Back at school, the narrator asks his dad if he has money for the prom. His dad says he doesn't, since he's so good at math. The narrator says he'll run away to New York City if he ever does that in public. He's not sure how to make money before the dance, though, since it's such a small amount of money. He asks if he can have some brownies from the cook, but the cook won't let him buy them. He also asks if there's a difference between reflection, refraction, and absorption, which are all terms used to describe the properties of light and water. He wants to know more about these terms, but his dad says it would be a "miracle" for him to understand them in class. He tells the narrator about refraction, which is a term for the ability of light to pass through a reflective surface, like a swimming pool. It's also used in prisms, a device that allows light to travel through a prism at different speeds. He says that in art class, if you combine all the colors in one color, you get a "fugly brown" . He gets home to find that the teacher has made him a rainbow chloe.