The Clueless Girl's Guide to Being a Genius (8 page)

“Aren't we friends now?” she asked.

That took me by surprise. “You're my teacher,” I said, setting the fork down. “That would be too weird.”

Roland and Salvador stumbled in and found our table. “Did you order yet?” asked Salvador.

Professor Wigglesmith smiled. “I'm having cheese fries and a killer burger.”

“Ugh! You've corrupted her,” said Roland.

Salvador plopped beside me. “That seat's saved for Adam,” I told him.

He pretended to examine the chair. “I don't see his name on it.”

Boys! I remembered when we were in third grade and I thought Salvador was cute. He came up to me all sweet and innocent and asked if I wanted gum. I said yes and he pulled a wad out of his mouth and stuck it on my nose. That was the day I crossed him off my “potential boyfriend” list.

I wanted Salvador to move, but if I made too much of a fuss, he would tease me about liking Adam and then Adam would walk in and it would be a disaster. “Whatever,” I said.

Practice lasted one and a half hours, and my salad was so awful I had to beg Professor Wigglesmith to trade so I wouldn't starve. That was the bad news. The good news was that doing math together in a group made it bearable, and Professor Wigglesmith said we were making great progress. When practice was over, she rushed off to plan “a surprise.” The rest of us scattered. I started to walk home, but heard someone behind me, turned, and saw Adam.

“Hey, Mindy, wait up. Can I walk with you?”

“Sure.” Adam lived on the other side of town, so walking me home was totally a good sign.

“Cool, isn't it?”

“I don't know. Except for the puddles, I think it's kind of nice out.”

“No. The other cool. I mean, the math team and the competition and all?”

Why did I have to be so stupid?
“Oh, yeah, I guess.”

“Miss Wigglesmith's not like the other teachers.”

“Of course not,” I said. “She's thirteen.”

“I mean, she doesn't look down on us like some of the other teachers do, and she doesn't assume that we're lazy just because we don't get all the answers right.”

When I dreamed of having Adam to myself, this was not the conversation I had in mind. “So, are you going to the dance?” I asked.

“What dance?”

“You know,
the
dance, the Spring Fling, next month. I totally wanted to go last year, but they have that stupid rule about having to be in eighth grade.”

“I hadn't thought about it.” He shifted his backpack. “I've been so busy with the Great Math Showdown, it's almost like I've been living in another world. My dad's an engineer, you know.”

I shrugged, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“He was really disappointed about my math grade when we had Miss Snipal. Not that he rubbed it in or anything; still, I knew. He tried to help with my homework, but you know how parents are.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering how to steer the conversation to the dance. This was my big chance to score a date with a total hottie, but Adam wasn't making it easy.

He ran a hand through his prickly blond hair. “You should have seen him when I said we were entering the Great Math Showdown and that I was team captain. I've taken home a lot of trophies for wrestling and basketball, but my parents care more about academics. Winning the Great Math Showdown would really mean something to them.”

“I've got about a million twirl trophies,” I said.

“Twirl?”

“You know, baton twirling.”

“Oh.”

“That's how a lot of people react. They think it's just a bunch of girls in sparkly leotards playing with metal sticks. The thing is, nowadays, it's treated more like a real sport. Countries from all over, like Japan, Poland, and South Africa, have teams that compete in the World Championships. Baton is even part of the Junior Olympics. If enough countries participated, it could become an Olympic sport.” Then I remembered I was trying to get a date, not to give a baton appreciation lesson. “Plus there's dancing in it, too. Do you like to dance?”

“I don't know,” said Adam.

We were at the beauty shop.

“This is where I live, above the shop. My mom is the Tiffany part of Tiffany's House of Beauty and Nails.” I pointed to the sign with this week's saying: “Bald Man's Special: Buy One Cut & Blow Dry, Get One Free.”

“Oh,” said Adam. He hesitated, and my heart raced.
Is he going to kiss me?

“So, what's she like?” Adam asked.

