ON HOLD; It's No Fun Being This Smart | ONC2021

Polygons

Isla's mom insisted on the playdate, saying that making friends was the point of changing schools. Isla wanted to slam the landline to the ground or cry not to go, but she didn't want to make a scene, so instead she shuffled her feet and said "Love you, mom. Bye."

Isla put the phone down and pulled her backpack up. Isla turned around and jumped, Li had been standing behind her.

"You scared me," said Isla.

Li didn't seem to hear, because instead of apologizing, Li said "Are you coming?" When Isla nodded, Li said "Awesome. My mom's expecting me to stop by before we play. She's a high school teacher and we're not in high school, so you can call her Auntie Jing."

Li grabbed Isla's wrist. Isla didn't know what to do with her brain, so she started looking for polygons along the way. A polygon is a shape with no curves and no openings. Polygons are named for the number of straight lines needed to make them.

Li lead Isla to the other side of the quadrilateral field, to where the older kids go to school. Unlike the elementary building, the high school building had multiple floors, each floor was shaped like an octogonal "U." The girls had to climb up two sets of stairs to get to Auntie Jing's floor. Stairs aren't polygons because polygons are 2D and stairs are 3D. When they got to the third floor, they walked past dozens of classrooms, a library, and a clinic before arriving at a door whose hexagonal label read "Vice Principal."

Isla bit her lip. Isla had met a vice principal at her old school. It wasn't fun, all he did was yell at Isla for throwing a notebook at a teacher.

Li pushed the door open. The walls were covered by shelves filled with books, trophies, certificates, and other stuff, except the wall behind a desk, where a kindergartner was painting with watercolors. Most objects are 3D, but they can be described by what polygon they're made of. For example, the desk was made of a bunch of rectangles screwed together. A tall woman in formal wear stood over the desk.

Li turned to Isla and said "This is my brother, Bo, and this is our mom."

The woman held her hand out for the girls to hold. Li and Isla took turns holding the woman's hand and bringing it to their forehead to get a blessing. (This was and is a Filipino tradition.) Then, the woman handed the girls a banana each while asking "How was your day?"

"Good," said Li. "Bayes did this awesome magic trick. He had got a coin, flipped his hands, and the coin teleported to the other hand! Right, Isla?"

Isla didn't remember any magic tricks. She did remember seeing a butterfly with a decagon on its wings, but then it flew away because the class started clapping too loud. She assused they had been clapping for Bayes, so she said "Mhmm."

"I'm guessing you'd want to head behind now," said Auntie Jing. "You, too, Bo."

Li was nodded while Bo was put his paintbrush in a cup, reached down the desk to grab two document bags, and walked away from the desk, revealing a metal lower leg. Li took Isla by the wrist.

The kids ran across the quadrilateral hallway to the stairs. They walked down two sets of stairs. Then, they ran past more classrooms to the side of the building  opposite the soccer field. Opposite means across or on the other side; when two sides of a polygon are "opposite," they are on opposite sides of the polygon. They went through an opening to the back garden, which was a line of grass and flowers between the building and a metal fence. They walked through the garden to the corner, where the fence gap was wider than the other fence gaps. Li and Bo went through the fence. Isla stood back and asked "Where are we going?"

"You like math, right?" said Li. "We're meeting Miss Flores. Come on."