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.
