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raining, it’s always Billie Holiday.”
    “What about Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday?” I asked.
    “Those days are quiet. Unless it’s raining.”
    I shrugged. “Okay. What’s all this?” I gestured to the numbers on the chalkboard.
    He picked up where he’d left off, writing numbers on the board, one after another: 806613001927 …
    “This is the part where Pi gets lost in a hurricane and saved by a whale, and he washes up on the shores of a tropical island right before the volcano blows.”
    I was leaning back toward the straitjacket. Then I asked Early Auden, that strangest of boys, the most important of questions.
    “Who is Pi?”
    Suddenly Early looked up from his numbers and locked me in his gaze, as if I were the one who should be wearing a straitjacket. No, I think it was more a look of him trying to decide if he could trust me.
    His eyebrows drew together and he paused, chalk in hand. Finally, he took the eraser from its ledge and, standing on tiptoes, erased the hundreds of numbers that were written in neat lines all across the board.
    “It’s better if you start from the beginning.” He took up a piece of chalk in his slender fingers and wrote three numbers and a decimal point on the board.
    3.14
    I recognized the number pi. Or the beginning of it, anyway. Kind of a coincidence that he had a whole chalkboardfull of the number when we were just discussing it in class. But then, my mom always said, “There are no coincidences. Just miracles by the boatload.”
    “Yeah, Mr. Blane was just talking about that in math class, about it ending. But maybe that was after you left.”
    “I heard what he said.” Early’s voice got a little louder. “That’s crazy talk.”
    “How do you know? People thought it was crazy talk to say that the Earth wasn’t flat or that it moved around the sun and not the other way around.” I couldn’t resist. “People probably think it’s crazy talk to say that there are no timber rattlesnakes in Maine.”
    “NO.” Early clenched his hands at his side. “It’s not like that, because the Earth isn’t flat and it does move around the sun. And”—he huffed—“there are timber rattlesnakes in Maine!”
    “And pi is just a number.” At least, that was what I thought.
    Early circled the number one. “This is Pi. And the rest of the numbers are his story. The story of Pi begins with a family. Three is his mother. She is beautiful and kind and she carried him in her heart always. Four is his father. He is strong and good. And here”—Early pointed to the number one, in the middle—“this is Pi. His mother named him Polaris, but she said he would have to earn his name.”

The Stargazer

 
    B EFORE THE STARS HAD NAMES , before men knew how to use them to plot their courses, before anyone had ventured beyond his own horizon, there was a boy who wondered what lay beyond. He gazed up at the stars with praise and wonder, but his wonder was not only born of awe. It was also born of a question: Why?
    This question began as a spark in his breast and grew with the kindling only a boy’s curiosity can provide. Why is the sky so big? he would ask his mother. Why am I so small? Why does the water creep up on the shore, only to retreat again? Why does the moon change its shape? Why do shells hold the sound of the sea? Why? Why? Why?
    The mother didn’t know the answers to his questions, but she did know that one day he would leave. And that day was not as distant as it had once been. She had named him Polaris, a big name for her little boy, and for now she still called him Pi. But the days passed. The moon changed itsshape, and the ocean licked the shore and retreated over and over again.
    Someday, when I am big , he thought, I will put my boat in the water and follow it when it retreats. Then I will know why .
    And the boy grew big.
    One day he went to his mother, and she knew. They both cried their tears, though they were not the same. His were youthful and