The Wild Tiger and the Answer Bot

My name is Blaze.

I am a Bengal tiger.

And I have a problem.

Actually, I have about fifty problems. But the biggest one started on a Tuesday morning in Ms. Burrows’s class, when I ruined everything.

Again.

Here’s what happened.

Ms. Burrows drew a diagram on the board. Water cycle. Evaporation. Precipitation. Arrows going up and down. Simple. I’d known this stuff since second grade.

She turned around and said, “Can anyone tell me what causes water to evaporate?”

I told myself: wait. Paw up. Wait to be called on. You can do this.

I put my paws flat on my desk.

I pressed them down. HARD.

And then—

“Heat energy from the sun excites the water molecules at the surface so they break free from surface tension and escape into the air as vapor, and at high altitude they need particles to condense around, which is called nucleation and without nucleation particles like dust or pollen there’d be no clouds at all, just invisible water going nowhere!”

The classroom went silent.

I was halfway out of my chair.

I had absolutely no memory of standing up.

My tail was doing a full rotation behind me. My paw was not raised. It had never been raised.

The answer had just come OUT. Before I decided to let it out. Before I even knew I was thinking it. One second I was pressing my paws down. The next second I was standing and talking and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

It’s like sneezing.

You know how you can’t stop a sneeze once it starts? You can press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. You can stare at a light. You can pinch your nose. But the sneeze comes anyway.

That’s exactly what the answers are like.

I looked at Ms. Burrows.

Ms. Burrows is a red panda. Small. Precise. She runs her classroom like a machine she designed herself. Paws up before you answer. Wait to be called on. Every rule exists for a reason. Every rule gets followed.

She was looking at me.

Not the angry look. I know the angry look. Raised eyebrows. Tight jaw.

This was the other look. The look that had stopped being surprised a long time ago.

“The answer was correct,” she said quietly. “Please sit down, Blaze.”

I sat.

I put my paws in my lap.

Around me I heard the very careful sounds of twenty students looking anywhere except at me.

I knew those sounds.

I’d been hearing them for years.

* * *

After class, Ms. Burrows asked me to stay.

I knew what was coming.

She sat at her desk. She picked up a pen. She wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it twice into a small white rectangle, and held it out.

“Please give this to your parents tonight,” she said.

I took it.

In four years of school, I had never gotten a note to take home. Not once.

The paper felt like it weighed ten pounds.

I walked out into the hallway.

And Devon was waiting.

Devon is a large green iguana. Heavy-lidded eyes. Permanent smirk. He spends most of his time leaning against walls in poses he seems to think look cool.

He looked at me walking out after everyone else. He looked at my backpack.

His smirk got bigger.

“Blaze got kept after class,” he said.

I kept walking.

“BLAZE GOT A NOTE HOME,” he announced to the hallway. “BLAZE GOT A NOOOOOTE—”

I turned the corner.

But his voice followed me all the way down the hall.

I was so busy thinking about Devon and the note and Ms. Burrows’s face that I almost didn’t notice the thing leaning against my locker.

It was small. Silver. Round green eye in the center of its face, glowing at full brightness.

Chip.

My robot.

He was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “We need to talk.”