The Clueless Girl's Guide to Being a Genius (4 page)

I loved Hermy's free spirit. When he colored outside the lines, I rewarded him with cookies. When he “shared” his pacifier with the neighbor's dog and the dog swallowed it, I bought him a dozen replacement pacifiers. A few months ago, I moved out of the sunny bedroom and into the smaller bedroom at the end of the hall because Hermy liked the morning sun on his face.

The doctors had started to chart Hermy's development to see if he would be a genius, too. Most everyone seemed disappointed when he turned out to be normal. I was relieved for him, because it meant he wouldn't have to give up things like coloring outside the lines and flinging squash.

My mother passed the dinner rolls to my father. I licked my spoon and pressed it onto my nose. Hermy laughed so hard squash came out of his nostrils.

“Is that how you behaved at Harvard?” Mother asked.

“Of course not,” I said. “Harvard is a serious place.”

Hermy dumped his bowl of squash over his head. Streams of thick orange paste ran down his face.

“Where's the camera?” I asked my father. He was naturally laid back and took Hermy's shenanigans in stride. He liked to say he didn't need to worry about anything because Mother worried for them both. My father had been the original plumber in the family, and my mother his appointment- and bookkeeper. When he broke his leg changing a stranger's flat tire and couldn't take on plumbing jobs, Father took it in stride. “Life is what you make it,” he said. Sure enough, it turned out that Mother was better at plumbing and Father was better at staying home and keeping the books, so they switched jobs and that's the way it's been ever since.

Father chuckled at Hermy's pumpkin face and went to find the camera for me. I took a snapshot of Hermy with the bowl on his head. Then another of him after he took the bowl off and began shampooing the gooey squash into his hair. Hermy washed his face with his sticky squash hands, mugging for the camera. “Dytee!” he squealed.

“Don't encourage him,” Mother said as I snapped away.

Father leaned back in his chair. “Lighten up a bit, honey. It's normal for a baby to play with his food.”

“Aphrodite never did,” Mother replied.

“But she was never . . .” Father's voice trailed off, but I knew what he was going to say.

“Normal,” I added, putting the camera down.

The word hung in the air. Part of me liked being a child prodigy. But another part of me didn't enjoy feeling like I was different all the time. I knew that I was lucky to be able to get a college degree when I was so young, but I didn't feel lucky while surrounded by Harvard students twice my age and size who always got quiet when I entered the room, as if they couldn't be themselves when they were around me. Real luck, it seemed to me, was what Hermy had: a body and a brain that matched.

After dinner, I went to my room and took out my neon-pink diary. I used it to record ideas regarding my theory that anyone could be a math wiz. Once my research at Carnegie Middle School was completed and I'd proved my theory, the plan was for me to move back to Boston and take a job teaching at Harvard. That's where my professors said my math talent could best be used.

I put on my pink-polka-dot pajamas and reached for Hershey Bear. My mother had won him at an amusement park on my fourth birthday. The man in the red cap tried to guess my mother's age. He said she was twenty-nine, even though she was only twenty-five, so I won a prize. That was my best birthday. It was before Principal DeGuy made me take the IQ test and everyone treated me like I was different. Hershey Bear was hot-chocolate brown and marshmallow soft, and I slept with him every night. Not that I could admit such a thing and expect people to take me seriously.

“But look at her,” Mindy had said. “My aunt Peggy's Chihuahua is two inches taller.”

“And probably smarter,” Roland had added. “I vote we give the job to the Chihuahua.”

It was mean, and I should have been angry. But in my heart, I could understand their reservations. How could a thirteen-year-old teacher expect her thirteen-year-old students to take her seriously? Because of my age and small stature, I would have to work hard to prove myself to my class. My students would not show me respect until I earned it. There was nothing I could do about my physical appearance, but I could try to win them over with my intellectual prowess. I would impress them with my ability to solve complicated equations. That should do the trick.

