When I get to math, Mr. Berman has everyone on the floor playing a math game with a partner. He wanders the classroom, stroking his bushy white mustache as if he’s deep in thought, giving me time to look through my new backpack. I can’t believe it, but Ms. Luna slipped me a pack of for-real Cheez-Its, my favorite. How’d she know?
Luckily, everyone is really into their game and no one even notices that I’m late. By the time my table group comes back, I’m sitting in my chair like I’ve been there all along.
Mr. Berman clears his throat and points our attention to the next task, pushing his glasses up his nose. His glasses are so thick, they magnify his eyes, making him look slightly crazy from just the right angle. I wonder if anyone else ever notices things like that or if it’s just me.
The Problem of the Day is already projected on the whiteboard. These are usually harder than your average math problem; they’re supposed to make us good at teamwork or something. We have to work on the Problem of the Day as a table group. It’s good, not because I like who sits at my table, but because it takes me way too long to read the problems. Lucky for me, Erin Summers sits next to me and loves to show off, so she always reads the problem aloud. And Jason Sparks is pretty decent at math, so he helps, too.
But the bad thing is that it also takes me a really long time to figure out what the question is even asking. By the time I can decide what we should do to solve it, the others are done, they’ve shown their work, and they’re mad because I didn’t help.
Mr. Berman visits each table, so I pretend to look busy by scribbling down numbers on my paper. When he sees that I’m actually doing something, he nods and makes a move to pat down his gray hair that sticks up in all directions. It bounces right back up as soon as he walks away. Seriously, this guy is old as dirt and I wonder if his jacket is, too. It’s one of those weird professor-y ones with leather patches on the elbows. He wears the same thing every day: tan pants, dark brown loafers, and that jacket—this one is “fall colors” but he’s also got an almost identical one that’s all different greens and one that’s like Easter threw up on it—over a collared white shirt.
I shake off the thought and look back to my paper.
The first week of school, at Mr. Berman’s request, Erin and Jason had tried to include me in the problem solving: “What do you think, Dragon?” But after a couple days of me staring blankly at them, they pretty much gave up. I actually saw them glance at each other, shrug, and then give up on me.
I’ve seen that look a lot, from grownups and kids alike. So now I just sit and watch and occasionally copy down the problem so it looks like I did something, anything.
Can we just pause and take a good long look at my name for a second? I mean Dragon? What am I, a reptilian flying monster? Who names their baby Dragon?
I know my mom was slightly obsessed with Harry Potter when she had me, but come on. Even the name Harry would’ve been an upgrade, and you know how many “Harry/hairy” jokes mean kids could come up with.
Plus, I bet people who hear my name before meeting me expect to see some hardened criminal, not a slightly-larger-than-his-classmates seventh grader with a floppy mop top, a scar running down one side of his face, and a chip on his shoulder.
Oh yeah, the hair. We’ll get to that later, too.
That scar though? We probably won’t get to that later. Sorry.
Back to math. I’m not dumb, exactly. It might look like I’m dumb, but it just takes me a little longer to get things. The problem is, by the time I get it, everyone else has moved on. Even Mr. Berman apologized once: “I know we have to move very fast. I wish it wasn’t this way, but it is. We’ll just have to bear it together.”
We get through today’s math lesson, a short review of multiplication and division—something even I can do—and then my stomach starts to grumble. Loud. I scrape my chair on the ground to cover up the noise. The bowl of stale cereal from the cafeteria this morning wasn’t exactly a hearty meal. And once I’m hungry, you can forget about me paying attention. It’s like a monster erupts inside me, and I cannot think about anything else until it’s fed.
Everyone else is hungry too, I guess, because they pull out these cute little sandwich baggies full of sliced oranges or mini-boxes of for-real Pringles, not the knock-off “potato crisps.” A blonde girl named Becca even has a little Nutella package with these stick cookies to dip in it. I mean, that’s basically chocolate. I’d trade my own sister for some basically chocolate.
I sink down into my chair, hoping no one will notice I don’t have anything to eat.
Official snack time disappeared after elementary school, but our teachers are pretty cool about us snacking during class as long as it’s not distracting anyone. The thing is, once one kid gets out something to eat, so does everyone else, like a ripple effect.
My classmates are all munching happily while they work on their math papers. Mine is blank. I can do it, probably, it’s just that I know it’ll take me forever so I don’t want to start. I fumble in my backpack for another pencil—mine broke—and see the Cheez-Its. Yes! I pull them out and scarf them. I try not to think about whether Ms. Luna has any more while I lick the salty cheese dust off my fingers.
I get started on my math paper, but by the time I finish the second problem, it’s time to do something else. Erin and Jason finished their work a while ago and are playing a math game together, whispering and giggling. I crumple my paper a little to make it look like I at least worked on it. I barely even write my name, just a scribble “D” at the top (he’ll figure it out), and throw it in the turn-in basket even though it’s not done.
On my way back to my desk, Travis Beaker, my sworn enemy and Reason Number One that I hate math, slams his shoulder into me so hard I stumble a little. He must be sad to have missed his chance to slam me into a locker earlier when Ms. Luna held me back in homeroom.
“Oops, didn’t see you there, Smokey.”
I grimace at the nickname he gave me last year. He shows his teeth in a way that might look like a smile from far away, but close up looks like an I’ll actually kill you kind of sneer.
My eyes search for Mr. Berman, but he’s talking to someone else. Denzel takes a protective step toward me, and Travis backs off. He’s dumb, but not dumb enough to cause a big scene in class.
The bell rings and I grab my backpack and head toward English, where thankfully, Travis will not be.
The way Piney Woods Middle works is that everyone has a group of ten kids that they stay with all day. There are a few exceptions, of course, but for the most part, we start in homeroom together and go to each class after that as a group. My Core Ten is made up of me and Denzel, Kyla and Jolie, Jason and Erin, Millie and Gavin, and Caden and Marisa. The idea is that we will get to know our Core Ten really well and feel like a “family.”
I already have one of those, and it’s not so great. I don’t feel like having another one.
The good news is, though, Travis only shows up in my math class and sometimes my PE rotation.