Chapter 3

One of the homework assignments was to memorize the grammatical rules for using vowels. Of course, I didn’t do this. It’s useless to repeat stuff that you don’t already know. The next assignment was to read about the water cycle in nature. I remembered Zoya Fillipovna and decided to skip this one as well.

The next assignment wasn’t any more pleasant: math. Some construction workers were digging out some kind of a trench. Before I could write out the problem in my notebook, a radio broadcast started. I figured that it was okay to rest for a while and listen. But whose voice did I hear? The voice of our teacher, Zoya Fillipovna! Not only did I hear her voice all day at school, but it was also haunting me here! Over the radio, she gave advice to students on how to prepare for exams, just like one of our best students, Katya Goodall. Since I wasn’t going to spend any time preparing for exams, I turned off the radio.

The math problem was very difficult and stupid. I was almost on the verge of figuring out how to solve it… when a soccer ball flew into the open window. The guys outside were calling me to come out and play with them. I grabbed the ball and started to climb out through the window, as my mother’s voice caught up with me:

“Vitya, are you doing your homework?!” she shouted from the kitchen. There was something boiling and grumbling in the frying pan, so my mom didn’t see me planning my window escape. For some reason, she really didn’t like it when I went out the window and not through the door. She would be in for a treat, had she come into the room right now and had seen me crawling out the window!

I got down from the windowsill, threw the ball out the window, and told my mother that I was doing homework.

I opened my math book again. Five construction workers dug a trench one hundred linear meters long in four days. What was the answer to the first question? I was almost starting to think about the problem again, when there was yet another interruption. Lucy Karandashkina peeked into my window. One of her pigtails was tied up with a red ribbon and the other one was loose. That’s how she always had it, even at school. One day, the right pigtail would be loose, the next day — the left. It would be better if she paid more attention to her hairstyle than to other people’s Fs, especially, since she had enough of her own to spare. Lucy said that the problem with the construction workers was so incredibly difficult that even her grandmother could not solve it. Lucy is lucky that she has a grandmother! I don’t have one.

“Let’s solve it together!” suggested Lucy and climbed into my room through the window.

I refused. I knew that nothing good would come of it. Better solve it on my own.

I began thinking about the problem again. Five construction workers dug a trench one hundred linear meters long. Linear? Why are the meters called linear? Who is lining them up?

As I thought about this problem, I made a tongue twister: “A little lineman laid low by a lined up linear meter…” Then I heard my mother’s voice from the kitchen again. I caught myself uttering a nonsense tongue twister and started shaking my head to forget about the lineman and return to the construction workers. Well, what should I do with them?

“It would be perfect if the lineman was named Lionel. But the construction workers? How do we deal with them? Maybe multiply them by the number of meters?”

“Don’t multiply,” Lucy objected, “that won’t give you anything useful.”

Despite her protest, I multiplied the construction workers by meters. True, this didn’t really give me anything good to go on, but at least now I could move on to the second question. Here, I decided to divide the number of meters by the number of construction workers.

“Don’t divide them,” Lucy interrupted me once again. “I already did the division. Nothing happens.”

Of course, I didn’t listen to her and divided anyway. The answer that I got was such nonsense that I began to look for the correct answer in the back of the book. But, as luck would have it, the page with the correct answers was torn out of the textbook. I had to take full responsibility for my answers. I decided to just go with my gut and it turned out that to complete the trench, you needed one and a half construction workers. Why was there half of a construction worker? How would I know! In the end, I don’t really care how many construction workers dug this trench. Who uses construction workers to dig trenches anymore? They should have just taken an excavator and finished off the trench in a couple of hours. They would be more efficient in doing their work and students wouldn’t have to waste their time solving these types of problems. Well, be as it may, the problem was solved. I was getting ready to hop out of the window and run to play soccer with the boys. And, naturally, I would have run outside, but Lucy stopped me.

