The Cinderella Theorem (4 page)

“Oh,”
I said, as if tiny people dressed in one color, falling from my ceiling were an
everyday occurrence.

“Did
you like the pretzels?” Peridiom asked.

I smiled, nodded, and helped Peridiom and Miss
Purple off the table.

I don’t
know how much more of this “normal” life I can stand.

After
I finished my biology, I settled into the couch to enjoy Sir Isaac Newton and
his first law of motion. Objects in motion were remaining in motion when my
parents finally decided to come home to see if their only daughter had returned
from school safely. They bounded down the stairs, holding hands and smiling.

“Are
you all packed, Lil?” Mom asked, looking appalled by my biography of Newton. Mom,
being a fiction writer and, apparently, the queen of a fairy tale kingdom, has
an aversion to non-fiction.

“What
exactly do I pack?” Questions about packing equal stalled time not spent in
magical fairy tale kingdom. “Furthermore, why do I need to pack? It seems to me
that if I need anything I can just zip back through the tub and get it.”

“Go
pack.” Mom used her rare no-nonsense voice.

I
took the tonal hint and went upstairs.

In
my room, I found my jeans from yesterday. Jeans are nearly mathematical all by
themselves. I’ve created an equation regarding how many times you can wear them
before you send them to the hamper.
And
the degree in which you wear
them plays a part of the equation. For instance,

if x = a wearing of jeans,

2x = two wearings of jeans,

but x² = dirty to the second degree,

a really dirty wearing of jeans.

Math:
Happiness and normality even when you are packing to go on a magical journey
through your bathtub.

I
stuck my hand in the pocket to clean it out and found the blue marble from
The
Box
. Lovely. The blue marble equals a reminder of happier days when what I
knew about my father could be contained in one small box. It’s actually kind of
sad, really. But which is sadder: losing
The Box
of what you know about
your father, or being able to put everything you know about him into a box?

That
was not a mathematical question at all, so I couldn’t answer it. Without
thinking, I put the marble into the pocket of today’s jeans. (Today’s jeans =
2x.) On to packing.

Ten
minutes, a pair of pajamas, yesterday’s jeans, two shirts, and an assortment of
toiletries later I returned downstairs to announce that I was packed.

“Where’s
your bag?” Mom asked, furiously scribbling something onto a post-it note in the
kitchen. Several post-it notes, actually. She had quite a pile going.

“It’s
in the bathroom.” Where else do you put your bag for a trip to Smythe’s SFL?

“Fine…”
Mom trailed absent-mindedly.

“What
are you doing?” I wanted to know what was so important it had to be written
down at that exact moment. We were supposed to be embarking on our first trip
as an entire family.

My
dad came over, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Unfortunately, Lily,” he
sighed. “Your mother has been seized with an inspiration.”

“Shall
we sit down then?” I asked, as mom ran to her office, calling, “I’ll only be a
minute!”

“I
think so,” my father chuckled, as we walked back into the living room. “Once
she ignored me for two whole days.” He smiled. “That was the Battle for the
Magic of Andeer.”

“I
know what you mean. The week that she wrote the fall of Sir Wend, I only saw
her at supper.”

“That’s
one of her better villain downfalls, though.”

“It
is.” We settled into a little silence; then our quiet was broken by Mom
shouting from the office, “I’ve got you now, Tressa! Your plans to marry the
prince are going to fail.”

“Poor
Tressa.” My father sank back into the couch and sighed.

I
should have been happy, really. I just had a “moment” of mutual understanding
with my new-found father. Too bad the “moment” came from us waiting for my mom
to come back from a world that exists only in her brain and computer, so that
we can portal through our bathtub to a parallel world inhabited solely by
fictional characters. And the awkward conversation we shared was about my mother’s
fictional worlds, instead of being a
normal
awkward conversation about
school, the weather, or the new anchor on the six o’clock news.

And
my mother wonders why I’ve found happiness in math.

Fifteen
minutes later, Mom emerged from her office looking a little tired.

