Gianfranco bombed an algebra quiz. He'd studied. He'd even had Annarita help him get ready for it, though she was rushed-she had her own Russian test to worry about. He'd thought he knew what was coming and how to do it. But when he looked at the questions, his brain turned to polenta.

And when his father found out, he probably would get pounded into cornmeal mush. Not that his old man had been any great shakes in school. He would be something better, something more interesting, than a mid-level paper shuffler if he had. He wanted Gianfranco to do what he hadn't been able to.

No matter what he wanted, chances were he wouldn't get it. Gianfranco cared more about basketball and soccer than he did about schoolwork. He was better at them than he was at school-work, too. He wasn't great or anything, even if he wished he were. He wasn't tall enough to be anything special as a basketball player, either. He enjoyed the games, though, where he felt like a caged animal in the classroom.

He was shaking his head and muttering to himself when he trudged off to history. He knew he would have trouble paying attention. He was still worrying about that stupid quiz, and about why he was too stupid to get things right. And who cared what happened back in the twentieth century, anyway? Tt seemed as far from his own life as Julius Caesar did.

Besides, Comrade Pontevecchio was a bore.

"Let's get to work!" the history teacher barked as soon as the bell rang. "Let's all be Stakhanovites in our quest for knowledge!"

He said the same thing every morning. Gianfranco didn't yawn-you got in trouble if you showed you wanted to go to sleep. But he thought this particular Party slogan was dumb. Doing more than your assigned quota made sense if you worked in a factory and made bricks or brushes or something like that. How could you learn more than was in your book, though?