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2008
rhea was in george's room, the two children huddled around some schoolbooks and worksheets. after finding out that she knew almost nothing on what they had done in the british school syllabus, he had made it his mission to teach her exactly what she had missed, so she could keep up in school the next year.
"so if you see here, this is an equation. to solve the equation, you need to move everything to one side except x. so if this is 6 + x = 15, then you move the 6 over, and that makes x = 15 - 6 because when you move it, the sign changes from plus to minus. so if you calculate that, it would give you x = 9. if you move everything, including the letter, to one side, the empty side is zero. get it?" george explained, trying to teach her algebra (emphasis on trying).
"kind of? so if the equation is 14 - x = 4, then i move the 4 over, it will give me 14 - x - 4 = 0. then i move the x to the empty side, so it becomes 14 - 4 = x. so calculating that would give me 10 = x, right?" rhea questioned, trying to do the question that was on the worksheet that george had photocopied for her.
"exactly. now try to do the harder questions on your own, because the questions get harder than this when we go back to school, not to scare you." george nodded, urging her to go on with the worksheet while standing behind her, watching her attempt the equations.
she got through the sums without much problem, until she got to the last question.
"george?"
"yea?"
"how on earth do you solve 63 - 2y = 15 + y?"
"so if you move all the numbers to one side and all the letters to another, you'll get 63 - 15 = y + 2y. and if you add and subtract that all up you'll get 48 = 3y. so to get y you need to divide both sides by 3. so that will give you 16 = y. get it?"
rhea stared at him in confusion, feeling as if he had just spoken gibberish to her.
he sighed, and began to explain to her again, slowly. she nodded at the end of his explanation, finally making sense of what he was saying.
"alright we'll just do another worksheet now because you clearly need the practice." george told her, making the two children giggle.
"do you need to photocopy it?" rhea questions. george had photocopied most of his school notes that she needed for her, blanking out the answers so that she could do them. due to the number of times they had done it, it became routine for the both of them.
"yep. race you to the study!" george exclaimed, and the two raced through the corridors of the russell home, ignoring the yells of his mum, giggling and screaming in joy, with him clutching a worksheet to his chest with his left arm, rhea chasing after him, arms swinging. because even at home, the race never stopped.