Tub
Man jumped up and said, “Did, uh, you get everything worked out with Tressa?” I
think my father was concerned we would never get to magic ourselves away into
Smythe’s SFL.

“Yes,”
Mom sighed. “It’s just that…” She sighed again. “It’s just that Tressa has
found another way to get her clutches on the prince.” Mom looked away, my father
looked at me, and I looked down. I’m no good at consoling authors when the
people they made up, and
therefore control
, do things that the author
doesn’t like. Honestly, that’s about as unmathematical as the Easter Bunny.

My father,
however, seemed to be a little better at this consolation. “You’ll get her next
time, dear. I’m sure of it. If you can bring down Sir Wend, how can little
Tressa stop you?”

“Matt,”
my mother began impatiently. “
I
did not defeat Sir Wend. Driel did. And
I’m not the one trying to stop Tressa. Laurel must do that.”

“But—”

“Let’s
just go.” She started up the stairs. “Are you packed, Lily?”

“Yes,”
I rolled my eyes, following her and trying very hard not to point out the
redundancy of her asking me
again
if I was packed.

Before my entire family gets into the bathtub and
showers away to a land where Sleeping Beauty’s Wicked Stepmother really does
exist, I would like to state the mathematical improbabilities I am about to
face.

(1) Though Einstein and Shrodinger did some work on
time gap theories, there is no mathematical evidence to support what we are
about to do.

(2) It is a bathtub, not a door to a world unknown.

(3) I submit, as further evidence to Point 2, the
fact that I have often taken a bath in the bathtub and have not seen any sort
of thing likely to be a “secret lever” or “magic doorknob” or anything like
that.

Mathematical
improbability or not, we all got into the bathtub. I carried my bag. Mom had no
luggage. But, I suppose, she already had everything she needed over there. You
know, for her secret trysts and all. His Royal Highness, King Tub Man, pulled
the shower curtain closed. It was rather tight. I had to hug the duffle bag to
my chest.

Trying
not to focus on the fact I was in the tub (fully clothed!) with my parents, I
asked, “I don’t want to sound critical or anything, but, um, how exactly do we
get there? Do we just stand here and say, ‘Open, thou door to Smythe,’ or
what?”

King
Tub Man chuckled. “No. All we really need are our keys. Do you have yours,
Lil?”

“What?”
Generally, I prefer more exact questions. Questions full of exactness tend to
result in answers full of equal proportions of exactness. But, in this case,
surprise won over exactness. (surprise > exactness)

“Your
key, Lily. Did you bring your key? Your mother and I have ours, but you’ll have
to use yours to get in. Everyone has to have their own key.”

Rationally,
I responded: “I don’t have a key. I have a key to the house, and one to the—”

“Not
a key like a
key
,” Mom interrupted. “This key is the only key that will
get you into Smythe’s SFL.”

“What?”
I asked again. “What do you mean, ‘not a key like a
key
’? That doesn’t
make any sense.”

King
Tub Man bumped his leg on the ceramic soap dish. Rubbing his knee, he
elaborated, “For instance, Lily, my key is a paperweight made in the shape of a
golden egg from the goose that lays the golden eggs.” He pulled a miniature egg
out of his pocket.

“Yes,
and mine is the golf tee from the first time your father and I went golfing at
Poseidon’s Under Sea Adventures putt-putt course.” And the golf tee was on
display for me to see.

“So
what’s yours?” my father asked.

I
just looked at him. “What?”

Both
of my parents sighed, looking exasperated. Speaking slower than was probably
necessary, Tub Man said, “You’ve got to choose something to be your key. Once
you choose it and use it with the intent to get you to Smythe’s SFL, it will
forever be your key.”

“So
I just pick something?”

“Yes.”
Mom inched a little closer to me to get out of the drip from the showerhead. “It
should probably be something small, so it can fit into your pocket easily.”

I logically
stuck my hand in my pocket so I could get a feel for how much space I could
use. I felt the blue marble from
The Box
.

“Here,”
I said, pulling it out. “I’ll use this.”

