Lunch Money (7 page)

Mr. Z taught sixth graders, and in his kingdom, mathematics ruled. Everything about his room—including its legendary calmness—was a function of math. Mr. Z did not just
teach
sixth-grade math. He lived math. He breathed and ate and slept and dreamed math. His wife taught geometry at the high school, so you could even say that he had married math—
plus their only son was an engineering major at the state university.

For Mr. Z math was the source of all that was beautiful, good, and true. Math controlled the orbits of the planets, always in perfect, stressless balance. Math was frictionless. Math supplied the principles that sent rockets past the moon and helped Beethoven create his symphonies. Mr. Z believed that even the smile of the Mona Lisa, like the spiral of the chambered nautilus, could be expressed as a ratio, a set of elegant numbers.

The alarm clock, the thermometer, the calendar, the digital watch on his wrist, the odometer in his car, the test and quiz scores of his students, the percentage points of his grading scale—these gave him the numbers he lived by. He awoke each day at 6:15, school or no school. Channel 7's weather forecasts were the most accurate—he'd done a three-year study himself—so a predicted high temperature of seventy degrees or warmer = khaki pants + a short-sleeved shirt; sixty-nine degrees or below = corduroys + long sleeves; and for a high temperature of forty degrees or lower, + one sweater.

Mr. Z put his heavy down coat into storage on March 1, and got it out again on October 1. He had an appointment at the barber shop every third Thursday at 4:15 p.m. He changed the oil in his white Toyota Camry every 5,500 miles, and when the odometer reached 110,000 miles—the twentieth oil change—he and his wife began shopping for a new white Camry. Why a Camry? Math: The Camry was the car that cost the
least
amount of dollars, had the
most
features he could afford, and had the
fewest
service problems. Why white? Again, math: White was the color that kept the inside temperature of a car
lowest
in the summer—when running the air conditioner meant buying
more
gas and getting
fewer
miles per gallon.

There were 185 school days per year, and 55 minutes in each class period. Mr. Z wrote the number of remaining minutes of math class on the board at the start of each school day—beginning at 10,175. Quiz scores counted once, and test scores counted twice. Grade percentages were calculated out to three decimal places, then rounded up. And arguing about grades was pointless: Numbers never lied.

Mr. Z had a sense of humor, but it was a
mathematical sense of humor. He wasn't witty or clever, but he had an almost endless supply of math puns. What did the triangle say to the circle? Your life seems so pointless. What did the ninety-degree angle say to the ninety-one-degree angle? Don't be obtuse. What did the plus sign say to the minus sign? You're always so negative. Why didn't the rectilinear equilateral like jazz? He was a square. And so was Mr. Z.

If Mr. Z seemed stiff, or set in his ways, or rigid in his views, that was a function of math as well. In math there were fixed rules. Math involved pure operations that required no bending, no guesswork, no emotional adjustments—only the glide and flow of intelligence. There were always answers,
right
answers, and it was possible to understand exactly what was right about them.

And that's why Mr. Z loved math—
loved,
not liked, not enjoyed, not appreciated. Loved. He loved thinking about math, he loved using it, and most of all, he loved teaching it. Math was perfect. Math clarified the jumbled minds and disciplined the untidy lives of his students. So many things changed constantly—politics,
weather, the price of energy, the cover of
Time
magazine. Not math. As he told his students, “Now and forever, two plus two will
always
equal four—every single day.”

But on this particular day, with 9,790 minutes of math class remaining in his sixth-grade year, Greg Kenton came stomping into the orderly world of room 27 with a head full of chaos. He walked straight over to Maura Shaw. He slapped the Eentsy Beensty Book down onto her desk, and through clenched teeth he said, “Nice! Nice rip-off! You are
such
a
thief.
You
stole
my idea, and you know it. So stop it. Stop it
now
!”

Maura jumped up, nose to nose with Greg. “Oh, sure, like you invented paper and drawings—and words, too, right? Just so you know, anybody can make anything they want to. And they can sell stuff too. It's a free country—like, for over two hundred years—or hadn't you heard?”

Mr. Z looked up from his grade book, saw the disturbance in aisle four, and got to his feet. Speaking as he moved, he was at the scene in three seconds.

“All right, all right there . . . easy does it.
Greg, lower your voice. Maura, you too. And sit down. Now what's this about?”

“Simple.” Greg opened his pencil case and said, “I started making these great little comic books, and now she's ripping me off with her stupid imitation. She's using
my
idea, and it's like she's stealing money right out of my pocket.” He pointed at the unicorn book on her desk. “
That's
what this is about.”

Maura shook her head. “What it's about is that you're a greedy little money-grubber, just like always—‘Mine, all mine.' That's all you ever care about!”

“That's a lie!”

“All right,” said Mr. Z, “calm down.”

But Maura was on her feet again. “It's true! And poor wittle Gweg can't stand it when somebody else has a good idea.”

