Chapter 7

Chapter 7 Location, Location, Location location (Location) n. Real estate term that refers to the position of a piece of real estate as it relates to the value of that real estate. Evan was in trouble. So far, he'd earned forty- seven dollars and eleven cents, which was more money than he'd ever had in his whole life. But today was Friday. There were only three days left. Three days to beat Jessie. He needed to earn almost fifty-three dollars to win the bet. And that meant each day he had to earn— Evan tried to do the math in his head. Fifty three divided by three. Fifty-three divided by three. His brain spun like a top. He didn't know where to begin. He went to his desk, pulled out a piece of paper —his basketball schedule from last winter—and

flipped it over to the back. He found the stub of a pencil in his bottom desk drawer, and on the paper he wrote He stared and stared at the equation on the page. The number fifty-three was just too big. He didn't know how to do it. "Jessie would know how," he muttered, scribbling hard on the page. Jessie could do long division. Jessie had her multiplication facts memorized all the way up to fourteen times fourteen. Jessie would look at a problem like this and just do it in her head. Snap. Evan felt his mouth getting tight, his fingers gripping the pencil too hard, as he scribbled a dark storm cloud on the page. His math papers from school were always covered in X's. Nobody else got as many X's as he did. Nobody. Draw a picture. Mrs. DeFazio's voice floated in his head. She had always reminded him to draw a picture when he couldn't figure out how to start a

math problem. A picture of what? he asked in his head. Anything, came the answer. Anything? Yes, anything, as long as there are fifty-three of them. Dollar signs. Evan decided to draw dollar signs. He started to draw three rows of dollar signs. "One, two, three," he counted, as he drew: "Four, five, six." He drew: By the time he reached fifty-three, his page looked like this:

There were seventeen dollar signs in each row. And then those two extra dollar signs left over. Evan drew a ring around those two extras. Seventeen dollar signs. And two left over. Evan stared at the picture for a long time. He wrote "Friday" next to the first row, "Saturday" next to the second row, and "Sunday" next to the third row. Evan looked at the picture. It started to make

sense. He needed to make seventeen dollars on Friday, seventeen dollars on Saturday, and seventeen dollars on Sunday. And somewhere over the three days, he needed to make two extra bucks in order to earn fifty-three dollars by Sunday evening. Evan felt his heart jump in his chest. He had done it. He had figured out fifty-three divided by three. That was a fourth-grade problem. That was fourth-grade math. And he hadn't even started fourth grade! And no one had helped him. Not Mom, not Grandma, not Jessie. He'd done it all by himself. It was like shooting the winning basket in double overtime! He hadn't felt this good since the Lemonade War had begun. But seventeen dollars a day? How was he going to do that? Yesterday he'd made forty-five dollars, but that was because he'd had help (and free supplies) from his friends. They weren't going to want to run a lemonade stand every day. Especially on the last days of summer vacation. He needed a plan. Something that would

guarantee good sales. The weather was holding out, that was for sure. It was going to hit 95 degrees today. A real scorcher. People would be thirsty, all right. Evan closed his eyes and imagined a crowd of thirsty people, all waving dollar bills at him. Now where was he going to find a lot of thirsty people with money to spend? An idea popped into Evan's head. Yep! It was perfect. He just needed to find something with wheels to get him there. It took Evan half an hour to drag his loaded wagon to the town center—a distance he usually traveled in less than five minutes by bike. But once he was there, he knew it was worth it. It was lunchtime and the shaded benches on the town green were filled with people sprawling in the heat. Workers from the nearby stores on their half-hour lunch breaks, moms out with their kids, old people who didn't want to be cooped up in their