Moving over to the window, Peter threw his wrapper into the bin and bit into the sweet. In just a minute, the headache disappeared. Sugar helped, but Peter couldn’t understand why he had to learn complicated formulas with his other classmates. In the classroom he tried to question the beer-bellied teacher about the more difficult exercises, but the large man just smiled and said that it would help him one-day… Weird!
Peter was tired, but his homework wasn’t yet done. He wished that he could just answer some of the questions like «can the residual of two figures be more than their sum’, for example. It seemed so easy at first sight, but he was stuck on the problem for a long time. He couldn’t concentrate and soon his thoughts slid away somewhere else…
Peter closed his eyes and relaxed in the chair after his long day. He felt annoyed, but the reason wasn’t his dull homework – it was Mary, his classmate. She was cute, well educated and he enjoyed seeing her eyes on him, though it made him feel uneasy and this was when the bloody surged to his cheeks. He didn’t fancy her, even though she was different from other girls in their class – but the worst was that she knew it. Peter tried to hide his feelings and none seemed to notice his reaction. He didn’t want to be friends with Mary, not yet. But being an acquaintance was okay… for now. Or didn’t he believe his true feelings? Peter did not want to answer.
He thought about his last chat with Mary at school and sighed. She’d come up to him with a friend, the red haired Natalie, who was rather cheeky and a bit stuck-up.
«Hi Peter’, said Mary. Natalie rolled her eyes as if being hit by Mike Tyson’s uppercut to her jaw.
«Hi girls’, said Peter, «How’s things?»
«Okay, thanks’, Mary replied. Natalie was holding her left elbow tightly. «I’ve got a few English Grammar questions – would you mind if I e-mailed them over to you tonight?», she asked.
«What? To me?», he asked. He was surprised. He knew she had some private teachers from the UK and her English was far better than others. But she never asked for help. Not yet.
«Sure! After all, who can explain English better than you?», Mary flattered him and raised her eyebrows.
Before he could think of a suitable answer to her question, the girls were already by the class next door.
It happened today and Peter thought it had something to do with the Maths lesson. A few days ago, the Maths teacher – well known alias «Teddy Bear’ – came into the class with a wry smile and said, «If any of you know how to solve the problem during this lesson, you’ll get A-mark for the third school term and be let out early!». It sounded like a joke and to Peter it was.
«Two ships are leaving piers from opposite river banks at the same time. They are moving towards each other’, whispered Alex, his neighbor – he was good at Maths and it was a challenge to him. «Both are moving at different but entirely steady speeds. They met for the first time, 720m away from the shore, but then moved away from each other again. Then each made a U-turn and began to track back across the river, meeting the next time, 400m from the shore. What is the distance, therefore, between the river banks?», Peter wished he could find the answer, but to no avail.
«Do you know what the answer is?», whispered Mary over the aisle.
«Not a clue’, answered Peter. He shook his head, not daring to look up, but instead rested his chin in his hands and pretended to think. His cheeks once again burned red through his fingers.
No-one succeeded in the lesson, but many of the class promised to have an answer by the following morning. Except Peter.
Peter e-mailed the puzzle to Robert, his friend in Manchester, but had no reply as yet. Robert must have been pondering the answer as well, no doubt, but if he did know the solution, he would surely make contact. Peter moved the sheet with the problem away and focused on something else. He thought about his private school in the Manchester suburbs. There were a few teachers who were helpful during the afternoon classes and helped pupils with their homework. He smiled as he reminisced about his time there. Mr. McDubley was really funny – always blinking his eyes when Peter couldn’t understand the Maths. Mr. Watersmith patiently explained the dull and boring grammar rules, but Peter never felt so desperate and exhausted as he did here in Moscow. He’s never been given so much homework, never. It was better in Manchester before…
A few days passed and there was no lucky man to cope with the Teddy Bear’s problem in his class. Even Alex failed. «Teddy Bear’ exulted over them, many classmates were really upset, but Peter didn’t care. He thought it was nonsense but not a challenge.
He had a few classbooks about Maths on his desk now, as well as two or three on History and Geography. He’d heard that there were more than twenty by different authors on English grammar that had been approved by the Ministry of Education – unbelievable! – those Russians are nuts about this stuff and they like to exaggerate. In his early days, he thought that there were exams for each class book, but was really surprised to find out he was wrong. It was only one exam. He wondered how he could choose the right course to take and books to pass the test successfully. All his efforts though were in vain – no-one could explain, simply relying on teacher’s knowledge, experience or simply a «hit and miss’ answer… Oh those Russians!
Peter came back to the Maths again. «Teddy Bear’ usually explained exercises for ten to fifteen minutes, as it took the other kids a little longer to understand his speech. Two or three more exercises took them another twenty minutes – why the hell did this man demanded a further ten to fifteen more exercises for homework? «Teddy Bear’ didn’t care how long Peter spent on this boring work and nor did the other teachers. Each of them thinks they’re the Lord of the manor and the pupils are mere slaves. Of course, they know more than the pupils, but homework always seems to be more than the lesson – why? Why should they do homework tree-four times longer than at school? Again, there’s no-one to explain.
Tomorrow they’ll have six lessons, two of them would be PE. Alex told him once how long it would usually take to do this «boring Maths shit’. However, Alex was a geek – one of the best in the class, so Peter could only imagine the efforts that, Mary or Natalie, for example, would have to go through to do the same. Awesome. If they really tried to do homework they’d have to do it well into the night. And no night clubs and parties, of course.