Greg snorted, and grabbed the Eentsy Beentsy Book. “Yeah, right! Like
this
is a good idea. You know what this is? Garbage! Cheap, stupid garbage—just like you!” And Greg ripped the front cover off
The Lost Unicorn
and threw it at Maura's face.

“
Both
of you—
stop
this! Just
stop
it!”

It was like Mr. Z had disappeared. All Maura could see was her little book as Greg began to tear off another page.

“Give me that!”
She swung her right arm to grab for it, and Greg yanked the book up above his head. And as Maura's hand followed the moving book, the bottom three knuckles of her right hand connected with a sharp
crack
against the left side of Greg's nose.

Greg's mouth dropped open. So did Mr. Z's—and Maura's.

There was a half-second of stunned silence, and then, “OWWW!” Greg clutched his nose, which began to bleed, dripping onto Maura's desk.

Room 27, usually quieter than the library, flashed to life.

“Did you see that?!”

“What? Where?”

“Maura . . . she
pounded
him!”

“No way!”

“I saw it—look at his nose.”

“Ooh,
blood
!”

And amid all the other noise, Maura squeaked out, “Oh . . . oh . . . I'm really sorry . . . I didn't mean . . .
I didn't mean to . . . really, I didn't . . .”

Mr. Z wanted to take charge. He wanted to quiet the room, calm Maura, and get Greg to the nurse. But there was blood.

Numbers never bleed, which Mr. Z believed was one of their best qualities. Because just the word
blood
was enough to make him start looking for a chair so he could sit and put his head between his knees.

Mr. Z turned away from Greg. Already woozy, his face was going gray, but as he slumped into the nearest empty desk, swallowing hard, he managed to say, “Maura . . . please help . . . Greg . . . to the nurse. I'll . . . I'll be . . . here.”

Maura rushed to the front of the room, yanked five or six tissues from the box on Mr. Z's desk, and hurried back to Greg. “Here.”

Greg accepted the tissues, but when Maura took his elbow and began steering him toward the hallway, he jerked his arm free and made his own way out the door. It was bad enough he'd just gotten a bloody nose from a girl. No way was he going let that same girl turn around and help him.

Maura stopped at the doorway of the nurse's
office, and Mrs. Emmet took charge. Sitting Greg on the black vinyl cot, she grabbed a plastic cold pack from a cabinet and smacked it on her desk three or four times to activate the crystals. She pulled on a pair of pale green gloves, took a paper towel, got it wet at the sink, and began to clean up Greg's face.

“Lean forward.” The nurse took the cold pack and wrapped it in a damp washcloth. Leaning over, she looked at the marks on Greg's skin, and then pressed the cold pack gently against his face.

Mrs. Emmet said, “How'd this happen?”

It would have been so easy for Greg to lift his bloody hand, point a crimson finger, and shout, “Maura did it! She slugged me right in the nose—hard!” He could have yelled so loud that the principal across the hall would have heard him.

But he didn't. He mumbled, “It was an accident. Somebody grabbed for something . . . and I got in the way.”

The nurse lifted the cold pack and touched Greg's nose carefully with her gloved fingers. He flinched. Mrs. Emmet said, “Hmm . . . It's not broken, but you're going to have a black
eye—a real prizewinner. You need to stay here till I'm sure the bleeding has stopped.” She pressed the cold pack back in place and said, “Put your left hand here, and press . . . not too hard.”

Greg did as he was told.

Turning to the doorway, Mrs. Emmet said, “Maura, did any blood get on you?”

Maura looked at her hands and down her front. She shook her head.

“Anywhere else?” asked the nurse. “Where did this happen?”

“In Mr. Z's room. Some drops got on a desk, and maybe on the floor.”

Mrs. Emmet nodded. “I'll send the custodian with disinfectant. You should get back to class now.”

Maura hesitated. It was nice Greg hadn't blamed her, and she wanted him to turn and look at her. She wanted at least to nod a “thanks” at him. But Greg kept his eyes shut. So Maura turned and left.

Mrs. Emmet said, “Greg, I have to go find the custodian. You can lean back on those pillows now, but stay still, all right?” And she was gone.

The whole side of Greg's face throbbed as
he eased himself back.
Great—a black eye. From a girl. Just what I always wanted.

What Maura had said in Mr. Z's room came back to him: “. . . you're a greedy little money-grubber, just like always!” Those words hurt—worse than his nose. His big brothers had been calling him stingy and greedy for years.
Is that what they all think, that I'm a money-grubber? Everybody wants a lot of money, right? What's wrong with that? Can I help it if I have good ideas? And that I'm willing to work? There's nothing wrong with that.

Greg became aware that he had something clutched in his right hand. He brought it up where he could see it. It was the wad of bloody tissues. And something else—Maura's mini-book,
The Lost Unicorn.