Times Squared (13 page)

THE HOTEL

“Pomeranian poo.” Payton finished telling me about what happened to her after the mathletes had left the theater.

“Ew!” I grimaced. “Gross! TMY!” I said.

“It's TM
I
,” my twin sister grumbled. “And so far
that
has been the highlight of my first day in New York City.”

“Hey, twins!” Cashmere's head popped out of a doorway. “We're right next door to you! Sydney, we can bang on the wall and the twins will hear it.”

“Whatever,” Sydney's voice said from their room.

Payton and I were carrying our suitcases and bags through the hotel hallway to our room.

“Room 817,” I announced. Cool. A prime number.

“We're here?” Payton gasped. “Emma, we are about to enter . . . drumroll, please . . . our very own hotel room in New York City!”

I slid the room key card the way the hotel front desk person had shown us.

The little light on the door flickered red.

“Isn't it supposed to be green?” my twin asked.

I slid the card again. Red blinking light. I flipped the card around. Swipe. Nothing.

“Having trouble, twins?” Jazmine James walked by. “You want to win mathletes, but you can't even get into your room?” She cackled.

I waited for Hector's echoing cackle. Nothing. Then I remembered the eighth floor was all girls. The boys were on the ninth. For once I didn't have to deal with Jazmine's sidekick.

Although one of the eighth-grade mathletes was with her.

“Hi, Emily,” the girl said, looking at both Payton and me.

“Hi.” I smiled weakly. Swipe. Red. Flip. Red. Rotate. Red light again.

Jazmine and the girl, who was apparently her roommate,
went up to the door just past ours. Jazmine swooped her key card, and the two girls disappeared into their room.

“This card must be defective,” I complained, jiggling it.

“Oh, give it to me,” my twin sister said, “
Emily
.”

I handed over the card.

“Like you can do it better than me,
Pain-ton
,” I scoffed. “You couldn't even open the right locker on the first day . . .”

“We're in!” Payton squealed.

The door opened on her first try.

“Woo,” my twin said, “hoo?”

Our hotel room was more like a hotel closet, really. It had enough room for two twin-sized (appropriate) beds and a shallow closet. And a stall-sized bathroom.

“What?” I said. “You were expecting them to put a bunch of middle-schoolers in a luxury suite?”

“It's cozy,” Payton determined, “and all ours.” She wheeled her travel suitcase in. I followed with mine. I placed my backpack on a bed.

“Ooh.” My sister smiled. “You gave me the bed with a window view!”

“It's probably a view of a wall,” I said, opening my
backpack.
Aah . . . my mathlete review books.
“Or one of those giant billboards advertising mattresses.”

“Or it could be a View! Of! New! York! City!” Payton said, pulling the cord to open the curtains.

“Oh!” she said. I walked over next to her and looked out the window.

“Wow,” I breathed. We were overlooking the building next door's rooftop garden. Plants and flowers flourishing right in the center of the city.

“Look down,” Payton whispered.

From our height we could clearly see all the people walking on the sidewalks, heading into restaurants, hailing taxis.

Payton and I looked at each other and grinned.

“New York City!” we shouted at the exact same time.

Bang! Bang!
There was knocking on one side of the room.

“Shush up, twins!” Sydney's voice came through the wall.

“Yeah! Keep it down! Some people are trying to study!” Jazmine's voice came through the opposite wall.

“We are surrounded . . . ,” Payton said.

“By evil!” I finished. “But will our evil nemeses bring us down? I say no! Twin powers activate!”

Payton giggled, but then her face changed.

“We don't need them to bring us down.” She sighed, sitting on her bed. “I'm already down.”

“Because of Ashlynn.” I shook my head. “You really need to learn to stick up for yourself better. You can't let the Ashlynns of the world walk all over you.”

“It's not just Ashlynn,” my twin said. Then she told me about how halfway through the Ferris wheel ride, she'd gotten dizzy and nauseous.

“I think Nick thought I wasn't happy to be with him,” she finished.

Uh-oh.

“Um,” I said, “actually, Nick wasn't in the best mood after we left the toy store. He said something like he'd misunderstood a situation.”

“I knew it! Augh!” Payton flopped facedown on the bed and pulled a pillow over her head.

“Your reaction is leading me to one conclusion,” I said. “You like Nick.”

“Drrf,” Payton said from under the pillow.

“What?”

“Yrrf erf lerrf Nrf,” she said, muffled.

I leaned over my bed, which was about two inches away from my sister's, and yanked the pillow off.

“What?” I repeated.

Payton sat up. Her face was red.

“Duh,” she said. “I said, ‘Duh, yes I like Nick.' ”

“Oooh!” I remembered how Payton had acted when she first found out I had a crush on Ox. “Payton and Nick, up in a tree, k-i-s-s—”

“Shhh!” Suddenly
my
face was covered with a pillow. My twin sister was trying to smother me!

“Sydney and Jazmine will hear us!” she hissed, removing the pillow. Okay, Payton wouldn't really try to smother me. But still.

I shook my hair out of my face and regained my composure.

“Well, good luck with the whole Nick thing,” I said, and sat back on my pillow. I opened
Mathletes Review
book 17, kicked off my sneakers, and settled in to study.

“
Helloo
 . . . ,” Payton said. “Traumatized twin over here.”

“Payton.” I sighed. “Do you really want boy advice from
me
?” Boys completely baffled me. I needed to focus on problems I
could
solve.

Like combinatorics.
What is the greatest integer . . .

“Let's review,” I said. “You like Nick and Nick likes you, but he thinks you don't. I like Ox, but everyone
thinks I like Nick. Which I don't. I mean, not how I like Ox.”

