Lunch Money Read online

  It was time for a showdown.

  Chapter 7

  ORDER AND CHAOS

  Ashworth Intermediate School was a big outfit, and when you put four hundred and fifty kids, mostly between the ages of nine and twelve, under one roof, a certain amount of hubbub and clutter is normal. And therefore, room 27 was not normal.

  Room 27 at Ashworth School was never messy, never loud. Room 27 was always like a peaceful island, an oasis of order and calm. That’s because the small kingdom known as room 27 was controlled by Mr. Anthony Zenotopoulous, who, for obvious reasons, was known simply as Mr. Z.

  Mr. Z was a man of average size, except perhaps for his head, which seemed a bit too large for his body. But that might have been an optical illusion caused by the burst of black and gray hair spiraling out one or two inches in all directions. Apart from his unruly hair, Mr. Z dressed neatly, but not formally. He wore a coat and tie only for the end-of-year assembly. The rest of the time he wore khakis or corduroys and loose-fitting collared shirts, carefully ironed. He had piercing dark eyes and a bright smile, which made it harder to notice the large nose that lived between them.

  Mr. Z taught sixth graders, and in his kingdom, mathematics ruled. Everything about his room—including its legendary calmness—was a function of math. Mr. Z did not just teach sixth-grade math. He lived math. He breathed and ate and slept and dreamed math. His wife taught geometry at the high school, so you could even say that he had married math—plus their only son was an engineering major at the state university.

  For Mr. Z math was the source of all that was beautiful, good, and true. Math controlled the orbits of the planets, always in perfect, stressless balance. Math was frictionless. Math supplied the principles that sent rockets past the moon and helped Beethoven create his symphonies. Mr. Z believed that even the smile of the Mona Lisa, like the spiral of the chambered nautilus, could be expressed as a ratio, a set of elegant numbers.

  The alarm clock, the thermometer, the calendar, the digital watch on his wrist, the odometer in his car, the test and quiz scores of his students, the percentage points of his grading scale—these gave him the numbers he lived by. He awoke each day at 6:15, school or no school. Channel 7’s weather forecasts were the most accurate—he’d done a three-year study himself—so a predicted high temperature of seventy degrees or warmer = khaki pants + a short-sleeved shirt; sixty-nine degrees or below = corduroys + long sleeves; and for a high temperature of forty degrees or lower, + one sweater.

  Mr. Z put his heavy down coat into storage on March 1, and got it out again on October 1. He had an appointment at the barber shop every third Thursday at 4:15 p.m. He changed the oil in his white Toyota Camry every 5,500 miles, and when the odometer reached 110,000 miles—the twentieth oil change—he and his wife began shopping for a new white Camry. Why a Camry? Math: The Camry was the car that cost the least amount of dollars, had the most features he could afford, and had the fewest service problems. Why white? Again, math: White was the color that kept the inside temperature of a car lowest in the summer—when running the air conditioner meant buying more gas and getting fewer miles per gallon.

  There were 185 school days per year, and 55 minutes in each class period. Mr. Z wrote the number of remaining minutes of math class on the board at the start of each school day—beginning at 10,175. Quiz scores counted once, and test scores counted twice. Grade percentages were calculated out to three decimal places, then rounded up. And arguing about grades was pointless: Numbers never lied.

  Mr. Z had a sense of humor, but it was a mathematical sense of humor. He wasn’t witty or clever, but he had an almost endless supply of math puns. What did the triangle say to the circle? Your life seems so pointless. What did the ninety-degree angle say to the ninety-one-degree angle? Don’t be obtuse. What did the plus sign say to the minus sign? You’re always so negative. Why didn’t the rectilinear equilateral like jazz? He was a square. And so was Mr. Z.

  If Mr. Z seemed stiff, or set in his ways, or rigid in his views, that was a function of math as well. In math there were fixed rules. Math involved pure operations that required no bending, no guesswork, no emotional adjustments—only the glide and flow of intelligence. There were always answers, right answers, and it was possible to understand exactly what was right about them.

