Down the Rabbit Hole Read Online Free Page B

THE CORAL SEA .
    â€œMornin’, petunias,” he said.
    â€œHi, Mr. Sidney.”
    Girls were always petunia to Mr. Sidney. Guys were guy, as in “Take a seat, guy, and zip it.” Ingrid and Mia filed past him and sat down at the back, as far from Brucie Berman as they could. Brucie sang “Am-er-i-can wo-ma-aa-aa-aan” as they walked by, ignoring him completely. They opened up their algebra notebooks and Ingrid started copying, fast as her pen would move.
    Â 
    Did it do her any good? No, all because of Ms. Groome, her Algebra Two teacher. There were four eighth-grade math sections at Ferrand Middle School—Algebra One for the geniuses, Algebra Two for good math students who didn’t rise to the genius level, Pre-Algebra, which is where Ingrid would have been happily, if Mom hadn’t called the school to complain, and Math One, formerly remedial math, for the criminal element. And what did Ms. Groome do to screw her up? Ms. Groome, who was making it her mission to single-handedly raise the SAT math scores of girls across the nation, whether they liked it or not, picked today to ignore the homework and spring a pop quiz instead.
    Would she ever have a use for algebra in her life? Get real. Or any other form of math? Who are youkidding? Ingrid was going into the theater, as an actress or director, and what possible use would math be in the theater? Take this question right here, number one on the pop quiz: Factor the following quadratic polynomial: 4 x 2 + 8 x –5. Could Angelina Jolie do it? Or Elijah Wood? How about Shakespeare, for God’s sake, if it came to that? Did they even have algebra when Shakespeare was around? She took another look at the stupid thing.
    X . All these math people had a big—what was the word? Mom used it all the time— fetish . That was it. Fetish. Ingrid put her hand on her chin and started daydreaming about schoolboy Shakespeare forced to factor quadratic polynomials. Her gaze met Ms. Groome’s.
    Ingrid bowed her head over the test paper. 4 x 2 + 8 x –5. A fetish. They made a fetish about x , couldn’t keep their hands off it. What was wrong with x just the way it was, kind of mysterious and interesting? X was way better than 39, say, or 1032, or even 999,999; way better than any so-called solutions. So-called solutions to nonproblems. How was 4 x 2 + 8 x –5 a problem? Like who did it bother? The whole thing pissed her off, big-time. She scrawled (2 x + 5)(2 x –1) in the answer column for no reasonapparent to her, and went on to the next one.
    Really annoyed now, Ingrid mowed through the numbers, squaring this, factoring that, equaling and not equaling, greatering and lessering, slicing and dicing, firing every math gun in her arsenal all the way down the page to the very last problem, the extra-credit one, which she knew was always a word problem, although she’d never before actually reached the end of a math quiz in order to try her luck. A little surprised, Ingrid glanced around to see if the test was still on, or whether Ms. Groome had called time and she just hadn’t heard. Still on: Three rows over, Mia was scratching out some calculation, the tip of her tongue showing between her lips, gloss a nice soft shade of pink—Mia had great taste—and Brucie Berman was picking his nose.
    â€œTime,” said Ms. Groome. “Pens down.”
    Ingrid downed her pen, leaving the extra-credit problem, some nonsense about trucks traveling in opposite directions, untouched.
    Â 
    Ingrid sat next to Stacy Rubino, her oldest friend, on the bus ride home. Mr. Rubino was an electrician who did the lighting for the Prescott Players, and Stacy always had the inside dope.
    â€œGoing to audition for the next play?” Stacy said.
    â€œThey haven’t announced what it is yet,” said Ingrid.
    â€œAlice in Wonderland,” said Stacy.
    Alice: a plum role, plum of plums. “She’s kind of an