It was cold outside, and cold inside the house too. The fire was about to go out. Ionică’s parents had no more firewood.
- Mummy, I can’t do my homework, my hands are frozen!
- Give them to me to warm them up.
The mother took the child’s cold little hands and tucked them into her own, rubbing them briskly. Her face sketched a smile, but only Ionică knew how much it pained her to smile. After he had finished his lessons, he said:
- I’m going over to Maria’s, she can help me send my homework to the teacher.
- Wrap up warm, sweetheart, and don’t be late for supper, his mother told him.
The child took the bicycle he’d been given as a gift by his neighbour Grigore and set off for his classmate Maria, who could take a photo of his homework so it could be sent to the teacher by email.
"Mariiiia! Mariiiia!"
"Yes! Ionică, hello!" said the girl.
"Hello, please help me with my homework again, I’ve done it, but I’ve no way to send it."
"Of course, come on, come in."
The curtains were white and reached all the way down to the floor. From the floor a pleasant warmth rose up to his feet, and that made him walk on tiptoe, ever so softly, for fear of losing this feeling of warmth he had never felt before. In the hallway a sweet fragrance drifted from large glass vases filled with colourful flowers. The girl’s room was in white and pink, with heavy, glossy furniture; he had seen something like it once in a film on television, but he hadn’t believed such things existed in real life. On the desk he spotted a rectangular golden device with lots of keys, which put him in mind of his father’s phone, because that one too had letters and numbers on it; he didn’t dare ask what it was. The girl took Ionică’s homework and slid it into a kind of white cabinet, that one with buttons and a light that travelled beneath the open notebook on the page where he had solved his maths problems. This time too he was ashamed to ask what it was. He kept quiet, said thank you, and made to leave.
"Stay for supper!"
"Noo, Mum’s waiting for me."
"All right, if that’s how it is, at least have a cup of tea."
"Yes, a cup of tea, yes. It’s ever so cold."
"Is it cold outside?" the girl asks.
"Brrr, bitterly cold!"
"How’s school going?"
"Hm… I’m not really sure, I’d better ask you instead."
"I hope the very clever people in this country will sort the problem out so we can go back to school again."
"Oh, how I’d love that," the boy added sadly.
Maria then begged his pardon and ran off to her mother’s room.
"Wait for me a moment," she said.
"Of course."
And the boy went straight back to standing with his feet on the floor, to feel that warmth again.
Maria came back from her mother’s, out of breath.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, I couldn’t find this!" And she held out a tablet to the boy.
"But, Maria, I…"
"I won’t take no for an answer, please, I’m lending it to you until school starts again. I have a laptop, and I only used the tablet to play games, but you need it far more than I do!"
With tears of joy in his eyes, the child took a firm hold of it and clutched it to his chest along with the notebook.
"Thank you! I can’t say more, though I wish I could!"
"You don’t have to, I only want you to promise me you’ll be just as devoted to your learning."
"I’ll take good care of it."
"See you tomorrow at online school, Ionică!"
"I can’t wait to see you all," said the child, full of excitement, and off he went.
That night Ionică couldn’t even sleep for the thrill of it; he seemed to dream that the meeting link wouldn’t work and that he hadn’t set up his microphone properly. He woke at the crack of dawn, put on the personalised green school T-shirt he kept clean in the wardrobe, and happily opened the platform, clicked the link, and poof:
"Good morning, everyone," said the teacher in her warm voice.
All the children answered in chorus.
"Today I noticed, to my amazement, that we’re all online."
Ionică’s eyes went wide, he felt a shame, a sense of guilt that struck him dumb!
"I wanted, Ionică," the teacher went on, "to congratulate you on the flawless homework you sent me; you scored top marks on every single one, you’ll find them attached to your account along with the grade. You’re a model pupil, and I ask each of you, dear children, to read his assignment in our Personal Development lesson. Ionică wrote a flawless essay about how a classmate helped him to call out 'present' in class once more."
Ashamed and happy, the child thanked the teacher for her praise.
"You deserve it, Ionică, and now, open your textbooks to page 34!"