"I hate math."

I bang my head on the desk, muttering the words I say so often that they might as well be my catchphrase or my mantra. I don't know, I'm not particularly strong in English either.

"And the cosign...blahblahblah...equilateral..." My math teacher's lethargic, drone-like voice just washes over my head like a painful, throbbing wave. I can feel my eyes slowly drooping, and soon my eyes close...

WHAM!

I jump half a mile into the air, only landing to see my teacher's angry face. "Gwendolyn Summers Patricia, are you sleeping in class AGAIN?"

"Yes, I mean no, I mean...sorry, sir. Don't call me Gwendolyn."

"You cannot continue to sleep in my class, Gwendolyn, you are the only one who is not passing this class," said my obstinate, rude, boring, dull-

"GWENDOLYN! Are you listening to me?"

I jump again. "Just coming up with adjectives, sir!"

"...Adjectives?"

I shake my head. "Never mind, nothing, not anything important," I mutter.

The bell rings mercifully, the signal to pack up and get out of there. "I'm going to miss my bus, sir," I say, stuffing my book into my bag.

"Gwendolyn, you have to be more attentive," he calls after me.

"Don't call me Gwendolyn!"

I can't stand math, if that wasn't clear before. The top three things on my "pet peeves" list:

-Spiders

-Math

-People calling me "Gwendolyn"

I can't stand it.

I don't actually ride the bus, I walk home. But I wanted to get out of that class desperately. There's not a thing in the world that could make me like math, nothing, not ever.

The endless number of formulas, the millions of possible answers but only one answer. It's so confined, so boring, so useless.

It's not a far walk to my house, but it's long enough that I plug in my earbuds and let Basshunter take me away.

I don't live with my parents anymore.

I don't mean I'm eighteen or whatever; I'm just not living with them. Confused?

It's a common reaction.

You see, my parents are busy. Far away and busy. On business trips eleven out of twelve months a year. They send me money and stuff for food, and I have a part-time job. 'Doly's got it down.

I drop my bag in the entrance.

"I'm home!" I call. "Not that anyone cares..."

I slouch down at the computer like I usually do. I love the Internet: there's millions and billions of things that AREN'T related to math.

First thing off, I check my email. There's one from my best friend, Lydia.

"OMG Doly I totally saw you fall asleep in class! Are you gonna be okay for the final?"

I frown. "It's math, I don't care," I reply.

"Well, you better care! It's a big score."

I close my chat with her, irritated. It doesn't matter! Why would she hang on my issues!

There's one from my mom. That's a surprise. "Dear Gwendolyn,

Please watch your math scores. We recently checked your grades online and were shocked to discover that you have such despicable scores. Fix them NOW or we'll get you into boarding school.

Love,

Loraine"

I scowl. She never can sign with "Mom", can she. My fingers fly over the keyboard. "Dear Loraine, as you so insistently call yourself, please stop NAGGING me about my math scores. I'll fix them."

I sigh. Easier typed than done.

But maybe they're right. Even if I'm never going to use math, I have to get a good grade. Boarding school's fourth on my pet peeves list.

Time to use the few million sites about math.

"I can't believe this," I mutter after a few minutes.

Every site I try has millions of kids who are doing infinitely better than I am! And I know dozens of them. Like I'm going to let a ton of kids I know find out how bad I am at math!

And the ones that don't have millions are dead boring.

Finally, after nearly an hour of searching desperately, I find an obscure site.

"Cyberchase", it says, and "Download here".

It looks small, and it looks fun. "What have I got to lose?" I mutter.

I click on the link, and all hell breaks loose.

My computer starts shaking! A pink portal opens in my screen, and before I can stand up to run away, I'm dragged in.

The portal is dark and there are strange symbols floating around. They're pretty...

Until I realize they're math symbols.

"Euch, gross, bug off!" I wail, as a dividing sign bumps into me.

When I pop out I'm in one of the strangest places I've ever seen.

It's a massive room, with a massive window looking out into what looks like outer space. There's computer-techy-stuff all over the place, topped with a massive screen.

None of that's particuarly freaky. What really gets me is that there's a big robotic head blinking at me from the screen.