“Oh,
Lily…” Mom got a little teary. “Your father’s favorite marble. Look, Matt.”

My
dad swallowed, and I rolled my eyes.

“So
I just hold this and think about going to Smythe’s SFL?” I asked, trying to
change the subject.

“Uh,
no,” my dad said. “You’ve got to stick it–oh, hold on, I’ll just show you and
walk you through it. So I’ll portal first. Then, send Lily and you come after
her, Ginnie.” The last sentences were directed to my mother, who immediately
began nodding her head and moving to the back of the shower, so my dad could
move to the front. “Okay,” he continued, when he had made it to the front of
the tub. “First, place your key in the water faucet, like so.” The golden egg
disappeared. “Make sure you hold on to it. Then, you close your eyes, and think
‘E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land.’ And…”

But
whatever was going to follow “And” was forever lost in the bathroom, because my
dad had completely disappeared.

Poof!

Into
thin air.

Gone.

“Well,” I said, stepping out of
the tub still holding my bag. “That was…lovely. Just lovely.” I walked out of
the bathroom. I admit I was suffering from a mild amount of shock.

Disappearing fathers = mild
amounts of shock

I headed for my room.

“Lily,”
Mom called. I could hear her fighting with the shower curtain. “Lily, where are
you going?”

“I
think I’d rather just spend the weekend here, thanks.” I called back as I sat
on my bed, hugging my duffle bag.

People
don’t disappear. It does not happen. There is no mathematical evidence
whatsoever that–

“Lily
Elizabeth Sparrow.” Mom stood in my doorway. “Get up and get in that bathtub,
right now.”

“I
can’t.”

“What
do you mean, ‘you can’t’?” Mom crossed her arms.

“There
is absolutely no mathematical evidence to suggest that people can—”

“Get
in the bathtub,” Mom interrupted. “This has nothing to do with math. You have
got to accept that there are some things in this world that cannot be put into
theorems and proofs.” She paused. “You are going to E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire
Land, and you are going
right now
.” She pointed behind her towards the
bathroom. “Now move.”

Here
is a fact about my famous-distracted-author-mother: when she comes out of her
distraction she tends to make up for her former distractedness by channeling
all that energy into authoritarianism and dictator-type behavior. I think she
tries to prove how motherly she can be.

Apparently,
I must have looked sad and pitiful, because she became more normal and less
dictatorial. She sat on the bed beside me.

“Lily,”
she said softly. “Look. I know what you’re going through. When I portaled the
first time, with your father and Prince Witham, I was so shocked by seeing
someone vanish like that, that I nearly didn’t go either.”

“Who’s
Prince Witham?”

“Snow
White’s Prince. Anyway—”

“Wait.
He has a name? Aren’t all the princes just ‘Prince Charming’ or something?”

“Really,
Lily. Of course they have names.” Mom looked at me like I had just said
something incredibly socially unacceptable. “As I was saying, after Prince
Witham portaled, I told your father there was no way I was going to vanish like
that.”
“So how’d he talk you into it?” Obviously the woman went, I mean, I’m here, for
crying out loud. There’s no need for all this suspense.
Writers.

“Well,
he just helped me realize that I wanted to go and this was the only way to get
there.”

“Oh,”
I said, wondering if she planned to try the same thing with me. The variable
she and my kingly father hadn’t counted on was the fact that I
didn’t
want to go. That considerably damaged their equation.

“Lily,
I know you don’t want to go. You don’t want to accept the possibility of things
working outside of your well-crafted world of math. But this is important. You
cannot change what you were born to. It is your destiny to go to E. G. Smythe’s
Salty Fire Land. It is your destiny to become the next Protector.” She smiled,
“It won’t be so bad. You haven’t considered all the possible outcomes of this
equation. You might even
like
some of them.”

She
was talking math to me, trying to trick me into accepting her scheme, but I
wasn’t ready to give in. What if I
did
like this fairy tale land? That’s
not normal or mathematical.

