Counting by 7s(17)

Two things.

I had never been in a taxi before.

And I had never ridden in a car with a complete stranger.

I was suddenly an explorer and a risk-taker.

I could feel my heart pounding. It felt good. A smile spread across my face.

I was on my way to see a new friend.

Granted, the person in question was two years older than me, and looked to have some anger management issues (as well as a brother who had discipline and authority problems).

But no living thing is perfect.

All scientists know that.



When we arrived at the school district administration parking lot, and I had paid the negotiated fare, with the addition of an eighteen percent tip, I felt very pleased because I had done this all myself.

I looked Jairo Hernandez right in the eye and said:

“Never let someone tell you that you can’t do it.”

And then I shut the car door.

I was speaking about my own achievement, but from the look on his face, I think he believed that I was talking about him.

As I came around the corner, I saw Mai sitting on the top stair outside the entrance to Dell’s office.

Maybe I was imagining this, but I thought the teenaged girl looked happy to see me.

I quickened my pace while still maintaining control of my red case with the 360-degree spinning wheel option.

When I got to the trailer, I was able to say what I had been waiting all week to spring on her:



She said my greeting had perfect inflection.

I had learned eighty-five Vietnamese phrases over the last seven days, as well as a great deal of verb conjugation.

Now I tried some more of them out on her.

Mai was incredibly impressed—not just that I could say these things, but also because she spent two weeks trying to teach a friend’s mother four words of Vietnamese and had not succeeded.

So this effort was worthy.



The time flew by.

We conversed, at first in English and then in bits of Vietnamese.

I usually found so-called “small talk” boring.

I like “large talk,” which is more about theories and concepts, mixed with facts and known quantities.

But we didn’t have any problem finding things to say to each other, because right away Mai wanted to know about the garden behind my house.

All that greenery had intrigued her.

I told her about some of my plants and gave a simple explanation of a few of my backyard botanical experiments.

And then the next thing I knew, forty minutes had passed and the trailer door opened and Dell Duke appeared with Quang-ha at his side.

The counselor’s eyes widened at the sight of us together.

He wanted to know how long I’d been out there and what we’d been talking about.

Dell Duke was not as friendly as I would have thought. And I got the idea that maybe he wanted to push the Nguyen siblings right down the stairs.

His smile was stiff and awkward as he said:

“All right then. It’s time for Willow’s session. Good-bye, kids.”



I insisted on keeping the door to the trailer open so that I could watch as Mai and Quang-ha receded into the distance.

At the last moment, just before the pair turned the corner to head down the block, Mai looked back and waved toward the trailer.

The door was angled, so I felt certain that Mai couldn’t see me.

But she knew that I was there.

Suddenly I had a strange lump in my throat.

I had a new, older friend. A girl from high school.

She felt like a protector.

It was some kind of magic.



I settled into the chair and listened to Dell Duke.

Today I wasn’t going to take tests.

He said that we were going back to word games.

This time, he would say an industry, and I would say “long-term” or “short-term” projected financial growth.

I explained to him before we started that I had very little knowledge of economics.

I really considered this study a social science, not a hard science, and I wasn’t interested in the squishy stuff, so I had stayed away.

But he didn’t listen.

He was prepared for our session and had a clipboard covered with scrawled notes.

I could read upside-down pretty easily and I saw right away that he lacked organization of any kind.

His lists had stuff crossed out and then arrows and all sorts of redirection to bubbles of messy thought.

I decided to ignore it.

The first thing he said was:

“Pharmaceutical companies.”

Dell had instructed me to answer “high growth,” “medium growth,” “no growth,” or “eroding market.”

This was a really crummy game.

I thought that pharmaceutical companies were probably always growing because more medications were constantly being developed; and the field of medicine was so rapidly advancing.

That was just a fact.

So the answer would have to be “high growth,” especially with an aging population.

But I said “eroding market” because I decided that I wanted to play the opposite game.

I just didn’t tell him.

I was going to see if he was paying attention.

But what was sad was that he never caught on and shouted “You’re playing the opposite game.”