Chapter 18
Mark’s Strength, Mark’s Weakness
“What are you looking at?” Mark asked, his wide eyes peering over Mark’s backpack to see.
“None of your beeswax,” Mark snapped. “Just do some problems on your own or something for a few minutes.”
Mark shrugged and turned to the math. He had paid very close attention that day when Miss Payley went over how to convert mixed numbers into improper fractions, but of course now that he was looking at a page of problems, he had no idea what to do. It had something to do with adding and multiplying . . . or was it subtracting and dividing? “So you . . . add and then divide?” he asked the other Mark cautiously.
“What? Look it up,” Mark said. He glared harder at the Mastermind pamphlet, as though he could intimidate it into changing its content. “I’m busy.”
Mark frowned. “Are you having a bad day?” he asked.
Mark softened a bit. No one had ever really asked him how his day was going before. “I just don’t have time for this. It was going to be bad enough preparing for the Mastermind tournament without them changing the rules.”
“Oh! That’s the thing Mr. Rocco was talking about, right? What is it all about?”
“What is it about? It’s about being the best.” In one long, impassioned rant, Mark explained the history of the tournament and the fact that his father had won it three years in a row. He told Mark how long he’d been preparing, how moronic it was that they changed the rules (though he was sure to win anyway), and how big a trophy the winner got. He told him everything except the part about having more than one artistic ability.
“Wow. That sounds really hard.”
“Oh, it takes a lot of planning, but it’s not hard.”
Mark doodled a trophy on a piece of loose-leaf paper. Then, with just a few tiny strokes of his pencil, he made it look as though the trophy was glistening in the sun. “Maybe I’ll enter it,” he said. How impressed his family would be if he won something like that for being smart! It would be like the day he found out he was in all honors classes, only ten times more exciting.
“Ha,” Mark said with his you-couldn’t-beat-me-if-you-tried look. “I mean,” he added, “you could. But it’s really a lot of work. So if you don’t think you could win in every single part—the good grades and the essay and everything—it’s really not worth it.” He had to make sure there weren’t any other report cards or essays with the name Mark Hopper on them. And that there wasn’t another drawing with that name, either.
“Yeah, I guess,” Mark said. His face twisted into a half frown. “But that new teamwork part sounds fun. I like when you have to do something as a group. Like in gym when you have to hold hands with a big group and tangle yourselves up and then find a way out of it. We did that at my old school.”
“Whatever,” said Mark, not knowing what Mark was talking about and thinking that it didn’t sound remotely fun. Holding hands in gym? Come on.
“You never did that?” Mark asked. He didn’t say it, but he figured that was probably for the best. He couldn’t picture Mark as much of a team player. He watched as Mark read the Mastermind rules as though they were his last chance of surviving all alone on a desert island. He was determined; he had to give him that. And when he stopped caring so much about being the best, he could even be kind of fun to talk to. It isn’t that I like the other Mark, Mark thought, but some people might if he’d just give them a reason to. Mark thought all of this while absentmindedly sketching a miniature version of his portrait of Grandpa Murray. After a few minutes, he caught the other Mark studying him from the corner of his eye. “Sorry,” he said, feeling his ears turn red. “I just really like drawing. I want to work on this drawing over the weekend, and my art teacher says we’re allowed to take them home if we want, but it’s just hard because my dad only comes to Greenburgh on weekends.”
“Your dad doesn’t live with you?” Mark asked, surprised.
Mark shook his head. “Not right now.”
Mark eyed Mark curiously. He wanted to ask a lot of questions, but he didn’t want Mark to ask any of him in return. He also kind of wanted to pat the other Mark on the back, but he didn’t do that, either. What he did do was put the Mastermind rules aside and say, “We’d better do the math before Miss Payley comes in.”
“You know,” Mark said carefully after he had finished all of the math homework. “I can tell you about all of the teamwork stuff we did at my old school. You know, the rules and things, and what the teachers were looking for when we did it. Maybe some of it will be the same at the tournament.” He stole a quick glance at Mark’s face—he didn’t know if Mark would take his offer as a statement that he wasn’t good enough to win the tournament on his own—and then went back to packing up his backpack. When he was finished packing up and the other Mark still hadn’t said anything, Mark looked up to find him staring at him with his eyebrows raised.
“Why would you do that for me?” Mark asked.
Mark shrugged. “Why not? You’re really helping me with the math. And I’ve done that sort of thing before, so that’s something I can help you with . . . maybe, if you want. Besides, since I’m not entering the tournament, I might as well help someone named Mark Hopper win.” He chanced a smile.
Mark crossed his arms. “All right.”
Mark widened his eyes in surprise. He nodded excitedly.
“Not that I couldn’t do it on my own,” Mark added quickly, “but it never hurts to be overprepared. And since we have to meet anyway . . . Maybe next week after we do the math we can start preparing?”
Mark kept nodding, like his head was on a spring. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll think about it and try to remember everything about it from last year. Cool! This’ll be fun. See you later.”
“Wait,” Mark called. “Um, it’s pretty stupid how you are so scared to talk to teachers and stuff”—he wrinkled his forehead—“I mean, you need to not be so scared to say what you think all the time. Even argue sometimes . . . not necessarily as much as me, but, you know . . .” He sighed. It was so hard to say what he wanted to say when he was trying to be nice about it. “Anyway, if you want, I can help you with that, too.”
“All right,” Mark said. “How about next Wednesday we talk about that, too?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
They looked at each other awkwardly.
“All right.”
“Okay. See you later.”
“Oh, yeah. Have fun seeing your dad this weekend.”
Mark laughed. “Thanks,” he said. “But I’ll see you tomorrow in homeroom.”