Sophie Simon Solves Them All by Lisa Graff Page B

people avoided looking at them directly, in case their brains turned to mush. There were graphs and charts and formulas and silly words like tangent.
    Sophie loved it. She loved it more than any subject she’d ever studied before. Sophie loved calculus the way other children love roller coasters and trips to Disneyland.
    She stayed up past midnight studying under the covers.
    She thought about equations while her parents made her watch TV.
    She even dreamed about calculus.
    But there was one problem.
    If Sophie really wanted to study calculus, really and truly, she needed a special kind of calculator.
    â€œMom? Dad?” Sophie asked as the Number 17 bus appeared over the hill in the distance. “Will you buy me a graphing calculator? I want the Pembo Q-60. It’s the latest model. It costs one hundred dollars.”
    There was a pause.
    A very short pause.
    And in that pause, Sophie imagined what it might be like to have parents who understood her.
    Parents who said, “Yes, dear, of course you may have a graphing calculator. Would you like a new set of notebooks and some fresh pencils to go along with it?”
    Parents who let her study in peace and stopped bothering her about pointless things, like making friends.
    But then the pause ended.
    â€œOh, Maxwell!” Sophie’s mother sobbed. “What would Doctor Wanda say?”
    Sophie’s father shook his head. “You try so hard to be a good parent,” he said with a sniffle. “And then your eight-year-old daughter tells you she wants a calculator .”
    Sophie heaved a deep sigh.
    â€œSo you won’t buy me a Pembo Q-60 then?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” said her mother.
    â€œAbsolutely not,” said her father.
    The bus slowed to a stop at the corner.
    â€œMay I at least have my book back?” Sophie wondered.
    â€œNo,” said her mother.
    â€œAbsolutely not,” said her father.
    â€œBut it’s from the library!” Sophie protested. “I have to return it.”

    â€œOh, Maxwell!” Sophie’s mother wailed. “Our little girl’s been visiting the library !”
    Sophie’s father shook his head. “You try so hard to be a good parent…” he began.
    But Sophie didn’t hear the rest. The second the bus doors squeaked open, she leaped up the steps and plopped herself into the first empty seat.
    As the bus pulled away from the corner, Sophie watched her parents’ faces grow smaller and smaller, weeping as they clutched her calculus book. When they had finally become specks in the distance and then disappeared, she turned around and thought.
    There had to be some way to get that calculator.
    But how?
    *   *   *
    Sophie Simon didn’t know it, but at that very moment, there were three other third-graders on the Number 17 bus who were puzzling over problems of their own.
    Doozies.
    Dilemmas.
    Submarine-size pickles.
    It would have taken a genius to solve all four problems.
    Too bad Sophie Simon only cared about one of them.

Check Marks and Squeegees
    Daisy Pete sat at her desk in Mr. St. Cupid’s third-grade class, tapping her pencil and staring at the list of rules on the wall.
    There were lots of rules in Mr. St. Cupid’s class.
    There were normal ones.
    No pushing
    No hitting
    No chewing gum
    And strange ones.
    No choking
    No wearing orange socks
    No talking about fungus
    Whenever anybody did something Mr. St. Cupid didn’t like, the teacher would add a new rule to his list.
    So far the list of rules covered nineteen sheets of poster board and spread across three walls.
    As Daisy stared at the list, the pencil she was tapping on her desk flew out of her hand and straight up into the air.
    It landed— ker-PLUNK! —on the head of the girl who sat in front of her.
    Sophie Simon.
    Sophie was so busy reading the book she had hidden under her desk, she didn’t even notice the pencil sticking out of her blond