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[[Note: if you would like your kid to have been nominated to take extra mathematics lessons, just give me a yell -- PM or in-thread or even OOC message in here. If I have your kid here mistakenly, please do the same!]]

The good part was: they no longer had to go to maths class with the others. The bad part was: they no longer got to go to maths class with the others. Although the notice had been sent home privately by Dr. Darnell with each individual child, to inform parents and to keep things quiet -- she'd even called it a class split, as though it had maybe happened to keep class numbers down -- the rumour had gone around that now there was a good maths class and a dumb maths class.

The names were neatly written down in Dr. Darnell's roll:

Island, Austin
Island, Polly
Mephisto, Carlisle
Morris-Chan, Cecelia
Naborn, Cascati
Prosper, Ophelia
Sand, Kaeden
Taylor, Madeleine

It was not, as they might have thought, the dumb class -- in fact, under Beatrix's estimation, most of them were actually bright students who generally disliked maths for some reason and therefore did badly at it. Or simply problem students, who disliked everything. Polly and Austin loathed school, and Beatrix often doubted the wisdom of having both in the same class -- that was going to cause problems; Cecelia openly loathed schooltime as well, maths just as bad as every other subject. Ophelia was a sweet girl, but seemed to find most academia difficult: odd, because she was bright otherwise. Carlisle was a singular case of dyslexia -- clever boy, she thought, but gave up out of frustration.

Madeleine Taylor was no slouch either: she and Ophelia were both generally easy to have in a classroom. And Casca Naborn wasn't bad at all, just lazy, and oddly enough when she'd been giving the notice out to Carlisle had somehow wormed out of her what it was for and asked to be placed in too. He'd been pretty charming about it. "I'm no good at maths," he said, "I think remedial would be a good place for me, Dr. Darnell."

She'd re-tested him, and certainly his algebra was on the wrong way -- not guessing (perhaps naively) that he'd flubbed the entire thing on purpose. She'd just been relieved that Wisp, who tried her hardest, was managing to somehow keep up with the work in the senior school mathematics department, mainly through hours and hours of home tuition and Irelia and looking over her arm to see what Rory was doing.

The Liberty Center had given her a teacher aide to work with, a demure girl of Russian extraction called Lida. They also took their classes in the computer lab, rather than the maths room; the remedial class focused on independent learning and assistance, as each child had a different pace. As with any IT center, this inevitably meant that the first lesson had to be put on hold as all of the children's logins were confirmed, and at least half of them were wrong for some reason. Lida, who was more terrified of Beatrix than she was of the children (and she was pretty terrified of the children) fluttered around as they all ruled up new pages in their maths books at the center table.

"I," Austin said imperiously. "Don't know how they can tell if I'm good at math or not."

"Because you never go to class," Polly said. Somehow, as cousins and siblings were apt to do (even if they hated one another) they had wound up sitting next to each other at the table.

"Exactly!" Austin said, grateful that (even if it was Polly) someone understood him. At the moment he was eyeing the ruler as if it were a foreign object, and to him, it was. "What are we doing again?"

"We're drawing lines," Polly said. And, of course, her entire page was covered in lines. Too many lines. Somewhere in the middle she had started turning the page as she drew to make pretty patterns.

Ophelia sighed, worked on her lines, and wondered what math had to do with painting. Why did she need multiplication tables if she knew how to go to any world she could imagine?

Unlike the others, though, she knew that she probably belonged in this class. She really had tried on the test that they used to level the class, it was just that numbers had never made sense to her. Add in fractions and problems that had more letters than actual digits in them and the whole thing just turned into alphabet soup.

Her lines were meticulously orderly, though, if she got any credit for that. It had been no small task, either - she had made the mistake of sitting next to Austin, and as a result was crunched up in her chair and trying very hard not to get hit with a stray elbow.

"I wouldn't like to have art in the computer lab, I think," she said quietly, looking across the table at Casca.

Polly looked up at the assistant teacher with irritation. "Lan'lubber," she muttered irritably before flipping to a new page.

"Ha! You got it wrong," Austin said evilly. "No wonder you're in the stupid class."

"Yeah, well where do you think YOU are right now, booger picker?" Polly demanded irritably. "And I don't know what the point of this is, Kae, I think they're tryin' to... civilize us." The word "Civilize" was much emphasized.

At this very moment Carlisle hated himself. It was just good that the notice had gone straight to his mother who had forwarded it straight to his aunt. He would not want anyone to know that he was in the dummy class. In fact, he was pretty much so distracted by trying not to be noticed not going to the usual maths class that he had missed the door not twice but three times. He had been late, which was... horrible. Everything about that day was horrible. The lines on his page were, however, a**l in their perfection. After all, he did want to do well at something and math seemed like as good a something as anything at this point.

"I hate computers," muttered Carlisle, putting his pencil down and planting his forehead on the notebook page with a minimum of drama. "They never work right." His login, for instance, almost never worked on the first go, and he was never sure if it was the numbers or letters that screwed him up. At this point, he was just gonna write the information on his hand. (It would stain in like a permanent tattoo right quickly.)

Austin was no doodling on his notebook, pirate ships and maps of all sorts. "I think," he said finally, "I want to go back to the island."

"We did already," Polly said, now doing (somewhat) what she was supposed to be doing. "That's why that annoying fairy guy has been following us lately, remember."

"Oh," Austin said. Then he groaned, grabbing his stomach. "Owwwwww! Teacher lady! I don't feel so good!"

Lida immediately looked alarmed. "Hold on a second, Austin," She escaped over to the other side of the room, and swapped places with the original maths teacher: Dr. Darnell was looking utterly annoyed, and in no mood for playing games.

"Good, Polly," she said crisply, "those lines look better; your margins are atrocious. That's an improvement. -- Austin, neither I or Miss Lida are teacher lady; that's Dr. Darnell or ma'am to you, and if you feel sick you have permission to leave and go to the nurse."

This sounded attractive until she added, "You'll simply have to do today's work as your homework, if you go home sick. -- And you'll be using a new piece of paper, in any case. Maths. Not art. We don't treat books that way. -- I want the date and the margins in the next two minutes, or I'll make you do maths in the basement."

Madeleine had spent most of the time in remedial class alternatively blushing in embarrassment, throwing helpless glances at her paper and squeaking in alarm whenever someone looked like they might look her way.

She was lost. Very, very lost. The first thing that didn't look ominous that day was, unsurprisingly, sitting next to Ophelia.

"Squishy!" There were definite notes of desperation and relief in her voice as the other girl sat next to her. "Hi!"