The Year Nine maths classroom had the energy of a reality show filmed during a fire drill. Chairs scraped, calculators clicked, and somebody had drawn a tiny moustache on the poster of Pythagoras.
Holly Downey sat beside Orla at their usual table, second row from the back, perfect for learning and also for quietly losing it when something funny happened. Holly was fourteen, kind-hearted, smart, pretty in that effortless way that made Tia and Megan narrow their eyes, and she had a habit of helping people even when they had just borrowed her pen and chewed it. Her favourite topic was her cats, Ben and Geri, who she claimed were “basically furry mathematicians, but lazier.”
Orla snorted. “Ben would fail algebra.”
“Geri would copy off him,” Holly said, and they both collapsed into silent laughter.
At the front, Mr Tafadar turned from the whiteboard. He was fifty, calm-faced, kind, and sometimes strict in a way that made even the loud boys sit up like meerkats. He had moved from France to England when he was twenty, and whenever someone complained that maths was impossible, he said, “I learnt English weather and fractions. You can learn simultaneous equations.”
Please don’t notice us laughing, Holly thought, pressing her lips together.
Mr Tafadar noticed immediately. “Holly. Orla. I hope the joke includes the value of x.”
“It might, sir,” Orla said. “We’re still solving it.”
The popular boys at the back — Jayden, Ellis, Reece and Callum — made impressed noises like a studio audience. They were loud, annoying and honestly funny, which was the problem. Jayden had turned his ruler into a microphone and was whispering, “Welcome back to Maths Island, where only one student will survive long division.”
Across the room, the nerd table was thriving. Arun had three sharpened pencils lined up by height, Bea was colour-coding her working, and Milo had already finished the starter and looked personally offended by everyone else’s breathing.
Near the windows sat the other girls: some nice, some unpredictable. Amara smiled at Holly whenever she needed a rubber. Poppy always shared gum after class. Yasmin once explained a whole homework sheet to three people at lunch. Then there were Tia and Megan, who whispered like their comments had subtitles.
“Holly thinks she’s proper perfect,” Megan murmured, just loud enough.
Holly pretended not to hear. Orla did not. “Your volume button’s broken again.”
Gasps rippled around the room. The imaginary reality-show camera definitely zoomed in.
⁂
Mr Tafadar clapped once. “Enough. Today we are doing a group challenge. Winners get five achievement points. Losers get the deep personal growth of trying again.”
Groans. Cheers. Someone dropped a compass.
He wrote on the board: FIND THE CODE. Four algebra clues. One final number.
“Groups of four,” he said. “I choose.”
This caused immediate panic. Holly grabbed Orla’s sleeve. “If he separates us, tell Ben and Geri I loved them.”
Mr Tafadar’s list was brutal. Holly and Orla were placed with Jayden and Arun. Tia and Megan were together with Poppy and Callum, which looked like a social experiment.
“We’re basically the dream team,” Jayden announced, spinning his pen. It flew across the table and hit Arun’s calculator.
Arun stared at him. “You have decreased our probability of success.”
Holly laughed, then leaned over the worksheet. “Right, clue one. If 3x plus 5 equals 26, x is seven.”
“Beauty and brains,” Jayden said, grinning.
Orla pointed her pencil at him. “Careful. Compliments are allowed. Being weird is not.”
For ten minutes, the classroom buzzed. Mr Tafadar moved between tables, offering hints in his gentle French-English rhythm, then switching to strict mode whenever the boys got too noisy. Holly helped Arun explain brackets to Jayden. Orla made everyone laugh by narrating Megan’s dramatic eye-rolls like sports commentary.
Then the smartboard flickered.
Every calculator beeped at once.
On the screen appeared one sentence, huge and black:
WHOEVER FINDS THE CODE FIRST WILL REVEAL THE CHEAT.
The room went silent.
Mr Tafadar’s face changed. Not angry. Worse. Serious.
“Nobody touch anything,” he said.
Holly felt Orla’s hand grip her sleeve. On their worksheet, the final code had appeared in blue ink. Holly was sure it had not been there a second ago.
And underneath it, in neat handwriting, was her name.
