Free Fractions = Trouble! by Claudia Mills

1
    Whenever Wilson Williams had a problem, he talked to his hamster, Pip. He had had Pip for only two weeks, but already she understood him better than anybody else in his family did.
    â€œMultiplication was hard enough,” Wilson told Pip on the first Saturday morning in April. “But now we have to do fractions.”
    Pip twitched her nose.

    â€œEven worse, Mrs. Porter is giving us a huge test in three weeks.”
    Pip blinked.
    â€œBut that’s not the worst thing.”
    Pip scampered across Wilson’s bedspread. Luckily Wilson had his bedroom door closed so that she couldn’t escape and get lost.
    â€œWait,” Wilson said to Pip. “Don’t you want to know what the worst thing is?”
    He scooped up Pip and held her in both hands, facing him, as he leaned back against his pillow. Her bright little eyes really did look interested.
    When Wilson had gotten Pip, her name had been Snuggles, but he had changed it to Pip, short for Pipsqueak. Pip’s brother, Squiggles, was the classroom pet in Wilson’s third-grade classroom.
    â€œThe worst thing,” Wilson said, “is that my parents are getting me a math tutor.”

    Pip’s eyes widened with indignation.
    â€œI know.” Wilson set her down on his knee. Instead of scurrying away, she sat very still, gazing up at him sadly. But no amount of hamster sympathy could change that one terrible fact.
    A math tutor! That meant Wilson would go to school and do fractions, and then after school he’d go see Mrs. Tucker and do more fractions. He’d have fractions homework for Mrs. Porter and more fractions homework for Mrs. Tucker.
    And suppose his friends at school found out. Nobody else he knew had a math tutor. There were other kids who were bad at math. There were other kids who thought fractions were hard. There were even other kids who thought fractions were impossible. But Wilson had never heard of any other kid who had a math tutor.

    Wilson picked up Pip again and stroked the soft fur on the top of her little head. Pip was the only good thing left in Wilson’s life. From now on, the rest of his life was going to be nothing but fractions.
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    â€œNow, come on,” Wilson’s father said at lunch. “Cheer up. The point of a math tutor is to help you.”
    â€œYou’ve been struggling so much,” his mother went on. “First with multiplication, and now with fractions. A math tutor will make math come more easily to you.”
    Wilson’s little brother, Kipper, who was in kindergarten, spoke up next. “Can I have a math tutor, too? Wilson and I can share the math tutor. Like we share Pip.”
    Wilson stopped glaring at his parents and started glaring at Kipper instead. It
was annoying enough to have a little brother, but Wilson had to have a little brother who happened to love math, and who was good at it, too.
    To the left of Kipper’s plate sat his beanbag penguin, Peck-Peck. To the right sat his beanbag alligator, Snappy.
    â€œWhat’s a math tutor?” Kipper made Peck-Peck ask in a deep, growly voice. For some strange reason, Kipper seemed to think that was how a penguin should talk.
    â€œDoes a math tutor toot on a horn?” Kipper made Snappy ask. “Toot! Toot!” Snappy’s head bobbed up and down with each cheerful toot, as if he were an alligator tugboat.
    â€œMom!” Wilson complained. “Make Kipper stop!”
    But instead of giving a warning look to Kipper, she gave one to Wilson. “Kipper’s just playing.” Then she actually leaned across the table and spoke directly to Snappy. “No, Snappy, a math tutor doesn’t go ‘Toot.’ A math tutor helps people learn math. A math tutor has a very important job.”

    This was too much. Who else lived in a family where adults had serious conversations with beanbag alligators?
    â€œToot! Toot!” Snappy said again, apparently not even listening to the