Hidden Hearts by Ann Roberts Page B

on the casserole, and I pictured Pops playfully swatting her bottom and making a raunchy comment to draw her wrath. She wasn’t as slim as she was in the old pictures and he called her curvy, but he seemed to like it. And I knew that other men thought she was pretty because they always whistled when she walked by.
    And she’d make a point of saying to me, “You see, Vivi, they’ll be whistling at you someday if you ever decide to fix your hair, quit jumpin’ off the roof and start behaving like a lady rather than a moron.”
    I shuffled across the linoleum, anxious to get upstairs and change my clothes before she put me to work peeling the potatoes. I slipped on some jeans and a T-shirt and started on my homework, but it didn’t take long before the doodles and drawings covered my math paper, leaving little room for the fifty mixed fraction problems I was supposed to complete. I was only on number four and my pencil was already dull from shading the portrait of Kiah that I’d started. I was in awe of her beauty and her dark skin and straightened hair fascinated me. 
    I heard a tap on my window and jumped a foot in the air. She was outside waving.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, opening the window.
    “I was worried about you when you left. You looked like you were mad or sad.”
    I shook my head and lied. “No, I just needed to go.”
    She leaned closer. “What’d you do to your head?”
    I automatically rubbed the goose egg and it started to hurt again. “I just ran into a tree branch.”
    “That looks bad. It’s turning purple.”
    “It’s okay.”
    I glanced at my door, knowing that Mama would appear soon and announce dinner. I couldn’t imagine what she’d do to Kiah if she found her in my room. “You should probably go.”
    “I know. I just wanted to check on you.”
    “How did you get up here?”
    She pointed to the trellis against the house. “It’s easy. You just climb up and walk across the edge of the roof. Seein’ as you’re a holy terror, I’m surprised you’ve never tried it.”
    We laughed, and I thought of my math homework. “Could you show me how to do mixed fractions real quick?”
    She held up the paper, and I remembered that I’d been drawing pictures of her. I tried to grab it but she turned away. I closed my eyes and prepared for a big sock in the jaw.
    “Vivi, this is really good. I think it looks like me,” she said with tears in her eyes.
    I smiled sheepishly. Will was the only one who ever liked my drawings. “Thanks.”
    She grinned and we stood there staring at each other stupidly. Then she looked down and her brow furrowed as she studied the little bit of math I’d attempted. “I don’t understand what you’re doing. Let me see your book.”
    I showed her the original problems and she shook her head.  “Vivi, you’re not doing this right.”
    “I know,” I said. “I don’t get it.”
    “No, that’s not it. Look, you’re not copying them correctly. You wrote down four problems and in three of them you mixed up the numbers. You’re getting them backward. It’s not supposed to be fifty-two and two-thirds; it’s supposed to be twenty-five and two-thirds. That’s why you’re messing up.”
    I followed her finger as she showed me the difference. In three problems I’d written numbers backward. “I don’t know why I’m doing that. That’s really stupid,” I muttered.
    Mama was right. I was a moron. I was twelve years old and I certainly should know the difference between fifty-two and twenty-five. I crumpled up the paper.
    “Don’t!” she cried. She took it and smoothed it out. “I really like the drawing. Let me help you. I’ll write the problems down and then you solve them.”
    She wrote out the first one and we worked it through.
    “See, you know how to do the math, but you get stuff backward. Do you do that with your letters, too?”
    I nodded. I never admitted it to anyone, but I remember Mama had yelled at me after the last