Counting by 7s

And weight carried around the middle is more deleterious than extra pounds in the butt.

  Yet, culturally speaking, today men with big butts are considered less desirable than a man with a potbelly, which is no doubt wrong from an evolutionary point of view.

  I would have liked to take his blood pressure.

  He started by saying that he didn’t want to discuss my test scores.

  But that’s all he talked about.

  For a long time, I didn’t say a single word.

  And that made him talk more.

  About a lot of nothing.

  It was hot in his stuffy little office and as I stared at him, I could see that he was sweating up a storm.

  Even his beard was starting to look wet.

  He was getting more and more agitated. As he spoke, small dots of saliva lodged in the corners of his mouth.

  They were foamy and white.

  Mr. Dell Duke had a large jar of jelly beans on his desk.

  He didn’t offer me any.

  I don’t eat candy, but I was fairly certain he did.

  I guessed that he had the jelly beans to make it look like he was offering kids a treat, but in actuality he never did and went on his own jelly-bean-eating binges.

  I considered calculating how many were in the glass container.

  The volume of one jelly bean = h(pi)(d/2)^2 = 2cm x 3 (1.5cm/2)^2 = 3.375 or 27/8 cubic centimeters.

  But jelly beans aren’t really perfect cylinders. They are irregular.

  So this formula was not accurate.

  It would have been more fun for me to try to count them by 7s.

  I hadn’t told my parents about meeting Principal Psoriasis from Sequoia.

  Or that I would have to see some kind of school parole officer named Dell Duke.

  I’m not sure why.

  It had been their idea to move schools, and I wanted them to think things were going well.

  Or as well as possible.

  So I was now officially duplicitous.

  It didn’t feel good.

  The middle school years were supposed to be (according to the literature) about an emotional separation from parents. I figured lying was laying a good groundwork for that.

  But it was as if I’d eaten something that was giving me indigestion. And that burning sensation extended beyond my stomach and moved upward, where it lodged in my neck.

  Right where I swallowed.

  My parents didn’t know any of my test-taking drama at Sequoia because I destroyed the evidence.

  I erased the message from the school that was on our home phone voicemail. My parents always forgot to check it, so that wasn’t a big deal.

  But what was more deceitful is that I hacked into my mom’s e-mail and answered the principal’s note about going to see a district counselor.

  So I would just have to put up with this stomach queasiness, because I deserved it.

  The round-head counselor/warden finally stopped talking.

  He was worn out.

  He folded his short arms defensively over his ball of a belly, and then after more sweaty silence (on both of our parts), he had an actual idea:

  “I’m gonna say a word, and then you say the first word that comes into your head. I’m not saying the word as a question—it’s something else. Let’s try to do this very quickly.”

  He sucked in a lot of air and added:

  “Think of it as a game.”

  Dell Duke didn’t know that my experience in this arena was very limited.

  But I have found myself to be shockingly competitive.

  For the first time since I stepped into the room, I felt mild enthusiasm.

  He wanted to play a word game. I was certain that I could beat him in chess in fewer than six moves. But I have only played against a computer, and not often, because chess is one of those things that can become obsessive.

  I know.

  I once played for twenty hours straight and experienced signs of mild psychosis.

  Mr. Dell Duke leaned forward in his chair and dramatically said:

  “Chocolate.”

  I was interested in the benefits of chocolate and I said:

  “Antioxidant.”

  He then tapped his foot, like he was accelerating in a car, and said:

  “Piano.”

  I said:

  “Concerto.”

  The day before, I had heard a kid at school shout to a group of boys in the hall:

  “Game on!”

  I wanted to shout that now, but it didn’t feel appropriate.

  Mr. Dell Duke tried to write down what he and I said, but he was struggling.

  Fortunately, he gave up and decided to just play the game.

  He said “space.” I said “time.”

  He said “dark.” I said “matter.”

  He said “big.” I said “bang.”

  He said “car.” I said “tography.”

  He said “mouse.” I said “wireless.”

  He said “white.” I said “corpuscle.”

  He said “single.” I said “source.”

  He said “seed.” I said “embryo.”

  He said “pie.”

  I said “3.14159265358979323846264338327.”

  But I said the number very, very, very fast and I stopped on the second 7 because of course that was my favorite number.

  Mr. Dell Duke then loudly shouted:

  “You animal!”

  It scared me.

  I don’t like loud things. I was silent for a long time, but then finally managed to find my voice.

  I said:

  “Lemur.”

  And then his eyes grew sort of dazed for an instant and he mumbled:

  “Female lemurs are in charge of the troop.”

  This was an accurate statement.