I took a breath and kept my voice low so only my sister, and not the neighboring rooms—villainesses—could hear.

“I have absolutely no clue what to do about B-O-Y-S, but I can't think about it now, because I am an elite mathlete in training.”

I continued reading:
What is the greatest integer between 1,000 and 1,250 that can be divided evenly by—

Knock! Knock!

“Yoohoo!” Mrs. Burkle's voice boomed through the door. “Everybody change into your bathing suits! It's time to go to the swimming pool!”

Payton popped up off the bed.

“Swimming poooool!” She squealed and grabbed her suitcase and ran into the bathroom.

I could hear more squeals coming from the direction of Sydney and Cashmere's room.

Ugh.
I needed earplugs to drown out the distractions.

“Emma!” Payton called. “Are you getting ready out there?”

“No,” I said. “I am sitting out here. With my books. I am studying, not swimming.”

Knock! Knock!

“Girls!” Mrs. Burkle called. “You have two more minutes to get ready. And remember, this activity is not optional. All Geckos to the pool!”

What?

Now I heard complaining through the wall from Jazmine's side.

“No exceptions!” trilled Mrs. Burkle.

Drat. Drat to the infinitieth power. I opened my suitcase and took out the swimsuit my mother had forced me to pack. And then, in a smaller pocket next to my clothes, I saw them.

Yes!
My flash cards! I had almost forgotten the color-coded review cards I'd made especially for elite competitions.

Okay, then. I would get into a swimsuit and flip-flops and go down to the pool with the rest of the people. And then I'd find a nice spot out of the way to study.

A mathlete always finds a way to do math.

Payton came out of the bathroom in her signature pink suit with a towel wrapped around her waist.

“My turn!” I said cheerfully as we maneuvered around each other in the small space. My twin eyed me
suspiciously as I held up my turquoise suit with one hand and backed into the bathroom.

I shut the door. In my other hand were my math flashcards.

Ha. Payton hadn't noticed. I'd make sure to keep them hidden in my towel until we got to the pool. Plan saved!

AT THE HOTEL POOL

“No running! No diving!”

Mrs. James was standing at the door that led to the pool. A group of us were all bunched up around her, wearing bathing suits and wrapped in towels.

“Okay!” we all shouted, and started to move to the door.

“No spitting!” Mrs. James shouted, putting her arms up to block the door. “No floating facedown and pretending you're dead and sending the chaperones into a panic.”

“Okay!” we all said.

She opened the door and a blast of chlorine smell
hit me in the face. Yeah! We all went into the pool area and took over. We had the whole place to ourselves. (Well, as soon as the lady who was in the pool saw us coming and fled.)

There was a mad rush for the chairs sitting around the pool. I threw my towel on a chair right next to the deep end and Tess grabbed the chair next to mine.

I noticed Emma going to the area farthest from the pool. With her flash cards.

“Ready?” Tess asked me.

We went to the side of the pool. I dipped my toe in the water. Brrr. I decided to sit on the edge and go in gently.

“Cannonball!” someone yelled. And Sam went flying right past me and did a cannonball. And soaked us.

“Eeee!” Tess and I shrieked. Then we looked at each other.

“Cannonball!” we yelled. And Tess and I cannonballed in too.

“No doing that, either!” Mrs. James shouted.

“Oh, pish,” Mrs. Nicely called to her from across the pool. “Relax and let the kids have some fun.”

Yeah! That was the goal here, to relax and have some fun. Pretty much everyone was in the pool. Sydney and
Cashmere were in the shallow end, not getting their hair wet. Except Emma. I looked around but didn't see Ox. Or Nick.

Well, their loss. I dived under the water and did a somersault. I attempted a handstand, but I tipped over. Then I sank to the bottom and sat there. I couldn't see much of anything but the hair floating around my face.

Ah. It was relaxing. It was nice to just float. Floating my cares away . . . I floated next to the wall.

And then a foot stuck in front of my face.

I popped up out of the water.

“Excuse me!” The girl from Emma's mathletes team, Nima, was sitting on the edge of the pool. “May I bother you for a minute? In private?”

I looked over at Tess, who shrugged at me.

“Okay,” I said, and pulled myself onto the edge and out of the pool. “Let me get a towel.”

I grabbed one of the scratchy hotel towels and wrapped it around me.

“It's urgent,” Nima said urgently as she half dragged me across the pool area.

What? Was it something about Emma? Oh no, was something wrong with Emma? I looked over at Emma,
who was sitting at a little table with her math flashcards out. She was muttering to herself.

Oh no, did Nima think Emma had gone
crazy
? That her obsessive mathness had put her
over the edge
? I followed Nima out of the pool area and into the hallway. She looked at me with panic in her eyes and took a deep breath.

“It's insanity.” Nima said, confirming my suspicions right away.

“Oh no,” I said. “You think it's really that bad?”

“Worse,” Nima said. “Nonstop thinking about math and numbers and equations all day, and then in nightmares at night. Obsessing over the math trophy and stressing about what happens if the Mathletic Geckos lose in New York City? And thinking, Then what would be the point of coming down here?!”

Whoa. I needed to call my parents if Emma was really this wigged-out. I got goose bumps, and not just from the air-conditioning that was blasting in the freezing hallway.

“Thanks for sharing, Nima,” I said to her. “I'm glad you thought you could trust me.”

“Oh, I don't trust you,” she said to me. “I just thought you'd know how I felt and I had to spill to somebody.
But you're still competition, so that means you're my nemesis, Emma.”

Emma?

Emma?

Oh my gosh. Nima thought I was Emma. She'd mixed us up!