"Aaaaah!" I scream.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" She asks. Her voice is halting and quavering, but with a strange sense of power.

"I don't know, I don't know, get me out of here!" I yell.

"Motherboard, what is it? I heard yelling..." A man runs in with a worried expression on his face.

Or at first glance, he's a man. He looks like a man and he walks like one too, if it weren't for his strange purple complexion and lightbulb hat.

"What the heck is going on here? What are you? What is that?" I yell, pointing at the screen.

"Who are you?" he asks me.

I throw my hands up in the air, exasperated. "I asked you first! What's going on here! I click one little link..."

The...man...I guess...shakes his head and rubs at his glasses. "I see. You must have clicked on that link that was put up there all that time ago...I thought it had been taken down."

"Well, it wasn't!"

He shakes his bulby head. "Let's start over. I'm Dr Marbles, and this is Motherboard." The virtual robot-woman nods her head.

"And where am I?"

"You're in Cyberchase."

I sit down heavily. "Cyberchase," I laugh. "So, like, this is a virtual world? Or something? I'm going crazy..."

Dr Marbles goes over to the computer panel and starts typing rapidly. And I thought my fingers were flying! His blur over the keyboard so they resemble a hovering cloud of fog more than fingers. "I'm going to call in the Cybersquad. For some reason, I'm not able to open the portal that leads to your computer..."

I gulp. "You mean I'm TRAPPED here?"

"I'm afraid so."

Moments later, portals similar to the ones I travelled through open and three kids I've never seen in my life pop out, seemingly cheerful even after having been surrounded by...math.

"Hey, Dr Marbles! What's up?" asks a redheaded boy.

"Yeah, I didn't know there was anything going on," said a brown-haired girl with thick glasses.

"Hey ya, Motherboard!" greeted a dark-skinned girl with a high-placed bun.

"What's going on..." I mutter.

They finally notice me and proceed to crowd me painfully.

"Oh my gosh, it's another Earth kid! Motherboard, is she joining our team?"

"That'd be great! Hey, she's like our age, right? What's your name?"

"MY NAME IS DOLYN. NOW STOP CROWDING ME!" I shout. "I just want to go home!"

They back away, thankfully. The redheaded kid scratches the back of his head. I hate it when people do that. What, does awkwardness itch or something? Anyways.

"Sorry. Uh, I'm Matt."

"I'm Inez," says the glasses girl.

"And I'm Jackie. Hey, Dolyn, is that short or something?"

I scowl. Why do people need to know what it's short for? I told them what I wanted to be called. "It's short for Gwendolyn," I mutter. "But don't ever call me that."

Jackie shrugs. "Okay, whatever." I immediately develop a dislike for her.

"I just want to go home," I mutter.

"Well, you're going to have to find out why we're not able to open the portal to your home," Dr Marbles calls from the panels. "The best bet is probably Hacker."

"HaX0r?" I ask. "I know some hackers. If I could email them-"

"Not hackers in the conventional sense," Inez says. "He's evil."

"Yeah, he and his robots Buzz and Delete are always causing trouble here in Cyberchase," Matt says.

"But we always beat him. Right, guys?" Jackie says.

"Yeah!" They high-five each other.

"That's great. Really cute. But I just want to go home," I mutter.

They each exchange a glance (a saying I've always found to be confusing. I mean, really. What the heck?) and shrug. "Okay," Matt says. "We can figure it out."

"Out of curiosity, what made you click the link? It wasn't exactly advertised," Dr Marbles asks.

"I-I...needed help with math," I whisper.

"What?"

"I needed help with math, okay? I'm doing really terribly and I'm really embarrassed and my parents might send me to boarding school, so I wanted to find an interesting site that wasn't crowded...I guess this is what I get for being bad at math," I mutter angrily.

"Well...we do a lot of math here," Inez says. "If you joined our team, I'm sure you'd get all the training you need."

"And we find the solutions to math issues on our own, so they stick with us longer," Matt adds.

"No offense, but I'm a little freaked out by this place and I'd rather go to boarding school than stay here," I reply irritably.

Jackie shrugs. "Your loss. Whatever."

It's going to be a long time before I get home, I can tell. Even if a portal were to open up here and now, I will have stayed here far too long for my liking.

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