Lizzie At Last by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Eight

In PAL math on Monday, Lizzie managed to let Ethan answer at least half the questions on his own, though she still came to his rescue for the tricky ones at the end of the problem set. She had promised herself she wouldn’t help, but when the moment came to turn in an assignment with a blank for one answer and a mistake for another, she couldn’t do it.

“Wait a minute,” she blurted out as Ethan picked up their assignment to give it to Mr. Grotient. “I just thought of a way we might be able to do problem ten.”

“How?”

Lizzie took the paper back and showed him. He looked relieved. Apparently Ethan cared about his math grade, too. Should she also tell him that the answer he had worked out for them on problem nine was wrong? He had seemed so pleased when he wrote it down. As far as Lizzie could remember, it was the first time Ethan had ever come up with his own solution to one of the trick questions. But wasn’t it better that she point out the mistake to him now than that Mr. Grotient point it out to him later?

“On nine? I think maybe it’s minus 7a plus 8b.”

Ethan studied it. “You’re right.” He erased his answer, rubbing too hard, so that the paper crinkled where he had rubbed. Lizzie resisted the urge to snatch the paper away from him and finish erasing it herself. Then Ethan added—ruefully, Lizzie thought—“You’re always right.”

“No I’m not.”

“When have you ever been wrong? Name one time.”

She couldn’t. That was the whole problem with Lizzie: she was the smart girl, the brain, the math whiz nobody liked. But she would be wrong the next time they did PAL math together. It couldn’t be that hard to hand in a paper with a wrong answer on it. Other people did it all the time.

* * *

On Wednesday Ms. Singpurwalla announced a class trip, in two weeks, to the rare books room at the university library.

“They have one of the nation’s largest collections of Shakespeare manuscripts and memorabilia,” Ms. Singpurwalla told the class. “A complete Shakespeare First Folio! That was the first collected edition of his plays—published only seven years after he died. Also, we’ll be able to see, even to touch—if our hands are very clean!—earlier manuscripts, from the fifteenth century, manuscripts that are over five hundred years old.”

Although Lizzie knew the university well, from years of visiting her parents in their offices, she had never been to the rare books room. She felt gripped by the same excitement she heard in Ms. Singpurwalla’s usually calm voice. To touch a piece of paper that people five centuries ago had read and loved would be a thrilling thing. Plus, Ms. Singpurwalla said they would visit the university’s Shakespeare garden, filled with flowers and plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

Lizzie took care not to betray her enthusiasm to anyone in the class. She was getting better at figuring out on her own what was cool and what wasn’t.

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