Times Squared (5 page)

Phew.

Brrrrzt.
Emma was texting me.

Thx for the save!

I texted her back.

? What were u thinking? U wanted 2 sing?

I choked! I couldn't think!

Well, every1 is
now.

Except me. It's too loud to practice math.

Gee, I felt so sorry for her. Not! I did feel sorry for
me.
I had totally embarrassed myself in front of Nick. I leaned over to pick up some cheese puffs as everyone switched to singing a Barney the dinosaur song and cracked themselves up.

I tried to wipe the orange off my fingers.

“Here.” Emma handed me something through the seats. Hand wipes. Of course. Emma always carried a pack of them.

“You can use them up,” Emma said. “I brought a travel two-pack. And just so you know, if you need bandages, floss, or duct tape, I came prepared.”

STILL ON THE BUS

“New. York.
City!!!
”

I looked up from my mathletes book. People were cheering. I stood up to look over at Payton. Some moments I needed to share with my twin. I knew she was as excited as I was to be in the city.

Payton was asleep, her head tilted back against the seat.

“Payton!” I said. “We're here!”

“Oz?” Payton asked. Oh, she was sleep-talking. Heh.

“Wake up, Payton!” I said. “Tess, shake her a little. Otherwise she'll sleep through the whole trip.”

“Trip? Click your heels three times,” Payton said, eyes still closed.

Tess grinned and shook Payton awake.

“Wha?” Payton asked, a piece of hair sticking out at a thirty-degree angle from her head.

“Good morning, bedhead,” I said to her. “Technically bus head.”

Payton patted her hair, felt the wayward chunk, and said “Gah!”

I smiled and sat back down in my seat, where Nima still had her nose in her math book. I looked over her and saw tall buildings in the distance. Not like
our
hometown tall. Skyscraper tall! Our bus was crossing a bridge over the Hudson River that led to . . .

“New York City!” Everyone started cheering. I looked over at Jazmine James. She was staring down at her study book, ignoring the noise.

“Mathletes! Dramatic Geckos! Silence!” Coach Babbitt didn't have much volume, but his voice meant
no nonsense.

Silence.

“The seat across from Mrs. Burkle is currently unoccupied,” Coach Babbitt said. “Someone needs to return to his or her seat immediately. No wandering.”

“It is Samuel!” Mrs. Burkle said, and raised her voice. “Sam the munchkin! Return to your seat immediately!”

I remembered Sam, from the
Wizard of Oz
play.

“Maybe he went back to Munchkinland?” Hector suggested loudly.

Jazmine snickered, but she did not move her eyes from the page.

“Boy, she's really serious about this competition,” I whispered to Nima.

“She wants to take back what is rightfully hers,” Nima whispered to me. “The mathletes championship.”

Excuse me
?

“That championship is rightfully mine,” I said, louder than I'd intended. “I won.”

“Only because I had caught a virus from your snotty twin rugrats,” Jazmine said.

By “rugrats” she meant Mason and Jason. Okay, they kind of sneezed on her.

“You'd better keep studying, then,” I said in my best competition voice.

“So should we,” said Nima. “We've got approximately fifteen minutes before our arrival in Times Square. Emma, how many points with integer coordinates are exactly five units away from the origin?”

I pictured the coordinate plane and calculated using the distance formula. “Twelve points,” I said.

“Correct.” Nima nodded.

“Sam the munchkin!” Mrs. Burkle yelled again. “Yoohoo! Are you in the restroom? You're taking a long time! We're waiting for you!”

Lots of people giggled.

“Ox!” a voice hissed. “Hey, Ox!”

Yikes!

The voice came from under my feet! Then Sam's face appeared from under the seats ahead of me.

“Aaack!” I shrieked.

“Aaaack!” Nima shrieked.

“Where's Ox?” Sam said, looking up at us.

“Not under our seat,” I told him.

“Why are you crawling on the floor?” Nima asked. “How can you even fit under there?”

“Didn't you hear?” Hector said, blurting in from his seat on the other side. “He's a munchkin.”

Jazmine snorted.

“I couldn't take it up there anymore. Burkle's been doing some vocal exercises. She sounds like she's a gargling cat.”

Payton's and Tess's heads popped over their seat backs.

“Sam,” Payton complained, “you're kicking my legs.”

That made sense. They had the lower part of Sam's body under their row.

“Oopsie,” Tess said, and dropped a chunk of bagel. It bounced off Sam's head.

“Hey!” Sam exclaimed. Loudly.

“What is going on here?” Coach Babbitt came down the aisle and stopped at our row.

“Emma Mills is harboring a fugitive,” Jazmine James said.

“I am not.” I glared at her. “He just . . . appeared.”

“Sam, get up,” Coach Babbitt ordered.

“I think I'm stuck,” Sam said, his face turning a shade of red.

The bus was quiet. Everyone was interested now.