But…I
do have that marble in my pocket. As unmathematical as it is to have a dead
father reappear in your life and as unmathematical as it is to want to get to
know this absentee man, it is something you wish for an awful lot when your
father is killed in a train wreck two days before you were born, but really spirits
away to a hidden kingdom in your bathtub. I could create a whole series of
algebraic equations for the number of times I have wished on a birthday candle
or a star for my father to be alive. (However, it is a little unlikely that I’d
be running around making up equations about something as unmathematical as
wishes.)

What
would a mathematician do? I don’t know. Their biographies lean toward the
mathematical. But I can’t imagine Newton, the man who discovered calculus and
the laws of motion, would pass up an opportunity to portal into an unknown
dimension. And even if he
did
say, “You know, why don’t we let that
young Descartes figure it out?” I don’t think he’d ignore an opportunity to get
to know his formerly dead father. Could it be
unmathematical
to miss a
chance to get to know your king-of-another-world father?

“Lily?”

“All
right. I’ll go,” I said. “But I’m still going to do pure mathematics research
or be a codebreaker for the National Security Agency.”

“Fair
enough,” Mom agreed. “I’m still a writer.”

I
picked up my bag, thinking briefly and happily about how Newton’s forces were
working as I exerted a force upon the bag and the bag exerted a force upon me. For
every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is normal–a
beautiful blend of math and science.

I
got into the tub first. Mom followed. “Do you remember what your dad was
telling you about what you’re supposed to do?” she asked.

“Well,
up until he disappeared.”

“Oh
right. He was at ‘close your eyes and think E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land.’”

“Yeah.
Then he vanished.”

“He
was probably about to say that you should never think just ‘Smythe’s SFL’ or ‘Salt’
or ‘Fire.’ It will make for a very messy arrival if you do. You’ve got to use
the whole name.”

“Okay.”
What did she mean by
messy
? “Umm, exactly how long does it take to get
there? Am I going to be portaling through time and space trying to think the
full name of the kingdom for an hour?”

“Of
course not. It’s an instantaneous portal. Well…unless you think the wrong
thing.”

Mom
hugged me and said, “Don’t look so worried, Lily! You won’t think the wrong
name, so you’ll arrive fine.”

I
tried to shake off the feeling that she had hugged me in case it was the last
time she ever saw me; then, I took the blue marble out of my pocket and moved
toward the faucet. I put the marble in, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and
thought,
E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land
.

I
felt absolutely nothing. I was afraid it hadn’t worked, so I opened my eyes to
ask Mom what I should do now.

Apparently,
it had worked.

No
sooner had I opened my eyes than my father was hugging me and a large group of
people were shouting, “Long live Princess Lily!” (Talk about instantaneous.) Then
my mom popped out of nowhere, and there was a lot more cheering and jubilant
happiness at seeing the royal family all together again. This state of loud,
cheering joy continued for two minutes.

Then
the person who appeared to be in charge of all the cheering ones said, “All
right everyone. We can celebrate tomorrow. There’s still lots of work to be
done in order to make sure Princess Lily gets a visit she’ll never forget.”

Like
I could forget it if I wanted to.

As the
cheering people began to disperse, an incredibly happy person took my bag away
with a “Welcome, Your Highness.” My father nodded his thanks to the in-charge
man, and I looked around the room I had portaled into. It was a long,
rectangular room or perhaps a large hallway. One side of the hallway (the side
I was facing after opening my eyes) was covered in windows–nice, neat, orderly
symmetrical rectangles. On the other side of the hall (the side behind me) were
paintings. Each painting was directly opposite a window making an effective
geometrical study out of the whole hallway.

“What
do you think, Lil?” My dad put his hand on my shoulder. “This is the
Arrivhall.”

Arrivhall.
That’s clever. “I like the geometrical shapes,” I offered honestly.

“Yes,”
my father went on, clearly undeterred by my lack of enthusiasm. “And did you
notice that there are twenty-three paintings that correspond to the
twenty-three windows?” He gestured at the paintings and windows. “See, the
portal painting,” (more gesturing) “is in the exact symmetrical middle of the twenty-three
paintings. There are eleven on each side of it.”