  If there is conflict in the group, the female lemurs are the ones who fight it out. Because of this, the female leader gets the best food and the preferred sleeping area.

  I now looked at him hard.

  Not everyone knows that a lemur is a primate found only on the island of Madagascar.

  It was possible he was not the toadstool that he appeared to be.

  He then ran both of his hands through his curly mop of hair, and that made it double in size.

  That has happened to my hair before.

  So I understood.

  I left the meeting confused.

  I knew that he knew that I was different.

  Mr. Dell Duke wasn’t friend material because he was the wrong age and, female lemurs notwithstanding, we appeared to have absolutely nothing in common.

  But as I walked away from the district headquarters parking lot, I decided I would come back and see him again.

  Mr. Dell Duke was testing me.

  But not in the way he thought.

  I believed he somehow needed me.

  I liked the feeling.

  That night at the dinner table, my mom and dad asked me how it was going at Sequoia.

  I said:

  “The experience is evolving.”

  My parents both smiled, but their eyes were still anxious. My mom’s voice was tighter than usual as she said:

  “Is there anyone special who you’ve enjoyed meeting?”

  For the briefest moment, I questioned whether they knew about the aptitude test.

  I took a bite of my artichoke soufflé and finished chewing before answering.

  “I met someone who interests me.”

  My parents perked up. This was big news for them.

  Mom tried not to appear too eager.

  “Can you tell us more?”

  I had to be careful here. If I didn’t want a colossal stomachache, I had to use a
version of the truth.

  “This afternoon was my first encounter. Viewed as a clinical trial, I’m in Phase Zero, which is when microdosing takes place. I’ll let you know how it develops.”

  And then I asked to be excused from the table.

  Chapter 7

  Dell didn’t see many girls.

  Boys got into a lot more trouble in school.

  He had assumed that “Willow” was some kind of nickname. He figured it was really “Will-Low,” which might have been gang slang.

  Instead, seated across from him had been a twelve-year-old girl.

  There was something not right about her.

  He could see that from the beginning.

  Her eyes darted around his small room and then came to rest on his stomach, which was rude.

  He knew he was sweating, which was just part of who he was.

  But he got the feeling that she was judging him.

  That’s not what this place was about.

  He was the judger.

  He needed to put her in a category of Strange as soon as possible so that he could disconnect from whatever was happening in the room.

  Dell had glanced over at his computer to reread the e-mail he’d been sent from Principal Rudin.

  The message said that the girl was some kind of cheater. He didn’t get many of those.

  So she was sneaky.

  Well, so was he.

  He’d get to the bottom of that.

  She wasn’t a Weirdo or a Lone Wolf or an Oddball or a Misfit.

  But she was Super-Strange, that much he could figure out.

  He talked and talked and talked and she just sat there, mute, staring at him, but he could tell that she was listening.

  He asked questions, but she didn’t answer them.

  She was small, but also powerful.

  She had some kind of energy or aura that was different.

  None of his tricks, if he could even call them that, worked.

  And then he remembered word association.

  It was a technique that he knew the other counselors used because he’d heard them when the windows were open and the air conditioners weren’t rattling.

  Dell fell asleep every night with the television on.

  He had hours of recorded broadcasts, because the sound of other people’s voices, especially ones that weren’t yelling at him, was a comfort.

  But nothing made him fall asleep faster than something educational.

  And that is why as the hour got late and Dell was looking to pack it in, he often went to the most boring thing that he’d ever recorded: a wildlife documentary on the animals of Madagascar.

  Scientists had made the show. It was filled with facts and feelings, two things that Dell could live without.

  If he was going to actually watch a nature documentary, the only kind that he could suffer through was one where a fierce predator took down a wide-eyed furball.

  But he liked it when the furball could see it coming.

  A good chase with a few near misses added tension to the eventual crime scene.

  A male narrator with a deep, husky (almost evil) voice set the stage for the slaughter. The music surged.

  And then Bam!

  Done.

  The Madagascar show had nothing like that. It focused on a group of monkeys who looked like squirrels in raccoon costumes.

  There was nothing in this program of interest and Dell had fallen asleep to it many times since he came to Bakersfield.

  He would not, could not, recall a single thing from the program other than what he had uttered to Willow at the end of their first session:

  “Female lemurs are in charge of the troop.”

  As she gathered up her things and silently headed out the door, Dell realized that his somewhat hairy hands were both trembling.

  He had never met a kid like this.

  He quickly accessed the electronic file that he was required to complete after every interaction with a student.