  And that’s why Mr. Z loved math—loved, not liked, not enjoyed, not appreciated. Loved. He loved thinking about math, he loved using it, and most of all, he loved teaching it. Math was perfect. Math clarified the jumbled minds and disciplined the untidy lives of his students. So many things changed constantly—politics, weather, the price of energy, the cover of Time magazine. Not math. As he told his students, “Now and forever, two plus two will always equal four—every single day.”

  But on this particular day, with 9,790 minutes of math class remaining in his sixth-grade year, Greg Kenton came stomping into the orderly world of room 27 with a head full of chaos. He walked straight over to Maura Shaw. He slapped the Eentsy Beensty Book down onto her desk, and through clenched teeth he said, “Nice! Nice rip-off! You are such a thief. You stole my idea, and you know it. So stop it. Stop it now!”

  Maura jumped up, nose to nose with Greg. “Oh, sure, like you invented paper and drawings—and words, too, right? Just so you know, anybody can make anything they want to. And they can sell stuff too. It’s a free country—like, for over two hundred years—or hadn’t you heard?”

  Mr. Z looked up from his grade book, saw the disturbance in aisle four, and got to his feet. Speaking as he moved, he was at the scene in three seconds.

  “All right, all right there . . . easy does it. Greg, lower your voice. Maura, you too. And sit down. Now what’s this about?”

  “Simple.” Greg opened his pencil case and said, “I started making these great little comic books, and now she’s ripping me off with her stupid imitation. She’s using my idea, and it’s like she’s stealing money right out of my pocket.” He pointed at the unicorn book on her desk. “That’s what this is about.”

  Maura shook her head. “What it’s about is that you’re a greedy little money-grubber, just like always—‘Mine, all mine.’ That’s all you ever care about!”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “All right,” said Mr. Z, “calm down.”

  But Maura was on her feet again. “It’s true! And poor wittle Gweg can’t stand it when somebody else has a good idea.”

  Greg snorted, and grabbed the Eentsy Beentsy Book. “Yeah, right! Like this is a good idea. You know what this is? Garbage! Cheap, stupid garbage—just like you!” And Greg ripped the front cover off The Lost Unicorn and threw it at Maura’s face.

  “Both of you—stop this! Just stop it!”

  It was like Mr. Z had disappeared. All Maura could see was her little book as Greg began to tear off another page.

  “Give me that!” She swung her right arm to grab for it, and Greg yanked the book up above his head. And as Maura’s hand followed the moving book, the bottom three knuckles of her right hand connected with a sharp crack against the left side of Greg’s nose.

  Greg’s mouth dropped open. So did Mr. Z’s—and Maura’s.

  There was a half-second of stunned silence, and then, “OWWW!” Greg clutched his nose, which began to bleed, dripping onto Maura’s desk.

  Room 27, usually quieter than the library, flashed to life.

  “Did you see that?!”

  “What? Where?”

  “Maura . . . she pounded him!”

  “No way!”

  “I saw it—look at his nose.”

  “Ooh, blood!”

  And amid all the other noise, Maura squeaked out, “Oh . . . oh . . . I’m really sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t mean to . . . really, I didn’t . . .”

  Mr. Z wanted to take charge. He wanted to quiet the room, calm Maura, and get Greg to the nurse. But there was blood.

  Numbers never bleed, which Mr. Z believed was one of their best qualities. Because just the word blood was
enough to make him start looking for a chair so he could sit and put his head between his knees.

  Mr. Z turned away from Greg. Already woozy, his face was going gray, but as he slumped into the nearest empty desk, swallowing hard, he managed to say, “Maura . . . please help . . . Greg . . . to the nurse. I’ll . . . I’ll be . . . here.”

  Maura rushed to the front of the room, yanked five or six tissues from the box on Mr. Z’s desk, and hurried back to Greg. “Here.”

  Greg accepted the tissues, but when Maura took his elbow and began steering him toward the hallway, he jerked his arm free and made his own way out the door. It was bad enough he’d just gotten a bloody nose from a girl. No way was he going let that same girl turn around and help him.