“My mother, Tiffany?”

“Of course not.” Even his laugh was cute. “I know she's tutored you a lot. You probably know her better than any of us.”

It hit me like a bare foot in a cold puddle. “Professor Wigglesmith?”

Adam fumbled with his backpack. “Yeah.”

If my eyelids had opened any wider, the eyeballs would have popped out and rolled down the street. “Do you like her or something?”

“No,” said Adam. “I mean, yes. I mean, not like that. I'm just really glad that she's my teacher.”

“Because if you like her, that would be gross, maybe even illegal. I don't think you're allowed to like your teacher, even if she is your age.”

“Don't make a major deal out of it,” he said. “I just think it's cool that she believes in us. That's all. What's wrong with that?”

“Besides, she's not even pretty.”

“She's not?”

I was getting really heated. Why was he going on about Professor Wigglesmith when I was standing there waiting for him to kiss me? “You're completely clueless,” I told him.

“Where did that come from?”

“You want to know what I think of Professor Wigglesmith?” I asked. “Here's what I think: she's a total egghead and a complete geek. She thinks she's so smart, running around doing equations like a head with its chicken cut off. But she must be stupid, because only a total idiot would waste her time teaching bonehead math.”

“The expression is ‘a chicken with its head cut off,' ” Adam said. “And that's the difference between her and you; she would never call you stupid.”

He turned and walked away. My big mouth had done it again. I wished someone would invent a vacuum cleaner that people could turn on to suck back words that they said in anger but didn't really mean. They could call it the Mindy-Did-It-Again-Vac, since I would be its number-one customer.

“Wait!” I said. “I can explain. Come back!”

He kept walking.

“Okay.” I yelled. “I've got to go in now. See you tomorrow.”

I reached for the doorknob while keeping my gaze on him. I wanted to see if he would steal a glance back to make sure I was okay, but he didn't.

J
ust because a person is a rocket scientist, that doesn't mean he knows how to sew a button on his underwear. Yet there are people who think geniuses always know what they're doing. Principal DeGuy was like that with me. I could wear a kangaroo on my head and he'd assume the extra pocket made it a wise fashion choice. No matter what my suggestion, he always gave me thumbs up.

“Did I hear right?” Miss Snipal asked. “You're taking your math class on a field trip to a pool hall?”

I nodded. I was working on mathematical theory for the Navier-Stokes problems in my diary over lunch. But there were so many teachers in the lounge it was hard to concentrate.

“Letting those students go on a field trip is a big mistake,” said Mr. Green.

“You'd better bring plenty of chaperones,” added Mrs. Underwood. “And make sure the school's liability insurance will cover it, too.”

“Have you ever been to a pool hall?” asked Mr. Ripple from his stuffed chair near the door. “Do you know what kind of people frequent pool halls?”

As usual, he'd brought potato chips and was making a crunchy mess. Romeo and Juliet, the tarantulas, hadn't been caught, and I couldn't help imagining that they were living off Mr. Ripple's droppings.

“A field trip should relate to what students are learning,” said Mrs. Underwood. “Whatever do you hope to accomplish at a pool hall?”

I closed my diary. “The game of pocket billiards,” I said, “commonly called pool, can teach about angles, because whether an angle is ninety-five degrees or eighty-five degrees will make the difference between the ball going into the pocket or not.”

“I suppose I should take my biology class to a health spa to show the effects of a whole-body massage on the circulatory system,” said Mr. Green.

“I'm sure they'd enjoy that,” I replied.

“Little lady, a pool hall is not an appropriate place for a field trip,” Mr. Ripple said. “You'll be explaining that decision to angry parents for weeks.”

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but it wouldn't matter. I had met a lot of people like Mr. Ripple—closed-minded to new ways of doing things. I tossed my apple core in my lunch bag. As I passed by Mr. Ripple, I tried to formulate a pithy comeback. I stared him straight in the eye. He looked a bit odd with his toupee crooked. Then I realized he wasn't wearing a toupee. “Tarantula!” I screamed.

