The Friendship Riddle (24 page)

Mr. Sneed droned on at the front of the room. He'd been teaching science forever. Legend was that he had been a teacher at the high school, and when they moved the high school to a new building and the middle school into the old high school, well, Mr. Sneed had stayed behind, still teaching the same stuff in the same way. He passed out typewritten handouts with a purple hue, and everything he said in class was the same as what was on the sheet, so you didn't really have to pay attention.

I reread the clue. The first half made no sense, but I thought I could do the math problem. Lucas probably had started there, too.

So, the prime numbers under 100. I listed them out as best I could: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 23, 29, 31, 37, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97.

“Today we are going to examine Cetacea,” Mr. Sneed said. “What class do Cetacea fall under?”

“Mammals,” we all said back. It seemed like we'd been studying mammals forever, even though Mr. Sneed had said we'd just be hitting a few of the highlights. When he'd said that at the beginning of the unit, his creepy corners-of-the-mouth-only smile made me realize it would be a slog, like Taryn trying to get through the Swamp of Memoriam.

So, the primes that added up to 10 were 37 and 73. That made the happy median the average? No, wait. I'd missed one—19. Okay, so that made 37 the median. Now what? The cube of 5.

“Correct. Cetacea are marine mammals. Examples include whales and porpoises.”

This was exactly what was written on the handout.

“What's that?” Coco whispered to me.

I stared down at the clue. Mr. Sneed couldn't stand people whispering in his class. Supposedly he'd once heard a girl whispering, even though she was sitting way back in the room. He'd stopped class and given her such a dressing down
that she'd started bawling. She had cried so hard, her nose started to bleed.

“Is that for math?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes and refocused.

The square root of the cube of 5. The cube of 5 was 125, but I had no idea what the square root of 125 was. There was no way I could get a calculator out of my backpack.

In front of me, Lucas raised his hand. “Yes, Mr. Hosgrove?”

“Whales get earwax just like people.”

I tried writing out the equation:

That didn't help me much. I could do 3 plus 2, of course, but I was still stuck with that square root of 5 cubed.

“Thank you, Mr. Hosgrove.”

“But,” Lucas went on, “they never clean it out. I mean, it's not like whales have Q-tips, right? So it stays in their ears their whole lives, and when scientists pull it out, it can be up to a foot long.”

Melinda said, “Eww,” and we all shuddered at the thought of a foot-long tube of earwax.

“But it's really cool because the wax tracks everything they've gone through. Everything from the salt levels of the water to the pollutants they come in contact with.”

“Interesting, but not relevant.”

Lucas's shoulders slumped. Had the teachers all agreed that this would be their line for him?

I raised my hand, and Mr. Sneed called on me without any enthusiasm. “I disagree,” I said. “I think it's very relevant.”

“Miss Mudd-O'Flanahan, things either are relevant or they are not. There's no such thing as very relevant.”

“Fine. But it
is
relevant. We're studying the whole classification system, which is like the web of life, right? And the whales and their earwax, that shows all the pollutants in our ocean and what's going to damage that web. And it's not just science class stuff. It's real life.”

“Science class is facts, Miss Mudd-O'Flanahan. It is real life.”

“Right, but also, I mean like the fishing industry and tourism—our oceans are vital to the peninsula. And what Lucas is saying is that whale earwax is like the key that tells us what's going on and then maybe we can try to fight the pollution and the trash and the climate change and everything else that is ruining the web of life.”

“A very impassioned speech. Perhaps you and your mother ought to write an e-mail about it.”

Everyone laughed, except Lucas and Lena. Even Coco laughed.

“Maybe we will,” I said.

Some people just shouldn't be teachers.

“Forty-two,” Lucas said when we got out to recess. He, Dev, and I stood near the building, stomping our feet to try to keep warm.

“But forty-two what?” I asked. “The first part of the clue makes no sense.”

“We should ask Coco,” Dev said. “He'd be really good at this.”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?” Dev asked.

The snow looked like a field of jagged diamonds. “We don't need any help. Anyway, he'd just think it was dumb.”

I could see Coco across the field. He had a black plastic sled and was getting ready to slide down the hill.

“It's better with a small group anyway,” Lucas said. “More loot to go around.”

“We don't know that there's any loot,” I told him. “We don't know that there's anything.”

“I'm not saying to invite the whole world. I just think Coco would be really helpful.”

“No,” I said. “Anyway, I haven't had a chance to show it to Lena. She might have some ideas.”

Coco held the sled in two hands, sprinted forward, and then dove onto it like those crazy skeleton riders at the Olympics.

“Planeswalkers,” Dev said. “I can't put my finger on it, but it sounds familiar. Maybe I could ask Coco without explaining the whole thing?”

I rolled my eyes.

“It's just that he's been my best friend forever. We do everything together.”

“Things change. And maybe you don't know him as well as you think you do.”

“You were wrong in science class,” Lucas said to me.

“What?”

A chunk of snow slipped off the roof of the building, bringing with it a cluster of long, sharp icicles.

