Maths was terrible, everyone in 7D at Lonwood School, Middleton, agreed with that. Well, everyone except Adrian of course, but Adrian was weird. Mr. Groton, the teacher, was a dumpy loud man, well into his fifties, whose only pleasure seemed to come from yelling at children. He’d assign enormous amounts of homework, and his lips would curl with delight when his students gave their weak excuses to why they could not complete it. In order to survive in Groton’s Grim Gruelling Grotto of Grime (a name given to Maths by Dan Smith, renowned for his cheek throughout the school), several students had devised methods of withstanding Groton’s tyranny while still maintaining decent grades (or, if you were like Dan Smith, decent-ish). These were essentially: thinking about something entirely different until the end of class, and then teaching the lesson to one’s self by using the textbook.
Georgina Morgan spent most of her Maths class staring at the back of Alan Bates’ head. Georgie was positively infatuated with him. She daydreamed of running her hands through his brown hair, and of staring lovingly into Alan’s blue eyes (or as she called them, ‘heavenly azul’), without seeing a look of utter terror and confusion staring back at her. Georgie’s friends thought she was bonkers for fancying Alan, as he was supposed to have an awfully hairy back, but Georgie didn’t care. She was madly in love with a boy, and her fantasies got her through Maths (although her class participation grade fell quite a bit. It was rather hard to focus on dumpy old Mr. Groton, when one had Alan Bates to dream about).
Arthur Green was from the shoddy part of town, or at least it was assumed so by the majority of the student population. People warned each other not to talk to Arthur or upset him in anyway. It was rumoured that his cousin ran a gang in Camden. That was quite a shame, because Arthur was a very nice boy. His family simply wasn’t as well to do as most others. Arthur loathed Maths class as much as anyone else, but he liked that the period gave him time to do as he liked, provided he answer a question now and then. Arthur had this little obsession with dice and probability. An ideal obsession for a Maths class, except Mr. Groton never taught them anything worth knowing (although Mr. Groton might have a differing opinion). Arthur would spend his Maths class rolling an imaginary die in his head and drawing up immense tables of probability. His tables were quite complicated, and he had gotten so good at holding a die in his head, that he could now role three or four dice at a time.
Gordon Silverson was the real bully of Lonwood. Even the teachers knew that. Some people, such as the guidance counsellor, sympathized with Gordon, as his father was supposed to be an alcoholic, and Gordon couldn’t help from being ‘troubled’. Childhood trauma aside, Gordon ran the school’s underground, which was quite extensive despite Lonwood being a small boarding school. He was head of an extensive circuit of cheating and already written essays, which he distributed to students at an incredibly unreasonable price. People avoided him even more than they avoided Janet Farnaby, and she was very peculiar. Children cringed when he walked through the halls, and he often extracted tolls from unlucky students who wished to enter certain facilities in the school, such as the dining hall, boys’ common room, and television room. Gordon had made quite a fortune, and he past his time in Maths class by planning out his escape to New York. He had heard that all the big gangs were in New York, and was saving up his money for a plane ticket and lodging there. He planned on going as soon as he reached his sixteenth birthday, which gave him loads of time for planning. Gordon had set every detail, from the distance between Heathrow and JFK, to the exact colour the walls would be in his Brooklyn flat, or apartment as they said in America. He had heard a rumour that there was a huge gang circuit in Brooklyn (which was completely inaccurate, but he didn’t need to know that). One ought to be concerned about Gordon, as no child’s dream should be to run a gang of organized crime, and maybe do a proper adult thing such as call his mother or find Gordon a better hobby. But sometimes people are simply far too caught up in their own lives, and Gordon will most likely have to find his own way to decency.