W
hen you really think about it, math is like a foreign language, and I'm not bilingual, so it's not my fault that I stink at it. After two weeks of Professor Wigglesmith's lectures, I was in a total fog. You know that movie Invasion of the Zombie Snatchers, the part at the end where there's just that one zombie left and she's wandering around the cemetery in a daze? That was me in Professor Wigglesmith's math class. She drew fancy stuff on the board and spoke about the heart and soul of mathematics, while I daydreamed about one of the zombie killers surviving so I could be put out of my misery.

It might not have been so bad if Veronica, Summer, Jordeen, or one of my other friends was in remedial math with me so we could pass notes or something, but the rest of the kids in bonehead math were mostly nerds and misfits. They tuned out, too, but in their own ways, reading manga or hooking up to MP3s, which Professor Wigglesmith never even noticed. Although we weren't learning, nobody complained. It was better than getting hit by Ping-Pong balls, like when Miss Snipal was in charge. Being in Miss Snipal's class had been like living in a Three Stooges movie—one dumb move and you got whacked.

When Miss Snipal first set her red bucket full of Ping-Pong balls on the desk, I thought we were going to play some kind of game. “Can I ask a question?” I said. It's one of my stupid habits—asking if I can ask a question before I ask a question.

Miss Snipal threw a Ping-Pong ball, and it just missed my cheek. “Raise your hand if you want to talk,” she said. “Better yet, don't talk. Just listen. I will be your substitute from now on. If a team is losing, they send in a new coach. You are a losing team, and you should be grateful that I volunteered to whip you into shape until a permanent teacher can be found.”

Eugenia raised her hand. She was a shy girl whose idea of a social life was cleaning out her hamster's cage on a Saturday night. Eugenia wore the same black sweater every day, but it was so clean she either washed it every evening or had a whole row of them lined up in her closet. I imagined her getting up in the morning and dressing her hamster in an identical sweater. Anyway, Eugenia said, “I don't mean to be rude, Miss Snipal, but I don't think I belong in remedial math. Isn't there room in the academic math class for me?”

A ball hit her in the nose.

“Stop whining,” Miss Snipal said. “If your name is on my roster, you belong here. If you want out, you need to work harder. Push yourself. Feel the burn. Here's the game plan: we'll start with five repetitions of multiplication tables, and then do a few sets of counting by odd and even numbers. If we have time, we'll squeeze in counting backwards by root numbers. Any questions?” The only sound was that of the balls rubbing together in her hands.

Asking a gym teacher to teach math is like asking a French teacher to give scuba-diving lessons. After two semesters of Miss Snipal, practically the whole class was drowning. I would never have believed that anyone could be a worse math teacher than Miss Snipal, until I met Aphrodite Wigglesmith.

After two weeks of staring at Professor Wigglesmith's back as she filled the board with numbers, things were more hopeless than ever. Even if I hadn't ripped up half the pages in my book, math was too hard.

Then there she was, Professor Wigglesmith, coming down the school hallway toward me. And there I was—ducking into the bathroom to avoid her. I hadn't planned to cut class, but with Miss Genius in charge, I was on my way to flunking out anyway. So what difference did it make?

I threw my backpack onto the sink and pulled out my baton for practice. But twirling just reminded me about how the Baton Barn was going to be bought by the Cluck and Shuck people. I imagined my baton falling from the rafters one day and whapping a customer right in his chicken corn soup. Even that didn't make me feel better.

I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up my favorite daydream—Adam Boyce sitting in the front row at one of my baton competitions. Adam was without question the hottest boy in the eighth grade. Broad shoulders? Check. Blond hair that he gelled into tiny spikes? Check. Total MVP on both the wrestling team and basketball team? Check. Check. There wasn't a girl in the class who didn't have a crush on Adam, even if he did act like he didn't notice. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't notice that made me like him more. I mean, even with my straight brown hair and stupid freckled nose, there were still lots of boys who wanted to be seen with me. But in the world of middle school dating, Adam was like the big trophy a girl got when she came in first place.