“Who knew all the drama would be in the mathletes section?” someone in front of us said.
Ha-ha.

Then.

Thump. Roll. Thump. Roll.
A strange sound grew louder and closer, then
bump!

“Ow!” Sam yelled. “Something just hit me.”

Tess disappeared, and then came up holding a soda can.

“It must have rolled down from the front,” Tess said.

Nima and I pulled our legs up onto our seats to
give Coach Babbitt room to reach down and assist Sam. Coach Babbitt tugged, and Sam slid out.

“Back to your seat, Sam,” Coach said. “We'll discuss your consequences up there.” Coach Babbitt went back up the aisle. Sam calmly stood up, brushed himself off, and moved to the aisle.

Whew. I stretched my legs out.

“Thanks,” Sam said. I was about to say “You're welcome” when I realized he was talking to Tess. He'd taken the soda pop out of her hand.

“All that crawling made me thirsty,” Sam said.

Oh. No.

“Don't—” I was going to explain the scientific results of rapid molecular movement and a sudden release of energy when it happened.

Sam popped the top.

Ka-floom!
Foam, bubbles, and liquid exploded into the air. And then gravity intervened, and it all rained down. Mostly onto the two people on the inside aisle. Payton and me.

First we were cheesed.

Now we were soaked.

“At least it's clear soda,” Tess said, trying to console us. “It could have been much worse.”

“This is bad enough,” Payton said grimly, trying to shake droplets out of her hair.

“We're twin targets for disaster,” I said.

“Man, I'm gonna get in double trouble,” Sam groaned. Then he ran back up the aisle to this seat.

“I hope Mrs. Burkle tortures him for the rest of the trip,” Payton grumbled.

“Here.” I reached into inner zip pocket number two of my travel bag and pulled out one of my emergency “magic cloths” for my twin.

“Soaks up any spill in under ten seconds,” I said. Payton said thanks, and she and Tess vanished from view. I used my backup emergency cloth (inner zip number three) and dabbed at my hair, shirt, and jeans.

“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .” Nima and I counted down the seconds.

“How cute,” Jazmine said. “They're practicing counting backward.” Hector laughed.

“Two . . . one!” I checked my clothes. Hey, not bad. The magic cloth absorbed almost all the soda pop.
What a relief!

“Excuse me, people,” Coach Babbitt said loudly. “Quiet, please. We need to go over the rules. Every one of you will be representing our school in New York City.
You must uphold the Gecko rules of safety . . .”

Coach went over the sheet of rules we had all received with our permission slips. I turned and looked out the window. Tall buildings, taxicabs weaving in and out of traffic, and an incalculable number of people everywhere.

Oh, yeah. This was it! Soon we would park and disembark and split up—those drama people off to do their acting stuff, and mathletes off to do mathletic and other
important
activities.

“As Geckos, we will all be supporting one another this weekend,” Coach Babbitt was saying. “This means that our mathletes will not only attend the play with the drama club but will also be going backstage at the theater.”

“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!” Mrs. Burkle exclaimed in a voice that could put a gecko in a coma. “A cultural and artistic treat for our Geckos!”

“What?” I said. “But we need to focus on what's important here: Math!”

The back of the bus muttered “Yeah!” and “Math!”

Payton leaned around her seat and shushed at me.

“And that also means that our Dramatic Geckos will be attending a mathematics lecture and also cheering on our
mathletes at their tournament,” Mrs. Burkle announced.

The front of the bus made groaning sounds.

It was my turn to shush Payton, who was saying “Sheesh!” and “Ugh!”

“
Bo
-ring,” Sydney whined loudly from her seat across from my sister. “We have to waste our time in New York doing geeky math stuff?”

Waste our time?

Geeky?

I chose to ignore Sydney, who was ignorant about the important things in life. Which, at the moment, was the math book in my lap.

Math > zero >Sydney.

Time to get some last-minute studying in.

TIMES SQUARE, NYC!

I pressed my face to the window. I could see blinking lights! Huge signs advertising random things! Zillions of people walking around everywhere!

Times Square! I had to share this exciting moment with my sister. I turned around and leaned over my seat.

“Emma!” I said. “Times Square!”

Emma barely looked up from her math book.

“Did you know Times Square is known as the Crossroads of the World? It's a major intersection of the blocks at Broadway and Seventh Avenue,” she mumbled.

Oh, dear.

“Hm, if it spans the blocks between Sixth and Eighth,”
Emma said, “and West Fortieth and West Fifty-third. That would mean the perimeter of the square equals . . .”

“Emma!” I interrupted her. “Stop being a math robot for just a minute and look out your window! It's
Times Square!
”

“Big whoop,” Sydney said, nearly hitting me on the head as she pulled her bag from the overhead. “We went to New Year's Eve here and watched the ball drop from our hotel room. We were so close, people probably thought I was a celebrity.”