“When do you want to memorize the poem?” she asked me.

“What poem?”

“Did you forget? ‘Winter! The peasant breathes a sigh, Renews his sledge, and makes his way.’ I’m just having a hard time memorizing it.”

“That’s because it’s boring,” I said. “That poem that the boys wrote in class is very easy to remember. Because it’s fun.”

Lucy didn’t know about the poem, so I read it to her from memory:

Studying all day

Boring boring boring

Tired of it!

We should just go out and play

Rolling rolling rolling

Loving it!

Lucy liked the poem so much that she immediately remembered the verses. Together, we quickly defeated the “peasant”. I was about to quietly slip out the window again, but Lucy remembered that we had one more assignment: to complete words with missing letters. My soul ached with frustration! Why are we doing such useless work? They leave out the hardest letters in words, as if on purpose. In my opinion, this is ridiculous. Regardless of how I felt, we had to work on the assignment.

A friend of my s…verest days,

Decrep…t darling dove of mine!

Lucy is convinced that this poem was written by Alexander Pushkin to his nanny. Her grandmother told her this. Does Lucy really think that I’m this stupid? There is no way I’ll believe the fact that grown-ups have nannies. Her grandmother just wanted to have a good laugh at her expense, that’s all.

What should we do about “s…verest”? We discussed it and were ready to insert the letter “i”, when we were interrupted by Katya and Zhenchik coming into my room. I don’t know why they decided to pay me a visit. I, for one, did not invite them over. The last thing I needed was for Katya to go into the kitchen and tell my mom about my Fs. Both of these smarty-pants treated me and Lucy very condescendingly, since their grades were a lot higher than ours. Katya had big bulging eyes and thick braids. She was very proud of her braids, as if they were given to her as an award for academic achievement and good behavior. Katya spoke slowly, in a way that made it seem like she was singing. Zhenchik, on the other hand, didn’t even deserve an introduction. He could never say anything on his own and just repeated what Katya was saying. Zhenchik was a pet name that his grandmother used when she brought him to school every morning, as if he was a little boy. That’s why we started calling him Zhenchik. Only Katya called him by his real name: Eugene. She was very proper like that.

Katya greeted us in a way, which made it seem like we haven’t seen each other all day. Looking at Lucy, she said:

“What a messy hairstyle. One of your braids has gotten undone once again!”

Lucy just shook her head at Katya. She didn’t like to comb her hair. She didn’t like to be patronized either. Katya sighed. Zhenchik sighed as well. Katya shook her head. Zhenchik did the same.

“Well, since both of you are here,” said Katya, “we will get you caught up on your assignments.”

“Better get us caught up quick!” cried Lucy, sarcastically. “We’ve got no time to lose! We haven’t finished all of our assignments yet.”

“And what kind of answer did you get for the construction worker problem?” asked Katya in the same exact manner as Zoya Fillipovna.

“One and a half construction workers,” I answered, deliberately trying to be short with her.

“Incorrect,” Katya objected calmly.

“Well, so be it. What do you care anyway?” I shot back at her, making a terrible grimace.

Katya sighed again and shook her head once more. Zhenchik, naturally, did the same.

“Why does she always need to get involved in everything?!” Lucy blurted out.

Katya straightened her braids and calmly said:

“Come along, Eugene. They’re being rude.”

Zhenchik got angry, blushed, and even scolded us all on his own. We were so taken aback that we couldn’t even reply back with anything. Katya said that they would leave immediately, which would only make things worse for us, since we would remain un-caught up.

“Farewell, slackers,” said Katya.

“Farewell, slackers,” squeaked Zhenchik.

“May the wind always be at your back,” I quipped.

“Goodbye, goody-two-shoes!” Lucy sang in a funny voice.

This exchange was, of course, not entirely polite. After all, they were visiting my house. They were practically my guests. Well, polite or not, I still exposed them for who they were. In a little bit, Lucy also left.