Not a word had passed between them on their walk to Hortensia's that morning. Matilda had hardly noticed her surroundings changing at all until they arrived at the front of the black gate. Her attention had been so focused on what she had seen and the implications of it all. Rage boiled inside her so much she had needed somewhere to direct her anger. If Miss Honey had noticed the leaves tumbling around against the wind in front of Matilda, she hadn't said anything.
"Please don't mention what you saw to anyone." Jennifer whispered, staring straight ahead at the door. Matilda gripped her hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "I hadn't meant for you to see."
Before Matilda could respond, the door began to open. Hortensia stood in the doorway wrapped in a blanket with a deep scowl on her face. "You got me sick." She hissed at Matilda, before stepping aside to let them in. Miss Honey flashed her a deeply apologetic look.
"Go sit down, you big baby." Hortensia's mom said, shooing her daughter away. "Serves you right, treating this like some sort of vacation. You wouldn't have gotten sick if you minded your own business and did your homework like I told you to." Hortensia grumbled before slinking off to the living room couch.
"I'm glad I packed the Pepto then." Miss Honey said. "I'm terribly sorry about all this, thank you so much for looking after her. I hope she wasn't too much trouble yesterday."
"A few issues in the beginning, but nothing too serious." Hortensia's mom looked her up and down. Matilda suddenly felt very shy, but resisted the urge to hide behind Jenny. "You sure overalls are a good idea?"
"She has a change of clothes if she needs them, just in case, but things have begun to settle down. Even if she does have any issues, don't worry about it, she's perfectly capable of taking care of it herself. I know she's only five, but she's very independent. She's not like other kids her age."
Matilda's heart soared in appreciation. It had taken some coaxing from Jenny, but Matilda had confided in her about the events of the previous day and had nearly gotten to her knees and begged Jenny to talk to her on Matilda's behalf.
"Kids act different when they're sick. It doesn't matter how resourceful or independent you think they are, It can set them back years."
"I'm a teacher I understand, but you see," Miss Honey dropped her voice to a whisper, "Matilda has come from an abusive family, and there are some trust issues when it comes to adults she doesn't know well, but we're working on it."
"Oh," Hortensia's mom said, her face falling. "I wasn't aware of that."
"She's been forced to grow up very fast."
Matilda darted inside, eager to get away from their conversation about her, and joined Hortensia on the couch.
"What happened?" Matilda asked her.
"You! You're what happened!" Hortensia growled. "I was just minding my own business after dinner, watching a bit of Telly, when out of the blue it felt like the Trunchbull threw a shot put right into my belly! I damn near blew a hole in my trousers!"
Matilda winced in sympathy. After having gone through the same thing yesterday, she knew from experience Hortensia wasn't exaggerating. While Matilda knew she wasn't 100%, maybe not even 65%, but she was far better off than the girl huddled in the blanket seated next to her.
"Matilda!" Miss Honey called from the door. She got up and approached Jenny, who handed Matilda her backpack and wished her a better day. "Please try and eat something today."
Matilda nodded, but she was still a bit hesitant. She had already refused breakfast before they had left the apartment in fear of a repeat of yesterday. Once Miss Honey had left, Matilda returned to her spot on the couch and began rummaging through her backpack. She pulled out the pink bottle, and began scanning the back for the info she needed. If she had to eat, she'd better give her stomach a fighting chance. After pouring out a dose for herself and knocking it back with a wince, she turned her attention to the back of the label once more.
"Hortensia, have you had any medicine today?"
"Ma sent it home with you." She replied, still curled underneath a great, green comforter.
"I've got the bottle with me, how much do you weigh?"
"I don't know, 45 kilograms, around there."
"It says you should take 15ml." She was about to pour out another dose when a shocked voice called out her name behind her.
"Matilda!" She jumped and put the cap back on the bottle. Hortensia's mom snatched the bottle away in a panic. "Honey, please, let's leave this for the adults. I don't want you guessing how much to take and making yourself sick."
"The label says for her to take 15ml since she's over 30 kg, I'm not guessing."
"Matilda, please, you're too young to-" She froze as she looked at the bottle in her hand, then back at Matilda, before letting her eyes drift to the bottle once more. Without a word, she poured a small amount into the cup, clearly stopping at the 15ml line, and handed it over to Hortensia.
"Eww, no I don't want to take any medicine." Hortensia complained, before falling quiet at the glare she had received.
"It's not that bad, I just had some, and it really does help. It's better than the Tylenol." Matilda offered.
"How much did you take, Matilda? Did you also take 15ml?" Her mom asked.
"No, ma'm, I took 7.5 ml."
"Is that how much Miss Honey told you to take?"
"No ma'm, it said so on the back under instructions."
"But how did you come up with 7.5 ml?"
"The bottle says to half the dose if you're under 30kg." Matilda explained with a shrug. "Half of 15 is 7.5."
Hortensia's mom let out a breath that sounded as if she had just had the wind knocked out of her. Matilda didn't understand why adults always seemed so surprised. It was right there on the label, as clear as the nose on her face! All you had to do was read it.
"Y-yes, th-that's right." her mom said, more to herself than to Matilda. "Whose class are you in again?"
"Miss Honey's, ma'm."
"Oh, yes, that's right, of course you're in the first form. You're five." The woman shook her large blond head as if trying to wake up out of a daze. "What's that pointy thing sticking up out of your backpack?"
Matilda looked down. "Oh, it's my compass, I must have forgotten to put it away. Thank you, I'd be a very cross if I cut myself on it." She pulled out the metal instrument and set it in the coffee table along with a few of her text books.
Her mom stepped forward, picking up one of the books. "Why in the world are you carrying these around for?"
