Fish in the Sky Read Online Free Page A

basis of creation, and the nexus that keeps the earth and planets spinning in their orbits. Mathematics is life, and life is mathematics.”
    Then he shuts up and peers through his horn-rimmed glasses, his bald pink head glowing. His gray suit, white collar, red tie, and sparklingly polished shoes bear witness to his refined taste and form an impeccable equation. He is God Almighty and holds the work of creation together with all his sums and divisions. He has given humankind the multiplication table and theory. No one utters a word during Pinko’s classes. What can anyone possibly say once the Lord has spoken? And he isn’t really waiting for answers, just waiting for the great truths he has uttered to become engraved in our minds, like the Ten Commandments on Moses’s stone tablets, so that we’ll never forget his words. He takes a tidy pile of papers off his desk and starts to hand out the test we took last week. Peter gets a 7.5; I get a 3. For a while there is nothing but the rustle of paper and suppressed sighs and groans from different parts of the classroom.
    The first two hours on Mondays are math; human cruelty knows no boundaries in this place. Pinko perches on the edge of the teacher’s desk and scans the class. He never sits in the teacher’s chair, always on the corner of the desk. Probably because he’s the headmaster and therefore cannot stoop to sitting like just any ordinary teacher.
    The red tie works in mysterious unison with his dappled-gray eyes and somehow magnifies them. He obviously isn’t too happy with the results. It’s as if we’ve deeply wounded him, ridiculed him even, by performing so poorly on the test. Just to spoil his chances of achieving the highest average grade in math in the country. Under his leadership, the school has scored the highest results in math two years running, and this class is about to ruin his chances of a hat trick. We have dashed his hopes. He takes off his glasses to emphasize his words and puts on that same look Miss Wilson has when she’s teaching us religion, because, of course, mathematics is his religion.
    “Let us not forget,” he says, “that a good result in math is a good result for life.”
    The few who have scored high on the test sit up, erect and proud, confident in the bright and prosperous road that lies ahead of them, while the rest of us sink our heads, full of remorse and despair, with no future ahead of us.
    The school bell resounds in the corridor, but no one budges. In Headmaster Pinko’s classes, no one stands up until he says, “Class dismissed.” And we’re not allowed to dash out in a mob but have to leave in a straight line, in a civilized and orderly fashion. He waits there until the bell has stopped ringing, glances mournfully at the glasses in his hands, and mutters, “Class dismissed.”
    The worst is over. At least I wasn’t called up to the board. The knot in my stomach, that eternal dread of being asked to walk up death row to the board, untangles on my way down the steps to the playground.
    All of a sudden I’m standing by a tall mountain ash on the school lawn and glancing over at the field where the girls in my class are playing catch in the mild weather. There’s a strange warmth in the air. I’m too hot in my jacket, so I take it off to hang it on a branch on the ash tree. The girls run around, lightly dressed in the warm breeze.
    Maybe it’s because I’m thirteen years old now that I don’t see just a group of strange beings with ponytails who speak an incomprehensible language and live for nothing but whispers and secrets. Instead I see a stunning flock of graceful gazelles, with beautiful eyes and slender, swift legs, bursting with energy and elegance.
    But there is one who stands out above all the others: Clara Phillips. Are her eyes green, or do they change color? They are like a running stream that reflects the sky one moment and the multicolored pebbles on its bed the next. Long black hair tumbles