The Clueless Girl's Guide to Being a Genius (14 page)

“Maybe we won't,” said Bobby. “But you're always telling me that I should stick up for myself, that even if I am small for my age, and got held back in third grade, I'm just as good. I want my chance. Isn't failing better than being afraid to try?”

Principal DeGuy sighed. “Okay, I give,” he said. “Never in my twenty-two years in this school district have I met a group of students with a greater desire to learn. Who am I to try to stop you?”

We jumped out of our seats and cheered.

“But,” yelled Principal DeGuy over the roar, “there will be rules!”

We sat.

Principal DeGuy went to the front of the room and selected a long white piece of chalk. “First,” he said, “you will continue with the assignments in your math book. You will grade one another's homework, and then leave it in a folder at the end of each class. Adam Boyce, since you are the captain of the math team, Professor Wigglesmith must have put a lot of faith in you. Therefore, you will be in charge of making sure your classmates turn in their homework, without cheating. I will check every night.”

“You can count on me,” said Adam.

Principal DeGuy continued. “Second, if anyone asks who is in charge of this classroom, tell them I am. Needs to be somebody's name on the paperwork—it might as well be mine.

“Third, you are all on the honor system. I cannot run back and forth checking on this class. Do your work, study, no troublemaking. Roland Geruch, any disciplinary problems you report to me immediately. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Roland, with a military salute.

“Fourth, your grades will be determined by Professor Wigglesmith's records and by your performance at the Great Math Showdown.

“Fifth.” Principal DeGuy snapped the chalk in two. “No half efforts. This is your chance. Remember, you asked for it. Any questions?”

Timothy raised his hand. “I have one. What did they call the Roman war hero who was good at math?”

The whole class groaned in unison.

“General Calculus.”

Principal DeGuy went over to Timothy's desk and leaned in close. “That's a good one,” he said. “Now here's one for you. What did they call the eighth grader who didn't know when to stop joking around?”

“What?” asked Timothy.

“A seventh grader,” he answered.

After Principal DeGuy left, I became invisible. Everyone was so mad they ignored me. In one minute, I was demoted from the most to the least popular girl in class. Worse, I knew I deserved it. I wondered if things were going any better for Dytee.
At least at Harvard,
I thought,
Dytee will be surrounded by people who appreciate her.

I
n front of Harvard's University Hall is a statue nicknamed “The Statue of Three Lies.” Although its inscription reads “John Harvard/Founder/1638,” the statue was modeled after someone else, the university was founded by someone else, and the correct date of its founding was two years prior. When I looked at the statue after returning to Harvard, it reminded me of my own lie, the one I'd told Dr. Goode when I called and told him I wanted to come back.

“Hello,” I said to a lonely pigeon on a bench. “Are you hungry?” I took out a granola bar and tossed crumbs on the ground. I was crossing Harvard Yard, headed toward the administration building for a Mensa meeting. Mensa is an organization for people whose intelligence has tested in the top two percent in the world, and once a month, local members meet at Harvard for networking. I stopped on the bench to watch the pigeon peck up the tidbits. As soon as it was done, it flew away.

It was May, and undergraduate students were playing touch football in the grass. Suddenly, a football whizzed by within inches of my head. A young man with a goatee and dimples raced toward me.

“Sorry!” he yelled. He picked up the ball and threw it back. It formed a spiraling arch and was caught by a busty young woman in a tight brown sweater. The man plopped down next to me. “Are you okay? I didn't mean to scare you. I've been throwing wide lately. Hey, you're the little math genius kid, aren't you?”

“I'm a professor now.”

“Right,” he said. “Cool.”

I didn't know what else to say. The ability I had to talk with boys in my class at Carnegie Middle School had evaporated on the wings of my flight back to Boston.

“Well, I better get back in there,” the young man said. “See you around.”

I watched the undergraduates laughing and playing for so long I was late.

“There you are,” said Dr. Goode. He was a reserved man with broad shoulders and a slight Caribbean accent. “I've got someone I want you to meet.” We were in the same stuffy room where the Mensa group always met. I had been back only two weeks and the dog and pony show had already resumed.

Dr. Goode handed me seltzer water and led me forward. The room seemed dark, even though every bulb in the giant chandelier was shining. I silently counted the bulbs and figured the wattage. It
should
have generated enough light. Why did it feel so gloomy?

Dr. Goode brought me to a small group. A woman in a pin-striped suit looked down and nodded politely at me. She had slightly graying hair pulled back in a barrette like the style I had returned to. After we were formally introduced, the woman's eyes lit up and her hand shot out. “I read about you in
The New York Times
,” she said. Her strong handshake practically lifted me off the floor.

“Professor Wigglesmith's talents are being put to very good use,” Dr. Goode said. “She's working on the Millennium Prize Problems.”

“Are you making much progress?” asked a stout man with a thick mustache, a banker whom I recognized from previous meetings.

The listeners waited and I blushed. Since returning, I hadn't felt like doing equations. The meeting was going from bad to worse. Perhaps if I added some levity, like Timothy always did when things got rough.

“Would you like to hear a joke?” I asked.