“You know an icicle can kill you if it hits you at just the right angle,” Lucas said. “I saw it on
MythBusters
.”

“What was I wrong about in science?”

“The web of life and all that. The wax just tells you what
was
there. It can't tell you what pollution is coming next or how to stop it.”

De
scriptive, not
pre
scriptive. Like baseball statistics and Coco's family in the spelling bees. Great. Now I had Coco memories haunting me along with Charlotte memories. Maybe they could hang out—throw a boy-girl party to celebrate my misery.

Lone wolf. I was meant to be a lone wolf, and now here I was surrounded by a pack of hyenas. We'd once visited this zoo and amusement park in the southern part of the state. It was just about the saddest thing you'd ever want to see. All the animals had threadbare patches on their fur and wandered from one side of their cage to another without any life in their eyes. That was what was going to happen to me.

“I've gotta go,” I said. I needed to get back inside to think. Back with Taryn Greenbottom on her own solo quest. Sure, Taryn usually traveled with her group, but those fellows were different. They were smart and loyal and brave, and they never, ever, ever let Taryn down. She was always the one leaving them. As usual, I realized, Taryn had the right idea.

Because my week couldn't get any better, on Tuesday we started volleyball in gym class.

Lena and I changed in the supply closet and I noticed that the bin of basketballs was sitting right where the volleyballs used to be—and the volleyballs were gone. I hoped this was the work of a flock of volleyball-loving penguins called to play snow volleyball out on the field, but I knew the truth. “Oh, no,” I moaned.

“Did you forget your gym clothes?” Lena asked.

I shook my head. “Volleyball. Game of death.”

“Really? I kind of like it. I'll help you out.”

But of course Ms. Wickersham split us up. And it wasn't just that Lena was on another team. No, her team was playing
on a completely different court. And who was on my team? Why, Melinda, Charlotte, and Coco, of course, plus Lucas, which would have been fine, only he was even worse at volleyball than me, so it wasn't like he could help me out and cover for me.

It didn't take long for the other team to figure out that we were the weak points, and soon they were firing every serve and spike our way. “It's like the balls are magnetically attracted to us,” I complained to him.

“At least something is,” Melinda said.

Charlotte looked at me, then looked away. She had just about perfected the move. It almost would have been better if she'd laughed along with the girls on the other side of the net.

On the next serve, though, Dev smacked it so it nearly hit Melinda in the face. That was like flipping a switch. She went from regular, mean Melinda to mean Melinda with a super-competitive streak.

“Come on, Ruth! Could you even try a little?” she yelled when I flinched away from yet another ball.

We were losing three to six. If the game would just end, we'd rotate and our team would be going up against Lena and a bunch of other relatively sane people. Lucas served. The ball flopped into our side of the net.

Melinda threw her hands into the air.

“It's just a game,” Coco said. Big phony. He was only pretending to be nice to me, so they could finish up their diabolical plan.

Melinda sniffed in hard. “What do you know about it?” she demanded.

He blinked his eyes quickly, as if no one had ever snapped at him before. It almost made me think they weren't in cahoots.

Melinda picked up the ball and threw it hard at Lucas, who caught it with an “oof.”

“Take your makeup serve,” she said. “And get it over the net this time.”

Lucas held the ball out with one hand, then used his other hand to send it over the net. It slipped over and fell down so close to the net that the other team didn't have a chance to get it.

“Yeah!” Melinda punched the air.

Lucas had to serve again. This time they were ready for him, with Ashley, one of Melinda's basketball friends, way up by the net. The serve veered to the left, and Dev popped it back up. Ashley jumped and tried to spike it, but ended up smashing it into her own toe.

She rolled the ball to Melinda, who tossed it to Lucas. “I have to serve again?” he asked.

“You keep serving until we lose the point. And don't even think of losing the point on purpose.”

So Lucas served again and got it over. This time they returned it easily. Coco bumped it up, then Charlotte pushed it over toward me. I took a deep breath and slapped at the
ball. By some miracle it made its way over and landed in a hole among the other team.

“Awesome, Ruth!” Charlotte called out.

“Dumb luck,” Melinda said.

She was right, but whatever.

“Good play,” Coco said to me softly.

“I don't care about stupid volleyball,” I said back to him.

Lucas's wrist was turning pink where it smacked the ball when he served. He tossed it in his hands.

“All tied up,” Melinda said.

“I just want to let you know that, even with the marked improvement I'm showing, statistically I am unlikely to get another serve over,” Lucas said. “I've never done more than one before.”

“Just serve the ball.” Melinda leaned forward on her toes. She blew her hair out of her eyes.

Lucas tried again and sent it sailing over the net and beyond. It was about to go out, but then Dev did a heroic dive and popped it back in. “Dev!” Ashley cried out. “Let that go!”

Another girl on her team managed to control the ball and get it back into play, and Ashley spiked it over. Straight to me, of course.

Melinda jumped in front of me, her elbow catching me in the ribs. I toppled to the ground and she fell on top of
me. Her knee hit my stomach. “Ruth!” she cried as she disentangled herself. “You're useless.”