All the Answers Read Online Free Page A

the first page, from when Ava and her mom were waiting at the dentist’s office a couple of weeks ago. Mom had promised Ava that if they kept busy finishing those boxes and writing their initials in them, Ava wouldn’t have space in her brain to stress out about cavities and Novocain shots. Ava still worried, but at least the game had helped keep her mind off the drill sounds coming from the next room.
    Ava turned to a new page on the legal pad, took a pen from the Popsicle stick container she’d made in third grade, and wrote:
    What is the formula to find the circumference of a circle?
    She listened.
    Nothing.
    Either Sophie was right and a ghost lived in the math room or it was one of those weird test-taking stress things. Whatever it was, having a magic answer-voice in your head was way better than being number-smothered to death.
    Ava pulled out her science folder and took out the extra-credit paper Mrs. Ruppert had sent home. Ava was a big fan of extra credit. People who choked on every test needed all the help they could get. This time, Mrs. Ruppert was offering points to anyone who brought in goldenrod galls, these round things that formed on plants when goldenrod gall flies were feeding on them. Ava set the paper aside; she’d see if Sophie wanted to collect some with her later.
    Then Ava found her worksheet on taxonomy and classification. Mrs. Ruppert required pencil, so she pulled the blue one from her backpack. The first few questions were easy enough that Ava didn’t need her science book, but then she had to list the order of scientific classification and couldn’t remember what came after “phylum.”
    Ava decided to try writing the question again, just in case repeating it made the little voice in her head show up.
    Under her other question on the legal pad, Ava wrote:
    What are the seven levels of scientific classification?
    The voice answered, “Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.”
    Ava dropped her pencil.
    It was back.
    Ava looked around her room. This time, there was no chance the voice might be coming from someone else. Unless you counted Ruffles, the stuffed owl on her bed, she was alone in her room. Alone … except for some weird voice giving her answers to her science homework.
    Ava still couldn’t believe it was real, but she wrote down the seven levels of classification. The next question on the worksheet asked about some specific scientific names. Ava knew humans were
Homo sapiens
and dogs were
Canis domesticus
. But goldenrod gall flies were next, and Mrs. Ruppert hadn’t mentioned them in class yet. Maybe the answer was in the book.
    Ava started to pick up the book, but then her eyes fell on thequestions on her legal pad. Maybe the voice would tell her. Could it possibly work, even with answers she’d never known? She wrote:
    What is the scientific name for a goldenrod gall fly?
    â€œEurosta solidaginis,”
the voice said.
    Ava’s mouth dropped open. She scribbled down the words, then looked up goldenrod gall fly in her science book index to check.
    There it was, under a photograph on page 241: Goldenrod gall fly (
Eurosta solidaginis
).
    Ava put the pencil down. She
knew
she’d never heard of that scientific name, so there was no way the voice was coming from her head. But why did it only work sometimes? Ava looked down at the math question scribbled on her legal pad. Maybe the voice was tired of math.
    Ava ran her finger over the unanswered question, and the ink from the pen smudged a little. She looked at the science questions. Then she looked at the pencil. She picked it up and wrote:
    What is the formula to find the circumference of a circle?
    â€œTwo pi R,” the voice said.
    Ava picked up the pen and wrote the exact same thing. The voice was quiet.
    She wrote it once more with the pencil. There was the answer again, loud and clear. “Two pi R.”
    The voice wasn’t coming from her head.
    It