Dr. Goode looked startled. “I really don't think—”

“It's a math joke. You see, Albert Einstein was always lecturing about his theories, and after a number of years of him giving the same lecture, his driver, who always sat in the back and waited for him, said, ‘I've heard that same lecture so many times I'll bet I could give it.' So Einstein—most people don't know this but he had a great sense of humor—said, ‘Okay. At our next stop, you give the lecture and I'll sit in the audience.' The driver did, and he did a fine job, but after the lecture someone from the audience asked him a really hard question. Without flinching, he responded, ‘That one's so easy I'm going to let my driver answer it.'”

They stared at me as if I had grown an extra head.

I chugged down my seltzer water. “Would you excuse me? I need to get another drink.” I crept past the bar and left. “What's wrong with me?” I asked myself as I walked to my room.

A plain brown package was waiting for me in front of my door. It was from my parents. I opened it and fished below the crinkled newspapers. Something felt soft: Hershey Bear. There was a note from my mother.

Tears pooled in my eyes. I had left Hershey Bear with Hermy so he wouldn't miss me, but Hermy knew I would need the bear more than he did. Homesickness was an ache inside my chest. I wanted to be back in my own dining room happily dodging squash. I wanted to hang out with the gang at the Carnegie Diner for math team practice. What were my students working on in class? I hoped they weren't allowing themselves to fall behind.

Dr. Goode had wanted me to return to Harvard immediately, and I had done so without a word to the class. After what had happened at the dance and with Mindy, I felt like I didn't belong. Mr. Ripple was mad at me for leaving the refreshment stand unattended, Mindy was mad at me for dancing with Adam, and the students probably were mad at me for ruining their dance. It was strange, but even though she was the one who told me I should leave, I missed Mindy most.

Maybe it was the way I'd left. Without a proper good-bye, how could I get on with things? I tried to shake the feeling. I could not change the past, and it would do no good to dwell there. I had to be practical. No matter how much I missed Carnegie Middle School, Harvard was my life now.

I
must have thrown that baton a zillion times, but it just wouldn't fly straight. Each time it came down crooked and whapped me somewhere, or I would trip over my own foot and splatter onto the ground like a cartoon character.

“Gracefully,” Miss Brenda said as I chased after the baton. “Remember, if you drop a baton, always retrieve it
gracefully
.”

I felt the sore spot on my head. It was hard to fake grace with cartoon stars circling your noggin, but I put on my show smile and continued my routine. Miss Brenda already had started packing for the closing of the studio, and the posters and team trophies were in boxes. The Baton Barn was starting to look like an old warehouse that should be torn down, and I had to act like it was okay because Miss Brenda said I would “land on my feet somehow.”

Buster Wigglesmith caught my gaze and waved at me from the parent waiting area. Dytee had been gone two weeks, but her dad still insisted on driving me to baton lessons. It beat having to ride my bike, but I felt bad about her family being so nice to me after what a creep I had been to Dytee.

The new routine for the Twirlcrazy Grand Championship involved two batons and lots of gymnastics. Miss Brenda had somehow convinced me to agree to choreograph the routine to Michael Jackson's song “Bad,” which wasn't exactly cheering me up. I tried to focus on putting more speed into my butterfly twirl, but my mind kept wandering to the Great Math Showdown.

Even with all the studying I had been doing at home on my own, I felt like I was still the worst student in math class, but I hadn't been able to convince anyone to take my place, so the team was stuck with me. Each team had to submit a list of nine members. The first six (Adam, Eugenia, Roland, Salvador, Keisha, and LeeAnn) would answer questions, and the remaining three (Bobby, Hunter, and I) would be the alternates.

I wasn't worried as much about losing as I was about not having enough team members to play. Even though we kept meeting at the Carnegie Diner for practice, it was harder to understand the math concepts without Dytee's help. Hunter was discouraged, and LeeAnn missed a lot of practices, coming up with lame excuses about having to do things like wash her cat. I suspected she was lying just to get out of it, but I put on my show smile and didn't say a word. After all, I wasn't exactly in the best position to complain about how other kids were handling the situation.

The team still hadn't forgiven me for telling Dytee to leave. Only Adam had somehow gotten over it. “Even though what you did was mean, it took guts to confess to Principal DeGuy so he wouldn't blame the rest of the class for her wanting to go,” said Adam.

I didn't know how to respond. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Really,” said Adam. “I used to think you were one of those shallow, popular girls who only cared about herself, but I was wrong about you.”

“No,” I said. “You were right. But people can change.”

Later, I filled him in on all the reasons I blew up at Dytee, partly because he asked, but mostly because I didn't want to keep it all bottled up inside and I missed having someone to talk to since Dytee was gone. Adam told me he had asked Dytee to dance to find out what Harvard was like, since that was his dream school, but when the DJ switched to the slow song Adam was so worried about stepping on her feet he didn't say anything.

“Straight,” ordered Miss Brenda, holding my arm by the wrist and pressing against the elbow. “If you want to win you must be perfect.”

Over and over again, I performed my two-baton freestyle solo routine. The music pulled Dytee's dad and brother over from the waiting area and gave me a reason to do my best. Each time I caught a baton, Hermy squealed and yelled, “Again!” When I did my back flip at the end, they burst into applause. I took a deep bow, imagining I was already wearing the first place medallion.

“Hold up,” said Miss Brenda as we were on our way out. “I really am getting old—I almost forgot to tell you. There's been a schedule change in the competition. The two-baton solos have been moved from Wednesday to Thursday.”