The Secret of Zoom (8 page)

“I
T'S
stupid!” said Taft. He was staring at Christina's computer, with its screen full of line-dancing poultry. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

The back of his thin neck was turning red. Christina set down her mother's jewelry box and dug into her sweatshirt pocket for the egg-and-toast sandwich. “Math
is
pretty stupid,” she agreed.

“Not the
math
.” Taft scowled. “What's stupid is the way they
teach
it.”

“What? The dancing chickens?” Christina laid his breakfast on the desk.

Taft picked lint off the toast, looking moody. “More than that. See, instead of teaching you one way to solve a problem, this program shows you about
ten
. Pretty soon all the methods are mixed up in your head, and you use a bit of one and a piece of another and get everything wrong, and then those chickens come beaking around with signs that say ‘almost right!' and ‘points for trying!' ”

“It's supposed to build up your self-esteem,” said Christina, trying not to laugh. She cleared a space on one of her bookshelves for the jewelry box and stood back to admire. It would have looked better if it wasn't surrounded by math books—her father supervised the book-buying in the house and kept hoping to get her interested in numbers—but still it was wonderful to have something of her mother's.

Taft made an exasperated noise and swallowed a mouthful of scrambled egg. “What would build up my self-esteem,” he said through his teeth, “is to
know
how to do a problem and then get it
right
. I figured it out after a while—this level isn't that hard, I'm still doing review—but it's going to be tough to learn anything new. No wonder you hate it so much. They've taken all the
true
fun out of math.”

“Yeah, right,” said Christina, “and it was
so
much fun to begin with.” She slumped to the floor, her back against the desk, and pulled at the frayed edge of her sweatshirt sleeve.

“Well, it
is
fun,” said Taft stubbornly, finishing off the toast.

“You can do my assignment for today, then.” Christina curled up her knees and laid her head on her arms. “I just wish you could talk to my dad for me, too. He's going to check my work and ask how I got my answers, and of course I won't know. And then he's going to explain and
explain
, and I won't understand a word.”

“It's not that hard,” said Taft earnestly. “Really, math
is
fun, if you—”

“Listen!” said Christina fiercely. “Math is
not
fun. It's horrible. You can talk all you want, but I'm never going to get it. There's no right answer, and the rules always keep changing, and I'm sick of it.”

“But don't you see?” Taft leaned over the back of his chair. “That's the beauty of math—there
is
a right answer, the rules
never
change, and you always know exactly where you are. You do the problem step by step, and it comes out the same every time. And if you make a mistake, you just go back step by step, and you can find out exactly where you went wrong.”

“It doesn't work that way for me,” said Christina. “I'm stupid at math.” She put a hand in her pocket and rubbed the edge of her mother's ring. Her mother was a scientist. Her mother must have loved math. Would her mother be ashamed of her? she wondered.

Taft snapped off the monitor. “I always thought the orphanage school was bad,” he said, walking over to her wall of bookshelves, “because we only had one computer for the whole place, and the math books were old and beat-up. But maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought.”

He ran his finger over a series of dusty books under a label that said
Mathematics
. “Aha!” He pounced on a book with battered corners, covered in a dull, water-stained maroon. He scanned several pages and nodded with satisfaction. “
This
is what you need.”

Christina backed away. “Oh, no.”

Taft blew off the dust and banged the book on her desk. “Sit down,” he said. “You can do math if you take it one step at a time.”

Christina frowned. She
couldn't
do math. She had proven that over and over again; even the happy dancing chickens never told her she'd done it right. “I'm stupid with numbers,” she insisted. “Don't even bother, because I can't—”

“You are
not
stupid.” Taft looked at her, his dark eyes serious.
“Some people are, you know. They can't get things no matter how hard they try. That's not
your
problem.”

“But we've got to make plans,” said Christina. “We're going through the tunnel after lunch, right? What do you want to do first? Climb trees? Run?”

Taft opened the book to the first page. “You're stalling. Sharpen your pencil.”

Christina looked at the computer keyboard. “Pencil?”

“Yes. We're going to do this the old-fashioned way.”

 

Taft was right, Christina had to admit an hour later. He had made her repeat her multiplication tables until she had them down cold, he had shown her a trick for remembering the nine-times table, and he had shown her one—and only one—way to multiply on paper. Now she was doing a whole page of multiplication problems, one after the other, and finding that what Taft had said was true—it wasn't that hard.

In fact, she hated to admit it, but it
was
actually fun to get the right answer time after time. She had a feeling of accomplishment that had nothing to do with overly enthusiastic chickens.

“Done!” Christina checked her last problem, smiled broadly—she'd gotten it right again!—and slammed the book shut. “Now we can make plans for this afternoon.”

Taft shook his head. “I'm not waiting until then. I'm going”—he glanced at the clock and pushed back his chair—“right now.”

“But we can't leave until Nanny takes her nap. They'll come looking for me if I don't go downstairs for lunch.”

Taft headed for the closet. “They won't come looking for
me
. I'm taking off.”

“By yourself?” Christina's voice rose. “That's no fair. I rescued you, remember? I found the tunnel, and I brought you here, and I even fed you
pie
—”

Taft pulled down the trapdoor ladder and grinned. “It was good, too. Got any more?”