  Maura stopped at the doorway of the nurse’s office, and Mrs. Emmet took charge. Sitting Greg on the black vinyl cot, she grabbed a plastic cold pack from a cabinet and smacked it on her desk three or four times to activate the crystals. She pulled on a pair of pale green gloves, took a paper towel, got it wet at the sink, and began to clean up Greg’s face.

  “Lean forward.” The nurse took the cold pack and wrapped it in a damp washcloth. Leaning over, she looked at the marks on Greg’s skin, and then pressed the cold pack gently against his face.

  Mrs. Emmet said, “How’d this happen?”

  It would have been so easy for Greg to lift his bloody hand, point a crimson finger, and shout, “Maura did it! She slugged me right in the nose—hard!” He could have yelled so loud that the principal across the hall would have heard him.

  But he didn’t. He mumbled, “It was an accident. Somebody grabbed for something . . . and I got in the way.”

  The nurse lifted the cold pack and touched Greg’s nose carefully with her gloved fingers. He flinched. Mrs. Emmet said, “Hmm . . . It’s not broken, but you’re going to have a black eye—a real prizewinner. You need to stay here till I’m sure the bleeding has stopped.” She pressed the cold pack back in place and said, “Put your left hand here, and press . . . not too hard.”

  Greg did as he was told.

  Turning to the doorway, Mrs. Emmet said, “Maura, did any blood get on you?”

  Maura looked at her hands and down her front. She shook her head.

  “Anywhere else?” asked the nurse. “Where did this happen?”

  “In Mr. Z’s room. Some drops got on a desk, and maybe on the floor.”

  Mrs. Emmet nodded. “I’ll send the custodian with disinfectant. You should get back to class now.”

  Maura hesitated. It was nice Greg hadn’t blamed her, and she wanted him to turn and look at her. She wanted at least to nod a “thanks” at him. But Greg kept his eyes shut. So Maura turned and left.

  Mrs. Emmet said, “Greg, I have to go find the custodian. You can lean back on those pillows now, but stay still, all right?” And she was gone.

  The whole side of Greg’s face throbbed as he eased himself back. Great—a black eye. From a girl. Just what I always wanted.

  What Maura had said in Mr. Z’s room came back to him: “. . . you’re a greedy little money-grubber, just like always!” Those words hurt—worse than his nose. His big brothers had been calling him stingy and greedy for years. Is that what they all think, that I’m a money-grubber? Everybody wants a lot of money, right? What’s wrong with that? Can I help it if I have good ideas? And that I’m willing to work? There’s nothing wrong with that.

  Greg became aware that he had something clutched in his right hand. He brought it up where he could see it. It was the wad of bloody tissues. And something else—Maura’s mini-book, The Lost Unicorn.

  The front cover was half gone, and some of the wrinkled pages were streaked with blood. Illustrated in living color, Greg thought, and that made him smile, which forced a sharp pain up through his nose and left eye.

  He got the book in focus, and using only his right hand, he began to turn the pages.

  Greg could tell right away that it wasn’t his kind of story, which did not come as a surprise. It was about a young unicorn who’d gotten lost, also not a surprise. At first the unicorn was terrified, but then she remembered what her mother and father had told her: “If you ever have a problem, find someone with a bigger problem, and offer to help. Do this, and your own worries will disappear.” So the unicorn went looking for someone to help, and found a princess who had been kidnapped, locked in a tower by a wicked ogre. The unicorn used her horn to chop down a tree, which leaned against the tower and gave the princess a way to escape. Then the unicorn gave the princess a ride back to her mother’s castle. The queen was so happy to have her daughter back that she asked ten of her best knights to help the unicorn find her way home. And they all lived happily ever after.

  Even though it seemed like a lame story to him, Greg had to admit that the writing was good. And the artwork wasn’t bad either. It was actually a tiny picture book, not at all like a comic book. Each of Maura’s pictures took up a whole page. There were no sequenced panels, no page grids, and no speech balloons like comics have. Still, the drawings were good. And Maura had drawn vines and flowers around the borders of each page.