 

The next day, I told the class, “I have good new and bad news. The good news is that the testing we did last class showed a thirty-two percent increase in scores.” The class erupted. I held out my hands for silence. “The bad news,” I said teasingly, “is that I will not be able to teach class on Friday.”

“What gives?” asked Roland.

Mindy shot up in her seat. “You're not leaving us?”

“Of course not,” I said. “You won't be here, either. I've arranged for you to be excused from your Friday classes because we're going on a field trip!”

The celebration resumed.

“We are about to start a geometry subsection,” I said. “So I thought you might like to see a practical application of angles.”

“We're going to a geometry museum?” Roland guessed.

“No,” I said. “We're going to the Shoot-M-Up pool hall on East Third Street.” They were cheering and clapping so loudly, it felt like the room would spin.

 

On Friday, a bus picked us up at the school's back entrance. I sat in the front so I could count students getting on and off. Mindy said she got “bus sick” and was less likely to throw up if she sat up front, too, and I was happy to offer her the seat next to me.

The Shoot-M-Up pool hall was across the railroad tracks on the other side of town. It was usually closed during the day, pool being more of an evening recreation. However, I had made arrangements with the manager, Mr. Finch.

He was a short, chubby man with a bald head and a handlebar mustache. Colorful tattoos peeked out of the ends of his shirtsleeves, and he wore cowboy boots with pointed tips. Mr. Finch had a couple of his regular customers come by to help us with the basics. Contrary to the teachers' warnings, Mr. Finch was well-mannered and genuinely eager to help. He wouldn't even accept the small stipend from the school's field trip fund.

“I consider it my civic duty,” Mr. Finch said. “Just because you run a pool hall, or your kid threw a firecracker down a school toilet and caused a flood back when he was twelve, doesn't mean you're not as good a citizen as the rest.”

The students had gabbed madly on the bus to the pool hall. But when they filed inside, they fell quiet, looking around as if they were really in a geometry museum.

“First off, you each get one of these,” said Mr. Finch as pool sticks were passed. The students made mock pool shots in the air. Mr. Finch grabbed Mindy's stick and turned it around. “Works better if you hit the ball with the thin end of the stick,” he said.

Nine pool tables were spread apart in three rows of three. Above each table was a fluorescent light in a stained-glass fixture. We would play 8-ball. Mr. Finch explained the game as Angel, a burly man in a purple suit jacket, and Bruno, a dark-skinned man with a huge Afro, demonstrated. On each table, fifteen balls were herded together in a plastic triangle. Eight were solid and seven striped. One player had to knock the solid-color balls in the pockets and the other player had to knock in the striped balls. The black 8-ball would go in last.

I put two students each at the pool tables; Mr.Finch joined them to make it even. The instructors—Angel, Bruno, Snake, Freddy, and Princess—demonstrated how to chalk the sticks and “break” the balls to start the game. During the demonstration, I grabbed a stick and sunk bank shots.

“I never would have figured you for the pool hall type,” Roland said.

“We all have secrets,” I replied.

Actually, I had never been to a pool hall. I had picked up the game while at Harvard. When I felt homesick, I would go to the recreation room at Dr. Goode's house and play with Hershey Bear. Calculating the correct angles, I could usually sink every ball in order.

“Professor Wigglesmith!” yelled LeeAnn. “I got a hole in one!”

“They're all holes in one in this game,” I said. “What was your angle?”

“Forty-five degrees. But I wasn't even aiming for the hole it went in.”

I had explained the rules on the bus ride. Before you take a shot, I said, you must decide what the best angle would be to hit the white cue ball to get the other ball in the pocket, and write down the degree of the angle. I explained how to use the specially designed protractors I'd brought to determine the angles.

“Professor Wigglesmith,” called Salvador. “Isn't there a limit? Eugenia got two balls in a row and now she wants to take another turn.”