Read Number 8 for Free Online Page A

had no food in the fridge, is also a
singer
. Another life ending in tragedy.
    Personally, I can’t wait to meet her. Jackson is so lucky. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a mother who plays the guitar and practices her vocal scales in red satin dresses instead of harping on about math exams. I bet Valeriedoesn’t even
care
about math exams. I bet she wouldn’t ever expect her child to be a cardboard cutout of her.
    I look at my mother’s back as she starts washing up the dishes. Her shoulders sag a bit and she throws the frying pan down too hard in the sink so the gray greasy water splashes up into her face. She’s saving for a dishwasher. Mom’s finally convinced Dad that it’s worth it. He argues that washing up together means that we have “quality family time.” She says she’d rather do that sitting down. I feel guilty, gazing at her back. I know she’s worried about money and being able to keep up the mortgage payments and that if she stops keeping her eye on the bottom line it will reach up and devour us all. But my math is not going to save this family. No matter how hard I try. I can see it plain as day. So why can’t they? I’m just no good at fractions or long division or lattice multiplication. And I never will be.
    I pick up the dish towel and Mom starts telling me about Doreen, this woman at the bank who has six children and a husband who just lost his job. But I keep thinking about Jackson.
He
can do lattice multiplication—can he ever! Today he finished ten problems in the time it took me to consider one. And he acted like he was enjoying it. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. There was a grin on his face, and he kept giving these tiny squirms of excitement—until his pen stopped working that is. Then I saw his face close up, and the little glow in his smile went out. It’s strange, but I felt a pang, right up under my ribs, and I wanted to do something to bring the light back. So I lent him the pen. Pity it was leaky, but he didn’t seem to care. Lilly would have been furious at being left with black all over her hands. Not Jackson. Sure enough, he got busy again, and the littlegrin came on slowly, like a campfire on a wet morning. He scribbled away until Mr. Norton said “stop” and then he sat there, quiet and self-contained, with the grin inside him. He looked to me as if he was singing a song in his head that he’d just made up.
    It was then that Badman poked me in the back. “Check out the try-hard,” he said, jerking his thumb in Jackson’s direction.
    We both looked at Jackson’s double page, filled with neat columns of numbers crisscrossing each other. It was a perfect lattice, just like the stuff our neighbor put on the fence for his potato vine. I leaned out further across the aisle. On Jackson’s page there were even more problems than those set on the board. He’d actually invented his own to solve! It was awesome—like watching magic happen, like the time I saw a magician open his wallet and it burst into flames.
    I turned around to look at Badman’s book. Only one problem done and redone and scratched out with big heavy dirty lines. Just like mine. Badman thrust out his chin. He glared across at Jackson. “Look at him, sitting there like he’s got a firecracker up his butt.”
    On the other aisle next to Jackson there’s Asim. He’s the best in the class at math but I think Jackson might beat him now. Asim is like a walking calculator, but he’s very quiet about being smart. He always looks puzzled, as if he’s listening for something that might suddenly explain everything. His English is quite good now, but maybe his confidence is still low. It’s strange, he lives only two doors down, but I’ve never really talked to him. Asim was watching the new boy, too.
    I put the clean dinner plates back in their drawer and theglasses