I
looked at the center painting. I shouldn’t have been surprised. With everything
else that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, why wouldn’t the
center painting be a portrait of my mom, my dad, and me? And why wouldn’t I
look like I did in my spring photo last year in eighth grade? It gave off the
appearance that we were a happy family: a happy family that had never been
severed by the laws of fictional people in a separate dimension.

“Your
mother brought your school pictures over every year so we could update the
painting. It’s good for the populace to know what their princess looks like.”

“Great,”
I said, thrilled to know that the fairy tale world did, indeed, have a way to
know what I looked like my entire life. Not everyone is as lucky as me. “What
are the other paintings of?”

“Different
Smythian citizens and scenes from their stories. We rotate them around every
month so that no one feels left out. After all, there are only twenty-two
spaces, and how many countless fairy tales, myths, and legends?” My parents both
chuckled at this, like they knew about the countless aspect of it. However, as
Princess and Protector of this land I can’t even name twenty-two of its
citizens.

Wait.

My
family is 3 + those 7 little people with the food last night = 10, but since of
the 7, I can only actually name Lubcker and Peridiom, I guess that just = 5. 5
total people. And wouldn’t that King Median guy, with the magic touch ice
cream, be here too? 6, then.

Well.
Six does not equal zero. That’s something.

“Isn’t
it amazing, Ginnie?” My dad held my mom’s hand. They both looked extremely
happy, like some sort of bizarre fairy tale greeting card. “All three of us. Here.
Together.”

“It’s
wonderful,” my mom agreed.

I was starting to get a little grossed out by all
this strange, parental affection. After all, the man’s been dead for fifteen
years. I did not want to see him kiss my mother. That would be beyond
unmathematical and abnormal. So, I turned to look at the other twenty-two
rectangle paintings.

I
didn’t recognize any of them. If I had to actually
apply
for the job of
future Protector, there’s no way I could get it, unless nepotism came into the
equation. It’s highly ironic that I was born to be something so unmathematical
and un-what I am. I am convinced that this would not have happened to any of
Newton’s children. (If he had children, of course.)

Luckily,
the paintings were labeled. I walked to one end of the Arrivhall to start
looking more closely and mathematically at the pictures. (The happy couple
stayed in the center gazing deeply at each other. Ick.)

The
first picture was titled
The Bremen Town Musicians
. In this painting, a
donkey stood outside the window of a house. On top of the donkey was a dog, on
top of the dog was a cat, and on top of the cat was a rooster. Why are they
called the Bremen Town Musicians? In an equation about music, I would say that:

One
can be a musician if and only if one can sing or play some form of an
instrument.

Mathematically
and logically speaking, the Bremen Town Musicians weren’t musicians. They were
just animals, and why were they stacked up like that?

“Oh,
Lily,” my dad called, “push the display button.” Not exactly knowing what he
was talking about, I looked down at the title of the painting. A little yellow
button was next to a speaker. I pushed it, and the hall filled with noise. A
donkey braying. A dog barking. A cat meowing. A rooster crowing. But all at
once. It sounded horrible.

“Do
you get it, Lily?” Mom asked, as she and my father walked over.

“No.”
How was I supposed to get it? I
get
things like unbalanced equations. I
get
things like Cartesian planes and mixed ratios. I
do not
get worlds in
bathtubs and strange animal paintings.

“You know…it’s the story of the Bremen Town
Musicians,” Mom went on. “The recording was done as a joke by the Musicians. Of
course, they don’t really sound as bad as they supposedly do in the fairy
tale.”

“Oh.”
I think I’m going to become very good at pretending to understand what’s going
on in my world(s).

“Yes,”
my dad agreed. “They usually play Thursday nights at Once Upon a Tine, but
they’ll also be playing at your ball tomorrow night, Lil. You’ll be able to
hear for yourself the difference between the fairy tale and real life.”

Two
things:

(1)
Once Upon a Tine? What?