windows, the other girls had formed their usual weather system. Sana and Priya were sharing highlighters like emergency supplies. Lacey was whispering, "If I get one more minus sign wrong, I’m legally changing my name." Tia and Megan sat behind them, looking glossy, bored and ready to judge.
Mr Tafadar clapped once. The room didn’t go silent, but it did become quieter, like a zoo at closing time. "Starter answers. Question one?"
Milo’s hand went up so fast it nearly left the rest of him behind.
"Not you yet, Milo," said Mr Tafadar. "Let someone else experience joy."
Jayden leaned into his ruler microphone. "Brutal scenes in the maths villa."
Then Orla noticed it.
Beneath the old blackboard, half-hidden by the tray of snapped chalk, someone had scrawled an equation in tiny, jagged writing. It was not in Mr Tafadar’s neat style. It bent in the middle, like it was trying to crawl away.
Holly squinted. "Sir, what’s that?"
Mr Tafadar turned. For the first time all year, his calm face went properly still. "Nobody touch that."
Obviously, this made the whole class look.
Callum read aloud, "If x equals all your wrong answers, solve for regret."
"That is not a curriculum statement," Mr Tafadar said sharply.
But Arun, who could not resist a puzzle, had already whispered, "Technically, if wrong answers are variables..."
"Arun," Bea hissed, "don’t flirt with doom."
Too late. Milo, offended by an unsolved thing existing near him, muttered the answer.
The lights flickered.
Every exercise book in the room snapped open. Old homework pages fluttered, and red-pen crosses began to peel off like scabs. Wrong fractions, backward threes, abandoned workings and tragic spelling of "isosceles" lifted into the air.
"My year seven decimals!" Reece yelled. "I thought we buried those!"
The mistakes swirled above the desks, chalk-white and scratchy, building arms, a hunched back and a face made of angry equals signs. It landed on Mr Tafadar’s desk with a dusty crash.
"Class," Mr Tafadar said, voice tight, "please remain seated."
"Sir," Orla whispered, "your desk has grown a maths goblin."
Don’t scream, Holly told herself. Screaming is probably not a recognised method.
The creature smiled with brackets for teeth. "I am the Miscalculation."
Jayden slowly lifted his ruler. "Welcome back to Maths Island. New bombshell just entered."
The floor tilted. Desks slid towards the wall. The window stretched into a rhombus. The door became a triangle and looked smug about it.
Mr Tafadar grabbed the board. "Everybody move to the centre!"
Holly caught Sana’s sleeve as she slipped. Orla grabbed Holly’s blazer. Ellis caught Callum by the hood and said, "I’ve got you, bro," while immediately falling over him.
Steady, steady, steady, whispered Bea, clutching her pencil case like a survival kit.
The Miscalculation raised one chalky hand.
"Give me the student who has never made a mistake, and I will hold your little school together."
For one stunned second, nobody joked.
Then Megan said, "Well, it’s obviously not Reece."
"Rude but supported by evidence," said Reece.
Everyone turned to Milo.
Milo went pale. "I have made mistakes."
"Name one," said Tia.
"I once used a blunt pencil."
"That’s not a mistake, that’s a personality crisis," Orla said.
Holly looked at Milo properly. He was annoying, yes, but he also looked terrified, not smug. She stepped slightly in front of him.
"You can’t have anyone," she said.
The Miscalculation’s eyes narrowed into minus signs. "Then the geometry collapses."
Bang. The ceiling folded down like a paper fortune teller. From the corridor came screams, laughter, and Mrs Vale shouting, "Why is the science lab now a pentagon?"
Mr Tafadar reached for the forbidden equation, but the chalk marks wriggled away from his fingers.
Orla pointed at Holly’s book. "Hols. Your page."
Holly looked down. Beneath her latest answer, new writing was appearing by itself.
The mistake-free student is not the cleverest.
The Miscalculation saw it too. Its grin widened.
Outside the classroom, something enormous began counting backwards from ten.
And Milo whispered, "That isn’t my handwriting."
