Chance sank his teeth deep into his last pencil. It felt good, chewy with a slight crispness to the paint. He worked his way down from the eraser end, examining the perfect tooth marks after each chew.
Ten bites, evenly spaced, and on the tenth, snap. That was the formula. On the tenth bite, he gripped the tip of the pencil between his fingers, sank his teeth a little deeper, and drove his chin down toward his chest hard. The pencil snapped.
Satisfied for the moment, he tossed the halves into his desk where they joined the jumbled, crumpled mess that had gathered since his arrival in Ms. Samson’s class. The math paper he was supposed to be working on would soon be added to the mix.
It was a page of word problems. Butterfly word problems, but butterflies were no different from dandelions or teacups where math was concerned. Actually, math, reading and writing combined. That’s what word problems were.
Pencil disposed of, Chance looked around the room. Ken sat next to him.
He was carefully coloring in the butterflies on his page with pencil crayons. Ken’s page was different from Chance’s. Ken had a baby page. At least, that’s what Martha and some of the other kids, the Martha clones, called it. All pictures and numbers, no words.
It seemed as if Ken didn’t care when they said that, because he didn’t understand English. He was even newer to the class than Chance was. And he had moved a lot farther to come here. All the way from Hong Kong across the Pacific Ocean, Ms. Samson said. Ken didn’t seem to care when the other kids told substitute teachers about him either. “He can’t do that,” they would say, all serious, helping the teacher. “He doesn’t understand English.”
Chance cared though. It made him mad, especially since half the time they were wrong anyway. And Chance suspected that when Ken sat there with his face all blank while they talked about him, he actually did understand. And if he did understand, then he cared too.
Chance cared even more when they said stuff about him. “He’s always bad like that,” they would say loudly. “You have to put his name on the board.” Or, “You should keep him after school.” Or, “Send him to the principal.” As bossy as that, ordering around him and the substitute, both.
He glanced at his paper again, but the words had done nothing to untangle themselves. He knew that if he tried, he would probably be able to find the word butterfly in every problem. And there’d be number words. He knew those. But there were other words too. And with Matilda sitting on that ledge, all alone like she was, he just wasn’t going to try.
Right now, this very minute, Ms. Samson was attaching the last three chrysalides to the butterfly bush. The last three, that is, except for Matilda. Matilda was still a caterpillar. A munching, crunching caterpillar. A caterpillar who could not get enough green guck to eat. But caterpillar through and through.
And Chance knew perfectly well that that was his fault.
Every bit on purpose, he crumpled up his paper, his butterfly-word-problem paper, and threw it right onto Ken’s desk. Ken looked up, startled. And Chance grinned at him. He thought it was a friendly grin, like he was saying, “Forget the baby pages. Look at me!” And, Ken had stopped coloring. He was looking at Chance. But he wasn’t grinning back. Instead, he looked kind of mad.
And one of the Martha clones was calling out, “Ms. Samson, Chance is being bad again.”
“Julie, unless you are in physical danger, I do not appreciate tattling,” Ms. Samson said from the butterfly bush.
“But, Ms. Samson,” said another of the clones, “he’s bugging Ken. And Ken doesn’t even know English.”
“All right, Preeti,” Ms. Samson said. Her voice was sharp. But she did look over. She took in Ken’s angry face and the crumpled paper. The whole class watched, breathless, hoping, Chance knew, that she would do something. But Chance cut her off at the pass. He jumped up and grabbed the paper off Ken’s desk, knocking Ken’s pencil to the floor while he was at it.
“Pick up Ken’s pencil,” Ms. Samson said patiently. But not really. She wasn’t patient at all.
Chance knew how to prove that. He could prove that Ms. Samson wasn’t patient every time. He did it by moving slowly.
He headed for the recycling box.
“I said, pick up Ken’s pencil, Chance,” Ms. Samson said, her voice a little tighter now.
Chance tugged at the ball of paper until he found an edge. Then he smoothed it out. After all, they weren’t supposed to put crumpled paper in the recycling.
Now she was striding in his direction. And her shoes made sharp noises, even on the carpet. She walked right up to Chance, towered over him. Chance looked up at her. He paused. Then, just as she was taking in a good, big breath to speak to him again, he strode as smartly as she had over to Ken’s desk, bent, picked up the pencil and handed it to Ken. He even tried a little smile, but Ken took the pencil from his hand without looking at him and without twitching a single muscle in his face.
Chance sat down and scuffed at the floor with his foot. So now Ms. Samson was mad at him, Ken was mad at him, and Matilda was going to be a caterpillar forever. She was probably going to die a caterpillar. And she had turned out to be such a greedy little caterpillar. She was always hungry.
That thought gave him the idea, the brilliant, best-ever idea.