  Bringing the little book closer to his good eye, Greg blinked. Then he rubbed his finger on the page. The dark gray lines smudged and smeared. He could not believe what he was seeing. It is—this is original artwork! Maura is drawing every book by hand and putting them together one at a time! No wonder she went nuts when I started ripping this one up!

  Leaning his head back and closing both eyes, Greg smiled. He’d just made an important discovery. This meant that Maura did not know how to mass-produce her books. It meant that she had probably made only four or five of them, tops. And it meant that at her current skill level as a minibook producer, she was just messing around—hardly a serious competitor. Maura wasn’t even in the minor leagues.

  And as his business mind clicked away, Greg saw the future grow bright again, with kids buying so many of his Chunky Comics that he would make tons of money. He would have to start getting his comics printed professionally. He’d have to hire a staff of artists to keep up with the increasing demand, maybe rent a building—or buy one. He’d start a Web site, and start selling to the major comics distributors, too. Eventually he’d have to open branch offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—Hong Kong and London, too: Chunky Comics International. He’d get so rich that he could have a different limo for every day of the week, each with a comic-book hero painted on the hood.

  Bbrrrrnnnnnnng! Greg sat straight up, completely fuddled. He blinked. A cold pack lay on his arm, his head hurt, and he was on the cot in the nurse’s office. Then the events of the day tumbled back into his memory. He’d been sound asleep.

  Mrs. Emmet smiled at him from her desk. “Feeling better?”

  “Yeah, a little.” Greg leaned back again, reaching for the cold pack.

  But then he made himself sit up. “Actually, I feel a lot better. So I guess I should get to my next class.”

  Greg had work to do. One more class period and Thursday would be history. He had comics to sell.

  Maura came to the doorway. “Hi. I brought your backpack. And your pencil case. Your face looks better.”

  Greg didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.

  Maura said, “You going to class?”

  Greg looked at Mrs. Emmet. “Can I?”

  She nodded. “You should be fine. But if you feel uncomfortable, come back, all right?”

  “Okay.” Greg stood up and walked to the door. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Maura gave Greg his things. He swung his backpack onto one shoulder, tucked the pencil case under his other arm, and headed down the long hallway toward the gym.

  Maura turned and walked beside him. “So,” she said, “you’ve got gym now?”

  “Nope.” Greg picked up his pace.

  Maura matched him, step for step. “Language arts?”

  “No . . . art.”

  Greg walked so fast that Maura
almost had to trot to keep up. “Hey,” she said, “before I forget—you have to go to Mr. Z’s room after school.”

  Still walking, Greg glanced at her. “How come?”

  “He wants to talk to you. And me, too. About what happened.”

  “Great,” said Greg. “I’ll be late for soccer.”

  Maura said, “Should you run around today? I mean, with your eye and everything?”

  Greg stopped short and swung to face her. “Look. It’s none of your business. It was just a little poke in the nose, all right? I’m okay, and I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

  “Fine,” said Maura. “Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

  “Good, ’cause I don’t care if you don’t care. So go away.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m going. Here,” and Maura pushed a quarter into his hand. “This is yours.”

  “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “One of your comics—they’re a quarter, right?”

  “What . . . you sold one?”

  “No,” said Maura, “I bought one.”

  “You?”

  “That’s right.” Maura stuck her chin out. “Any law against that?”

  “No,” said Greg. “But . . . why?”

  “That’s a stupid question. I read it. In math class. It’s good.”

  Creative pride won a small victory over ill temper. Greg smiled. “You liked it? Really?”

  Maura nodded. “Yeah, it was okay. But—” The bell rang. “Oops—I can’t be late.” Maura turned and dashed for class.

  “‘But’ what?” Greg called after her.

  “Later,” she called back.

  And Greg thought, Later? Oh yeah. ’Cause we have to go see Mr. Z.

  The art room was close, and Greg quickly forgot Maura’s comments about his comic book. He had to finish a wire sculpture. The thing was due Monday, and it was going to take a small miracle to get it done on time.

  Still, that didn’t keep Greg from selling three more copies of Return of the Hunter before the end of art class.