Jim arrived at the door promptly at 6pm. He was a math teacher, and it was in his nature to be prompt. Jenny was a first grade teacher and most confident in a storm of chaos. She was still straining the noodles, stirring the sauce and flipping the meat balls and could not pull herself away from the kitchen long enough to get the door. She stepped momentarily out of the kitchen and yelled up the stairway.

"Matilda! Get the door!"

Matilda took a long time getting to the door. Long enough that Jim, starting to become anxious, tapped the doorbell again.

Matilda opened the door, and Jim looked flustered. "Mr. Spalding, I presume?" Matilda asked.

"Who are you?"

Jenny had never mentioned a daughter, and she would have to have been very young for this teenager to be her daughter. Jim had reasonably taken this invitation into Jenny's home as an invitation to deepen their relationship but now he revised his plans into a meet the family formula. But he was still disappointed, hence the sharpness of his question.

Jenny, wiping her hands on her apron, got to the door to find Matilda and Jim staring at each other like hissing tomcats. She should have foreseen this, but she hadn't.

"Matilda, this is Mr. Spalding."

"Jim," Jim said, holding out his hand.

"Jim," Jenny agreed.

Matilda looked at Mr. Spalding's hand with disinterest.

"Jim, this is my best student and best friend Matilda."

Since Jenny had been so kind as to not introduce her as her adoptive daughter, or even worse, as her daughter plain and simple, Matilda relaxed, and shook the poor man's hand. Weakly, mind you, as if it was covered in nasty smelling slime.

"Take your coat off and relax," Jenny told him, then turned to Matilda, "Could I have your help in bringing things from the kitchen?"

"I'll help with that!" said Jim.

"No, no, go sit in the dining room, we've got it covered," Jenny said.

Jim went into the dining room, and sat down at one of the three table settings at the large table therein. He looked around with interest. He had known that Jenny was The Trunchbull's niece, but it had never occurred to him that she might be rich. He wasn't cad enough to want her more because of it, but it did change things a little bit.

In the kitchen, Jenny piled a salad dish into Matilda's hands. "You be nice," she ordered her. Matilda only looked at her with an innocent expression. Jenny sighed.

When they all sat down at the table, Jim was surprised to find himself the odd man out on the other side of the table from the two women. He could have sworn that he had sat down next to one of the two settings that were together. But there was one full setting in front of Matilda and another in front of Jenny. He didn't know when that could have happened.

This was only the beginning of his troubles. Somehow, Matilda had worked the conversation around to a highly textual comparison of Moliere's satire and Voltaire's irony, and the value of both. Jenny was enjoying it immensely, and had turned her chair toward Matilda to better discourse with her. Having read neither, Jim was out of his depth. He tried to bring the conversation around to something he could converse about. His mistake was that he chose math.

Matilda knew a lot about math. She also knew a lot more about the theoretics of mathematics than Mr. Spalding did. By the end of the conversation, she had managed to make the math teacher doubt whether 0 could actually be considered a number or not, and when and why, and how this affected our understanding of the universe, and negative space.

At about that time, Matilda started tickling his leg with a meat ball.

"What was that?" Jim said.

"What?" asked Jenny.

"That, I felt it again just now, against my legs. Like something was licking me. D-do you have cats?"

"No," Jenny said. Then she looked pointedly at Matilda.

Matilda levitated a napkin under the table and swiped it against Jim's leg.

"Ahh!" Mr. Spalding gasped, getting to his feet. "I'm sorry, I'm allergic to c-cats." He sneezed.

This, more than anything thing, propelled him out of the house. He was also feeling much less confident than he had when he arrived, and vaguely stupid as well.

Jenny turned at looked at Matilda. She was pissed off.

"I told you to be nice," she ground out.

Matilda, looking impish and completely satisfied with herself, said, "Well, it wasn't my fault that he couldn't keep up. Besides," she said, "That man is a total sap. You'd be tired of listening to him in a week."

"Go to your room."

"What? You can't be serious!"

"I am. I am completely serious," Jenny said. "If you are going to act like a child, no, like a rebellious teenager, I'm going to act like you are one too. Go to your room this instant, and don't come out tonight."

"Yes, mother," Matilda said in a voice that dripped sarcasm. She stalked up stairs and slammed her bedroom door behind her. The door rattled, starting to show the wear and tear of being slammed so often in the last few days.

Jenny rubbed her eyes tiredly, noticing that a headache was coming on fast.

Then she went outside to apologize to Mr. Spalding, to Jim -oh who was she kidding- to Mr. Spalding.

"I am so sorry about that. We do not have cats. That was just Matilda's bad idea of a joke."

"That's ok" Jim said, running his hands through his hair. "I guess I should be going, anyhow." He paused; then asked, "Could I get a good night kiss?"

When she didn't say no, he bent down to kiss her. At the last second, Jenny turned her head and his kiss brushed only against her cheek. Jenny had, at that moment, looked up at Matilda's window. As she had known, Matilda's face looked down at her. When she saw how Jenny had rebuffed the man, a look of triumph adorned her face.

"I didn't pass her test, did I?" Jim said, noticing where her gaze had gone.

"No," Jenny said, "But it wasn't a fair test. She's a genius." She sighed. "Jim, I don't understand teenagers."

"Well, I'm just a math teacher, not a genius, but I have nephews about her age," he paused, waiting until she nodded at him to continue, "Teenagers are actually a lot like adults. They just feel things more, or perhaps are worse at hiding what they feel."

Jenny considered this. "You know, you might not be a genius, but you are very smart."

As Jim walked back to his car, he reflected that while he had not gained a lover tonight, he might have gained a friend. He also reflected that Jenny was going to have her hands full with that girl. He'd gathered at dinner that Jenny had adopted her, but she certainly had considered herself his rival. And tonight at least, she had won.