“Mrs Grange, actually,” the Amazon said. She didn’t sound particularly snooty about it. Most Amazons insisted that the shorter folks get their titles precisely correct. “And don’t worry about it, Mr Gibson. My kids are out at P.E. so I had some extra time. This was fun. Tarnia and I were just telling jokes about our husbands.”

Tarnia? Joking about her husband? She never talked about her home life. Sometimes I legitimately forgot she was married until she started talking about Aaron…or was it Eric? I could never remember. “Oh really…”

“Tell him what you told me!” Tarnia said, giggling just at the thought. This was weird. Tarnia only ever let her guard down this much around Beouf. And we’d known Beouf for years.

Mrs Grange smiled. It was thin. Polite. Maybe slightly embarrassed? “Nah,” she said. “The moment’s passed. Not really a joke. You kind of had to be here for it.”

I did my best to give a comically exasperated sigh and shake my head smiling. “Thank you again.” I said, wishing she’d take the hint.

“Before I go,” Grange said, holding up a piece of paper scribbled with my handwriting. “Can I ask you about this?”

Internally I froze. I’d been bored and working on math problems the other day at my desk. Nothing major. Just sometimes counting to a hundred and stopping there got boring. “Oh that?” I said. “Was just trying to think of a different way to teach greatest common factors.” If I couldn’t have been a Pre-K teacher, I would have wanted to be a Math teacher. Other way around, if I’m being honest.

“But why use a factor tree?” Grange asked.

“Because if I reach prime factorization of two numbers, I can re-multiply all the prime factors that they have in common to make the greatest common factor. That way I don’t accidentally miss something and I don’t have to go through listing each and every variation.”

Grange pouted her lip out. “Huh…” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought about it like that. I would have just listed all the factors, individually.”

Again, she wasn’t being critical, but typical me was nervous that this was some kind of trap. “Yes, but if your third graders don’t have their fact families completely memorized, they could overlook something and identify a common factor instead of the greatest common factor.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve got stragglers in my class who think that the GCF for every even number is two. This is safer. Makes them think it through instead of just plain memorization. I like it.”

I smiled; I had to show appropriate gratitude. “You can steal it if you’d like.” Please please please! Just get out of my room so that I can let my guard down! Thank goodness she couldn’t read my thoughts.

“I don’t know…” she clicked her tongue. She put down the paper and stood up, really towering over me. I swallowed, feeling my throat go dry. “I don’t think I could explain it the right way. Think you could drop by my room in a day or two and teach it to my kids?”

This was a trap. It had to be a trap. There was no other explanation. “I’m not sure I have the time. My students don’t have the same schedule as the older kids.”

“You could go during nap time,” Tarnia offered. “That should be fine.” I shot her a look. Why was she not reading me?! TAKE THE HINT!

Grange looked past me and to my Tweener assistant. “When’s their nap time?”

“Just after Noon.” Murder. I was going to murder Tarnia. That’s what I’d have to do…

The intruder nodded. “Okay. So I’ll rearrange my Math block for just after Noon this Friday. How’s that sound, Mr Gibson?”

I smiled. Big, toothy and fake. “Great,” I said. “Just great.”