  But for the first time since his Four Groups of the Strange system went into operation, Dell put it aside and dug out Dickie Winkleman’s three areas of evaluation:

  Activity

  Patience

  Attention

  Willow had the ability to pay attention.

  She appeared to exhibit patience (she had listened to him drone on for the first half of the appointment).

  But he could not rate her activity level.

  Dell copied a paragraph from one of Dickie Winkle-man’s old files. It had been written for a kid named Wesley Ledbetter.

  Dell wondered if Wesley’s problem was that his name sounded like “Bed-wetter.” That could certainly throw a person off.

  It said that Wesley appeared to be normal, but needed further evaluation for possible anxiety issues.

  In truth, Dell knew that the twelve-year-old with the large eyes (who had told him to have his blood pressure checked just before she left) was anything but normal.

  And for the first time in his professional career, he was not just motivated.

  He was almost inspired.

  The counselor had to add a new group to his system.

  He had to access the color wheel on his computer and feverishly attempt to create something that would look metallic.

  Something that would stand out like oozing gold ink.

  Because Dell Duke believed he had discovered a new category of the Strange:

  GENIUS.

  Chapter 8

  After I was removed from Mrs. Kleinsasser’s class and taken to Principal Eczema’s office, my teachers and the other students treated me differently.

  A few of my classmates, assuming that I’m some kind of cheater, asked me for answers to tests.

  An eighth grader with what looked to me like a full-on beard demanded my math homework from last Tuesday.

  I was so startled that I gave him my entire binder, which I later found on top of the trash by the boys’ bathroom near the gym.

  He’d left half of a roll of breath mints inside, but I think it was an accident, not a gift.

  I was surprised that I was looking forward to the long walk from Sequoia Middle School over to the district offices where I had my second meeting with Mr. Dell Duke.

  Knowing that I had somewhere to go gave me a new sense of purpose.

  Even if it meant again lying to my parents.

  But it was easier to lie the second week than the first time around, which was sad.

  I decided any behavior, good or bad, could become routine.

  This was probably why people were able to empty porta potties or regulate the quality of canned cat food in factories with actual taste tests.

  Now when the last bell rang, and the school suddenly exploded (because that’s how it felt), I gathered up my things with new gusto. (I like the word gusto. It should be used more in daily life.)

  The doors of the school flew open and the students burst from the building as if there had been some kind of toxic-waste spill inside.

  I was now part of that.

  I, too, had someplace to go and a limited amount of time to get there.

  When I got to his office, I could see right away that Dell Duke was prepared in a different way.

  He still looked as if he had slept for the last week in his clothes; but his beard had been trimmed, or at least washed.

  And his very cluttered office had been straightened up.

  However, what made me smile as I stood in the doorway was that I saw he now had a small silver frame on the side table behind his desk.

  And in the picture frame, like some kind of lost relative, was a photo of a lemur.

  He was nervous.

  He struggled to make conversation, but then he finally just blurted out:

&nb
sp; “What would you think about taking a test again—like the one you did at school?”

  I decided that was why he was anxious, and so I put an end to it.

  “I’ll take one right now if you want.”

  This made him very happy.

  He had a folder behind his desk with test booklets inside. He was suddenly all jumpy and I had to help him with the pencil and the timer.

  I tried to explain that I wouldn’t need the allotted fifty minutes.

  He didn’t believe me until I finished the first test in fourteen minutes.

  After he corrected the exam, I removed another booklet from the pile and did that one in twelve minutes and 7 seconds.

  If I could have had perfect test conditions—a room with decent ventilation, and a glass of unsweetened green iced tea—I would have cut off another two minutes.

  I got up to go, because my session was now over, and Dell Duke was smiling. Unbroken mouth expansion.

  He said that I didn’t miss a single question, on either test.

  I said, in a very matter-of-fact way:

  “Flawless.”

  Maybe he thought we were playing the word game, because he made a fist and pumped it like he was pulling down on a parachute cord (even though I’d never done that, I had an idea how enthusiastic one would be to pull the chute).

  He then said in a voice that was too loud:

  “Willow Chance!”

  Mr. Dell Duke didn’t want me to wait a week for our next meeting.

  He thought that I should come again during his first open hour the next day.

  He told me that he would bring a surprise to the meeting. I have never been big on surprises, but I didn’t tell him.

  I was planning on assessing the acidity of the soil in my garden for the rest of the week.

  I worked hard to keep it at a pH of 6.5, but I agreed to return because he seemed to be very excited about the aptitude tests and I thought that he might be depressed.

  It was possible that he was making some progress in his mental health condition by seeing me.

  The next afternoon I was five minutes early and right away I knew that something was different.