Christina glared at him. “If you're going to go off by yourself and have all kinds of fun without me, then you can forget about any more pie. You're going to miss lunch, too, and supper if you're not back in time—”

“I'm used to it.” Taft shrugged. “I had to miss meals at the orphanage if I talked back.”

“I bet you missed them all the time, then,” Christina countered, but suddenly she noticed the thinness of Taft's neck and the way his shoulder bones showed through his shirt. What had they done at that orphanage—starved him?

“Listen,” Taft said. “I can come back for you if you want. But I want to go check on Danny.”

“Oh.” Christina looked up, her irritation fading.

“I can't stay here forever, anyway—I've got to figure out a place where he can live with me.” Taft disappeared up through the trapdoor.

“Wait!” Christina hopped up the ladder and poked her head into the attic. “I've got an idea! Just give me ten minutes, okay?”

Taft turned with his hand on the service door's latch, his head cocked to one side. “Okay. But I'm leaving then, whether you're coming or not.”

“You can watch the orphanage through the telescope
while you wait,” said Christina, pointing past the sheet-draped furniture to the broken chair beneath the air vent. “Stay inside, though. Someone might see you on the roof.”

 

Christina skidded down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Nanny and Cook were having a final cup of coffee. “I need to pack a lunch. A big one. I'm going on an adventure.”

“Eh?” said Cook, staring.

“To a desert island,” said Christina, inventing on the spot. “I'm going to sail away.”

Nanny and Cook did not seem able to comprehend this.

Christina tried again. “If I can't go outside,” she explained patiently, “I'm just going to have to pretend, aren't I?”

“Ah!” said Nanny.

“Oh!” said Cook.

“I'll go up to my room,” Christina said, “and set sail. I'll be gone all day, and if I take a lunch, you won't even see me until suppertime.”

“I'll make you one this minute,” said Cook, getting up.

“Make enough for two,” said Christina with sudden inspiration. “I'm taking a friend with me.”

“An imaginary friend,” Nanny explained to Cook in an elaborate whisper.

“Poor little tyke,” mumbled Cook in return. “Trying to make the best of it. I'll make her a lunch big enough for three, so I will.”

 

Christina heaved the lunch sack through the trapdoor, climbed into the attic, and pulled the ladder up behind her with a
click
.

The morning light shone in hazy stripes through the slats of the air vent and outlined the cracks in the small door to the roof. Taft was still there, hunched over the telescope, but he had discarded the broken-backed chair and was standing on a child's dresser instead. Skid marks showed where he had dragged it across the floor, and a pile of sheets lay crumpled where he had tossed them in search of a sturdy piece of furniture.

Christina hadn't bothered to look under the dust covers before. She had assumed it was just old furniture under the sheets—and it was. But it was
her
old furniture. The child's dresser that Taft stood on was painted with a row of yellow ducks that she had seen before. Over against the wall was a crib, and next to the crib was a rocking chair.

Christina trailed her fingers across its carved wooden back and down curved spindles to the sturdy arms of the rocker. This must have been in her nursery once. Her mother had sat in this chair, rocking—

“Hey!” Taft jumped down from the dresser and crossed to the service door in three leaping strides. “The kids are out in the orphanage yard. Come
on
!”

T
AFT
clambered across the slanted roof to the gargoyle that stood twisted open, the door behind it a dark rectangle in the morning light. He plunged down the gloomy stair and was lost to view.

Christina followed more carefully, annoyed that he had forgotten to duck as he crossed the rooftop. What if someone on the ground had been looking up? He could have ruined everything.

She wasn't any happier when she reached the bottom and heard his footsteps echoing far ahead in the dimly lit tunnel. She took off at her fastest pace, the lunch sack banging her leg at every step, but she couldn't catch up. She didn't even have time to rattle the latch of the big square wooden door as she passed. Of course it must still be locked, but she would have liked to have made
sure
. And why was Taft in such a hurry, anyway? The orphans weren't going anywhere.

But maybe they were. Christina emerged from the tunnel into leafy green light, blinked, and crawled up behind Taft,
who was crouching in the bushes. Ahead, past the barbed and electrified fence, five columns of ragged children stood waiting in the circular driveway that looped past the orphanage. The yard boss, the man with the short bristly hair, paced in front of the columns, looking at his watch.

“I hope they're not waiting for the garbage truck,” said Taft worriedly. “Danny likes to sing, and I always had to remind him to sing the wrong notes. I hope he remembers, that's all.”

“Where
is
Danny?” whispered Christina.

Taft's eyes scanned the ranks of orphans, back and forth. “There. Fourth column, back row.”

Christina could see him now, one of the taller boys, his head noticeably large even from this distance. She glanced at Taft, and hesitated. “What's wrong with him?”

Taft frowned and muttered something that she could not hear.

“Was he born like that?” Christina persisted. She didn't want to be rude, but she really wanted to find out.

Taft squinted narrowly at her through his dense lashes. “I don't know,” he said, looking annoyed. “He was like that when they brought him on the truck from the city. Why should
you
care? Nobody else does.”

Christina blinked. Sometimes she thought Taft was getting nicer, and then all of a sudden, he was mad again for no reason.

“Once I heard somebody say it was ‘water on the brain.' But I don't know what that
means
. Nobody explains things in there.” Taft jerked his chin in the direction of the pale brick building that squatted in the clearing like a large square mushroom.
“You're lucky to live with a scientist. I bet all you have to do is ask your father anything you want to know, and you'll get an answer.”