Before the Deadline

Iris and Ben have a class project about bikes on the road outside their school. It is four forty. Their deadline is five o’clock: they must send the project before five. Their chart, a picture with numbers, says, “More bikes on Mondays.”

Iris looks at their notebook. On Monday, they count bikes for one hour. On Friday, they count for thirty minutes because it rains. “These times are different,” she says. “Our chart does not explain that.”

“Let’s send it now,” Ben says. “We can explain if the teacher asks.” Iris says no. “People can read our chart and get the wrong idea. We need to change it.” They cannot count more bikes now.

They keep the numbers. They write the times under the chart and add a note about the rain. They take out the sentence about more bikes on Mondays. They send the project two minutes before five.

The next day, the teacher reads their short answer at the end. “Now I can understand your numbers,” the teacher says. Iris smiles. Ben writes a note on a new page: “Next time, check how we count first.”