Course One

Tick tock, tick tock. Stop ticking, you clock! I’ve never needed more than an hour for a test before. I cannot believe this is happening to me.

I’m quite the genius, you see. I’m taking Course One math in only grade three. Never a check mark or wrong answer all year long. Straight one hundreds. Only A pluses. And for my final exam, I predicted perfection. I called it like that old timey baseball player, told my teacher I’d ace it for sure. I zipped and zoomed my way through in a jiffy, almost to the end, until I hit a snag on the penultimate problem. I finish the last one, no big deal, but shuffle back to get stuck yet again. A tough cookie, a real zinger, an algebraic enigma. I just couldn’t figure it. Something about Ray and what he buys on grocery day. Hot dogs and hamburgers, however many per which. I think my brain is starting to twitch. I’ve got to get in there and give it a fix.

My brain is full of files. Tidy, shiny pocket folders lining the narrow hallways, like a longhouse made of cards. I’m looking and looking for the one with Ray, emptying their contents cartoonishly, arms and papers flailing every which way. I work my way down each hallway, still empty handed and looking over my shoulder at the mess I have made. I should clean it up, I think, but then I can feel the quake of the ticking and tocking. My time is running out. At the end of a hallway, I find a green file in an upside-down V, like a teepee. Underneath is a lamp, like the one from the movie. Aladdin, I think it was. Open, says me, and all that jazz. I give it a rub and out he swizzles. He doesn’t need to say a word, I tell him, I know the drill. And by the way, I only need one. Genie, how many hamburgers?

He swizzles my way and holds his green fuzzy hands up to his face and whispers. Forty four.

I toss the lamp back under its teepee and make a break for it, slipping on the mess I have left all along the way. I dive forward and slide out of my brain, back to the test. Forty four hamburgers. Pencil down, hand up. I’m still the first one to finish.