"To work on my school work; I don't want to fall behind."
"Fall behind who?" Hortensia said, poking her head out from the blanket. "You said you get to do your own thing in class. Can you believe that, Ma? She's allowed to not pay attention in class."
Her mom didn't say anything, instead she flipped through the pages, eyes as wide as saucers. She put the first book back down and picked up another one. "Matilda, does Miss Honey really expect you to work out of these? All by yourself?"
"She says I can ask her questions if I have any in between lessons, but so far I've managed fine by myself."
Hortensia's mom sat down on the opposite side of the table, gazing wordlessly at the books. Then she turned her attention to Hortensia's stack and pulled out a completed work sheet before letting out an annoyed, "hmph," and brushing off potato chip crumbs. Next, she copied down the questions on another piece of paper, without the answers, and handed it to Matilda.
"Would you please humor me for a moment? I know it's silly, and you're probably not feeling up for it but, are you able to … solve these?" Matilda looked over the paper, nodded her head, grabbed a pen and immersed herself in the equations. "I think, I think I'll make us some toast while you work on that."
"I'm done." Matilda said, before the woman had even managed to get halfway across the living room.
"That-that's not possible, it took me longer just to copy the questions down." She looked down and let out a laugh that almost sounded relieved. "Did you just scribble random numbers?"
"No, ma'm." Matilda said softly.
"Well, where's the work?"
Matilda pointed to her head. "Up here." Matilda could see the doubt written all over her face. "You can check them if you'd like."
Hortensia's mom shrugged and then smiled and sat down. "This is all just a silly game anyway. I do have to grade Tens's work, actually." Matilda could see the color drain from her face as she entered the numbers into a calculator one by one, occasionally making a mark on the page Hortensia had worked off of, before taking a glance at Matilda's answer. Once she had finished, she put the pen down and stared quietly ahead for some time.
"How?" She finally whispered. "Did you really just do all that in your head?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I thought you had just copied off 'Tens' when I noticed they were right, but you even got the ones right that she couldn't." She slowly stood up, looking a bit shell shocked. "I think I'll make that toast now."
…
"You see what I mean?" her mom asked, pointing down at a pile of spread out math sheets on the table, each with a failing grade. "She excels in every other subject," she had started to say but stopped, "I-I mean, she gets an A, but math has always been a very large hurdle. We've even hired tutors, but she just won't focus enough and makes such near constant silly mistakes."
Matilda gazed over the work, deep in thought. "But you said she gets A's in all her other subjects? That also takes a great deal of focus. I've found that she's actually quite perceptive, much more than even some adults I know."
"I guess she has a selective attention span, then. You're umm, well, I don't think I could even make that make sense. I was hoping you could notice something the others can't." She said, stumbling over her words a bit.
"Hmm," Matilda muttered, "Well, there is something, but it doesn't make much sense since you said she does well in everything else."
"What?"
Matilda pointed at several points along the tests. "I can tell she knows how to do the math, she's doing all the right steps, but she's still coming up with the wrong answers."
"I know! That's what I mean by silly mistakes."
Matilda took a bite of her toast before answering. "But look closer, she's copied down the wrong numbers. This question right here, 4,872 x 3,964, when she transferred it to scrap paper she wrote 4,872 x 3,694."
"See, she's not focusing." the woman started, but Matilda quickly shook her head.
"No, now look at these. Even the harder ones, she consistently gets the word problems right. Do you see what's different about them? She always gets the questions right when the numbers are written out, but when it's time to copy the answer down, the number is jumbled."
"Oh, that's strange." Her mom said, frowning.
"I don't think it's a matter of focus. Of course, she won't get the answer right if she's seeing the question wrong."
"So you're thinking she needs to get her eyes checked?"
"No, I mean, you could if you wanted to, but it might be a little more complicated than that. I'm not really sure myself. At first, I thought maybe dyslexia, but it doesn't seem to happen with letters, only numbers. If letters were getting jumbled, she'd make a lot more spelling mistakes. Possibly it's a minor case of dyscalculia? Has she seen a doctor about it?"
"Well, no."
"You could start there. And just as an experiment, next time she has a math assignment, read her the question out loud, and have her read you her answer. I know there's still steps in between, but it might slightly improve her chance of getting it right."
"That was certainly a fresh perspective." Her mom said. They sat in silence for a moment before she added. "Thank you, no one's ever brought this up before."
"Hortensia's been telling you the truth." Matilda blurted out. "About the Trunchbull, I mean, what she does to kids." Hortensia's mom's eyes looked very sad for a moment.
"I know." She whispered.
…
Matilda sat glaring at the television, seething. She was making the channels change rapidly, despite the remote being on the other side of the room. She thought of Hortensia's words from the night before. "The adults are cowards, every single one of them." She shut the TV off and balled her hands into fists.
Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of the burns all over Jenny's body, of Hortensia covered nearly head to toe in cuts and scrapes who came home to a mother who pretended they weren't there. She cried for Amanda, who had nearly been scalped and impaled in front of her friends, for Julius Rotwinkle, who had been thrown out a window, and lastly she cried for herself, because she knew deep down, she was no better than any of them. Hadn't she also failed to act? She had stood paralyzed to the spot along with everyone else.
Matilda wiped her face and gritted her teeth. Things had to change around here. She couldn't keep making excuses. She thought of Hortensia's words, "Don't wish you were an adult, you can get away with so much more when you're little." Maybe she had a point. She went to Hortensia's room and barged in without knocking.
"Wake up!" She said to the lump asleep on the bed. Hortensia groaned in response. "I want in on whatever you're planning next!"
