If I Could Change History

Chapter 3- Maths

Dorothy was all a-twinkle when we finally arrived at our usual bench in the Sunken Garden, I would've bought Keiko with me but she said she had something to do with the maintenance team about her locker.

"The new guy, you know Dominik Xu? He's in our Creative classes!"

"Oh, he's in my Curriculum classes."

"He's really smart you know!" Dorothy babbled on, "He knows this really odd word that Miss Purnell used and even Ambrus doesn't know! Ambrus!"

"Let's guess," said Lucia sarcastically, "He also knows the periodic table by heart?"

"He actually does!" Dorothy nodded so furiously her golden curls where a blur, "At least that's what Ambrus said."

Lucia blinked, surprised that one of her teases where (kind of) true.

"Hi!" Bee grinned, her hands full with our containers of pasta, "I got our lunch, I had to tip the pasta in real quick and the dinner lady was giving me the evil eye at how much I was buying."

Due to the pesky seagulls that used to patrol our playground, the school put a ban on Key Stage 3 students taking the canteen's food outside. But hey! Dorothy quickly worked around that: By bringing our own containers and forks to school and then tipping our bought food into the containers so it looked like packed lunch.

Beatrix flopped down and passed down our containers, Dorothy telling her all about Dominik Xu.

Bee looked horrified, "Dorothy... you don't.... like him do you?"

"Oh no." Dorothy's ears went red, "No I don't you know, he's just... ugh, so unusual! You know the guys! Football, PS4, playing all day, never really bothers. The smart ones in our class are just so typical, you know, typical nerd or just typical smart guy who doesn't need to try or the show-offs-"

"Ok, shut-up, we geddit." Lucia snapped, her pasta speared with her fork, halfway to her mouth.

Before I could stop it, everything tumbled out of my mouth about what happened that morning. About Dominik Xu and me staring and how I crashed into him and that.

Now Lucia looked (mock) horrified, "Why is this guy popping up everywhere?" She grabbed my face, her left hand still holding her fork, "Has he bewitched you? What happened? Who are you and what have you done with my sister! She'd never blabber on about a guy like that!!!" She dropped her hands onto her lap and jerked her thumb at Dorothy, "But she always had." In a stage whisper.

Dorothy picked up her book and thwacked Lucia's upper arm.

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Last was maths and we got my favourite teacher in the whole wide world again. Dr Shah. Grumpy as hell, easy to anger, he always makes sure his class is drowning in homework, but still he was a good teacher. A strict but effective teacher, his GCSE students always got A* or A. Top set got Mr Evans, also a good teacher. He was less strict but still effective in teaching.

Dr Shah made us line up at the back of the classroom I hurriedly glanced around, the maths sets where sometimes changed and this year it changed- a lot. But in a good way. Gone was annoying Ben Norman and disruptive Kylie Holt and Zara Milara, thank the Lord!

 Last year they set Dr Shah in such a temper every lesson, we spent more time listening to him yell at them instead of actually learning. I guess we where lucky that Miss Kamil put up a Maths Study Club (that only a few went to- including me and Dorothy) or I wouldn't of stayed up in second set. 

The dropping of test scores was also probably one of the reasons that second set changed so much- plus the addition of the B students (like Hiroshi). Dorothy had dropped down the third set and Lucia remained high up in top set.

Oh thank God the new guy wasn't here, perhaps he was in top set for maths?

Dr Shah began pointing out our seats plopping us in places randomly but there was a pattern, boy, girl, boy, girl...

"Lauren, you're here at the end of the back table-"

"Sorry sir, I'm late."

The whole class looked up, including me, stopping halfway through unpacking my things.

Great. Dominik Xu.

Dr Shah nodded, knowing that he was new, "Alright, sit here next to Lauren."

Sugar rainbow chocolate chip cookies.

He looked at me and our eyes met, I could imagine the words forming in his head, the polish girl who stares. Fletcher decided to be very helpful and tell him that I was also Polish. His dark eyes looked wary, almost scared but then it was gone, his eyes and face blank.

Ah, an emotionless guy. What a great year of maths I was going to have.

I looked away and fished my pencil case out from the bottom of my bag along with my notebook and sat down, keeping my face as emotionless as his, as cold as ice. He took out his own pencil case and surprisingly his own notebook and sat down next to me. Our pencil cases, I realised with a confused blink, was the same. My one was a three compartment pencil case, with a yellow smiley face and different black words (such as 'yay', 'yippee' and 'yolo') printed all over a white background. His was the same. Except that it was a black one, with white words. 

Just like Ying and Yang. 

Wait. What?!

I shook it off and began to listen to Dr Shah's tedious droning about expectations of the year. Then he put up the questions that he made us answer last year, stuff about ourselves, what we think of maths and other stuff. All maths based.

I picked up my pen and began to write and bumped elbows with Dominik Xu. 

"Sorry." we said at the same time, both looking down at our books,

I looked sideways at him and was slightly shocked that there was a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Stupid girl, everyone can smile. I guess I was just so unprepared that I'd see him smile, so soon as well.

"Should I ask to move, I mean I'm left handed-" I began to say, not really looking at him.

"No, it's ok, it's fine." he replied, his voice barely audible,

My eyes widened as I watched him shift his pen to his left hand and began to write, his handwriting slightly scruffier than his right-handed looping, fancy handwriting. 

"Um, how did- how can- how did you do that?" I asked, still a bit mind-blown.

"I, um, block my hand- I mean broke my hand when I was ten, I couldn't type or write well with my right so I learnt to write with my left." His voice was so quiet that he was mumbling but gradually his voice grew more confident.

"So you practice both hands all the time?"

He opened his mouth to say something but was loudly interrupted,

"Lauren Wiśniewski! Dominik Xu! What are you doing!? Get on with the work! If you continue like this during the year you are in serious trouble! I tell you, you two, you and I will not get along at all if you continue! How will you learn if you're chit-chatting away like that?! How will you get good grades in your GCSEs!?" Dr Shah roared at us, swelling up twice the size he was, if that was even possible.

At the final sentence Dominik flinched and buried his head into his work and I quickly followed suit.

"Sorry." I whispered but he just nodded and didn't talk to me again for the rest of the lesson.

My interactions with Dominik Xu just gets better and better.