In my daydream, he was gawking at me like I was the only girl in the world, and in my sparkling gold dance outfit, I was. I soared onto the stage, batons dancing on my fingertips. I threw them high in the air, did a cartwheel, caught them in perfect unison, and went into a split.

“Min-dy. Min-dy . . . ,” the crowd began to chant. The faster I spun, the louder they chanted. “Min-dy. Min-dy. . . .”

Someone was shaking my arm.

“Mindy? What are you doing?” It was Professor Wigglesmith. I hadn't noticed her come in. I was sitting on the floor under a sink, and my head was resting against a plumbing pipe like it was a pillow. I must have dreamed the whole period away.

“I don't feel well,” I said. “I guess I'm sick.”

“So that's why you missed class,” Professor Wigglesmith guessed.

I got up, splashed my face, patted it dry with a paper towel, and unzipped my makeup bag. Two girls walked in. One went into a stall and the other asked to borrow my lipstick. After they left, I noticed that Professor Wigglesmith was watching me put on mascara.

“Doesn't that make you tear?” she asked.

“You get used to it,” I said. Through the mirror, I looked over at Professor Wigglesmith. Her face was so pale next to her charcoal turtleneck it looked almost featureless. I felt a little sorry for her. “You could use some color.” I dug out my new lipstick and held it out like one of the Sioux Indians we learned about in social studies might offer a peace pipe to a member of the Iroquois tribe. “Do you want to try some?”

H
ere's some more advice. If a girl ever offers to share her lipstick with you, do not hesitate; grab it and start puckering. Above all, don't do what I did. The lipstick was passion pink, and just the thought of trying it made my lips tingle. But, as a teacher, I was supposed to be educating students, not sharing lipstick, even if it was passion pink. I tried to think of something educational. Finally, I replied, “There are millions of germs in the human mouth. Even if only one-tenth come into contact with the lips, there could be tens of thousands of germs living on that lipstick.”

Mindy dumped the lipstick into her makeup bag. “What kind of a mean thing is that to say?”

“But it's true.”

“That doesn't mean you should say it.” She folded her arms. “How would you like it if I told
you
the truth?”

I sensed there was something Mindy wanted to say, a secret of some sort that she wanted to share with me. Perhaps something personal that had been bothering her. “I'm sure I'd like it very much,” I answered.

“Are you making fun of me?” she asked. “Because if you are, it'll be the camel that breaks the straw's back.”

“I think you mean the straw that breaks the camel's back.”

“There you go again, acting like you know everything. You want the truth?”

I assumed it was a rhetorical question, but she waited as if I was to answer. With Mindy misinterpreting everything I said, and with her towering over me, grim-faced and arms folded, the best I could do was nod apprehensively.

“You asked for it,” she said. “So here it comes: the whole class is probably failing because none of us can understand what you keep talking about.”

I felt like a tiny mouse standing under the proverbial camel as it collapsed.

“You may be a genius,” Mindy continued, so agitated her voice rose an octave, “but you're the worst math teacher ever. I'm not sick. I cut math class because it's a waste of time. I don't know how to add fractions. I can't tell a number line from a clothesline, or a square root from a hair root.” She threw her backpack over her shoulder. “If I don't learn something soon, I'm going to fail math and have to repeat eighth grade. Do you have any idea how totally humiliating that would be?” She took one final look in the mirror, said, “Oh, what's the use?” and stomped off.

 

That night, I kept replaying the scene in my mind. I set Hershey Bear on my nightstand. “Do you think I've been teaching over their heads, too?” I asked rhetorically. He fell forward and landed with one paw up in the air as if in agreement. I returned him to the nightstand with a sigh. “I've been so focused on showing off my math skills that I'm afraid I haven't been a very good teacher. Instead of earning their respect, I've bored them into such a stupor they don't have the energy to complain. I'll never prove my theory that way. I suppose the best thing to do would be to have a long talk with my students about how to change the situation.” Hershey Bear fell again, tumbling with his caboose in the air. “If I can't even get you to sit still while I talk, how will I ever get the class to listen?”