do ninety-one minus ten and add four. He didn’t need to do anything. He just understood.
6 life jackets
The last question. Christopher could barely bring himself to look. He only needed one more answer to get a perfect. Brady Collins got them all the time. So did Dominic Chiccinelli. Kevin Dorwart. Even Jenny Hertzog. But this was his.
Bonus Problem:
12 x 4 =
Christopher’s heart sank. He had only started to learn multiplication before he went to the woods. There was no way he could figure this out. So, he just thought about the number twelve. And how there were twelve people in the jury box in his mom’s old movies on Friday nights. And how if there were four movies, that would be four sets of twelve jurors. And how that would be forty-eight jurors.
Christopher stopped breathing.
The answer was forty-eight.
He knew it. Like the moment he learned how to tie his own shoe or know his left from his right (your left hand makes an L!). His mind went CLICK. Everything in his brain that had been cloudy was lifted.
Bonus Problem:
12 x 4 = 48
Christopher had to make extra sure he would get that first perfect, so before he put down his pencil, he went back over the whole test. He did each problem again. And when he got to number three, he stopped.
If you had two nickels, one dime, and one quarter, how much money would you have?
It didn’t even occur to Christopher the first time through. This was a math test after all. Not a reading test. But there were so many letters. And he realized he didn’t switch his letters back. Not once. He had read the sentence without even sounding it out. He thought there must be something wrong, so he read it again.
If you had two nickels, one dime, and one quarter, how much money would you have?
45. Or forty-five. There were so many e’s. Five to be exact. But that didn’t stop him. And nickels didn’t look like…
ncikels
They were nickels. And one quarter was one quarter, not…
Qautrer
His chest was pounding now. He looked up at the posters around the room. The ones that had given him trouble all month.
RAEIDNG IS FNUDAEMATL
He didn’t even have to sound it out. He did it all in his brain.
READING IS FUNDAMENTAL
All the sound faded away.
DRAE TO KEEP KIDS FOF DRUGS
There was only the room and the sound of Christopher’s mind.
DARE TO KEEP KIDS OFF DRUGS
Christopher could read!
He put his head on his desk and tried to hide his excitement. He wasn’t stupid anymore. And his mom didn’t have to pretend anymore. She would never need to say, “Don’t worry. Keep trying. You’ll get it.” He finally got it. He would make his mother proud with his test.
Not Mom proud. Real proud.
Christopher was about to put his big green pencil on his desk and raise his hand for Ms. Lasko when he stopped. Christopher looked around and realized all the other kids were still taking their tests. Heads were down. And big green pencils were going swish swish swish like the doctor’s pen in the hospital. Most of the kids were still on problem number two including Brady Collins.
That’s when Christopher finally looked up at the clock. The test had started at eight o’clock that morning. Christopher didn’t even need to do the math in his head. He just knew.
He had taken the test in forty-two seconds.
He was so proud that he didn’t even notice the beginning of a headache.