St. Mallory's Forever!

26: XUAN: The plot thickens.

I had a bit of a Sherlock Holmes moment today. Two, in fact, although I think I've solved the first mystery already.

The first mystery was why Christie has become so friendly towards me all of a sudden. Apparently (this from Abby, via Helen) Christie has been the one who wanted me to come on the Brighton trip on Saturday, and she had been going out of her way to chat with me on Sunday. Then on Monday morning she sat next to me in math. Or rather, maths as they say in the UK. Having gone to an American school I tend to say math, and this gets me some strange looks sometimes from the few here who do know I speak English well.

And, no, this is not a total digression from the mystery of the over-friendly Christie. In fact, case solved. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Christie is the world's worst math student, and somehow word has got out than I'm a bit of a wiz' with numbers. Well, the fact that on Friday I answered the problem the maths teacher was putting on the board before he'd finished writing it is the main reason.

But it was so simple. It was a bog-standard inverse proportion problem. You know, the time a donkey takes to fall down a mine shaft is inversely proportional to the square of the diameter of the aforementioned shaft. If it takes said donkey 25 seconds to flatten some poor, unsuspecting miner down below and the shaft is 0.3 metres across how long will it take another donkey (obviously the first one is now being made into burgers in France somewhere) to fall down an adjacent mine shaft with a diameter of just 0.2 metres?

"I'm assuming these two events happened in quick succession," I said to Mr. Breeze, the maths teacher. I don't bother with the no-speaka-da-English act with maths teachers. No need.

Windy (unsurprisingly, and unimaginatively, that's his nickname among the students) stopped with pen in mid-air and turned to me. "And why might that be, Chin?"

Doh! Every bloody time! Excuse my English.

I put on my best grin-and-bear-it smile. "It's Xuan, sir. Rhymes with shin, remember? But I'm thinking that the mine-owner would not be happy having to clean up the splattered remains of a donkey the first time, so would take precautions to ensure a second donkey did not stray near their otherwise unguarded mine shafts."

Mr. Breeze sighed. "It's a hypothetical donkey and a hypothetical mineshaft, Chin. Can we just focus on the mathematics behind the question, please?" He turned to the class. "Now, to solve this sort of problem we need first to convert to a proportionality replacing the —"

"Fifty-six point two-five seconds, sir," I said. Not that I wanted to show off, but he had really annoyed me by calling me Chin twice in quick succession. Although I suppose it's an improvement on Zoo-Anne.

Mr. Breeze just stood there staring, his lower jaw gradually heading towards the floor.

Thus it came to pass that I gained instant fame as the school's resident maths genius. Which sadly doesn't say much for the others. Truth to tell, I was solving problems like that when I was ten. Not that I'm especially clever at maths really. I just had a good tutor who taught me the secret of maths.

What's the secret of maths? Well, if I told you it wouldn't be secret, would it?

Anyway, ever since that Friday maths lesson Christie has been my best friend. Case closed.

The other mystery is a little more complex, but I've plenty of time to explain as everybody else is far too wound up and hyperactive about the social tomorrow night, which apparently involves boys. I tell you, the shrieking is doing my head in.