Сборник рассказов на Английском языке

Retrieving the actual homework was, naturally, out of the question — nobody was climbing an oak tree to negotiate with a squirrel over structural nesting materials — so Yusra proposed an alternative plan: they would photograph the nest, zoom in as best the binoculars and Marcus's ageing phone camera allowed, and present the resulting blurry but undeniable image to Mr. Aldous, the geography teacher, as supporting testimony. Mr. Aldous, a man not easily moved by dramatic excuses in twenty-two years of teaching, examined the photograph for a long moment, examined Marcus for an equally long moment, and finally said, "This is either the most elaborate excuse I've ever been given, or the most unlucky. I'm inclined, against my better judgement, to believe the latter."

Word of the incident spread through the school with predictable speed, and by Wednesday, Marcus had acquired a small but persistent reputation as "the squirrel kid," a title he initially found mortifying and eventually, somewhat to his own surprise, began to enjoy, particularly once several classmates started bringing him increasingly implausible theories about Sir Reginald's supposed grudge against the geography department specifically. Yusra, delighted by her own detective work, produced a hand-drawn "wanted poster" featuring Sir Reginald's likeness, which she pinned, with Mr. Aldous's amused permission, to the classroom noticeboard for the remainder of term.

Mr. Aldous, for his part, allowed Marcus an extension without penalty, on the entirely reasonable condition that the new diagram be left somewhere "squirrel-proof," a stipulation Marcus took so seriously that he completed the replacement project at the kitchen table under his mother's direct supervision, refusing to let it out of his sight for even a moment until it was safely inside his school bag.

Sir Reginald, blissfully unaware of the reputation he had built for himself, continued his residence in the oak tree for the rest of the autumn, and Marcus, rather than holding a grudge, found himself leaving the occasional peanut on the garden table, a gesture Yusra declared "reckless provocation" and Marcus privately thought of as something closer to a peace offering, or possibly hazard pay for the least believable homework excuse of his academic career.

Mr. Aldous, whose reputation for scepticism Marcus had assumed was permanent and unshakeable, later admitted at a staff meeting — a detail relayed to Marcus by a friend whose older sibling worked as a teaching assistant — that he had actually gone home that evening and looked up whether squirrels really did use paper as nesting material, partly out of professional curiosity and partly, he confessed, because he'd wanted a good excuse to tell the story at dinner. The confirmation that they genuinely do seemed to delight him rather more than the actual homework submission ever had.

Yusra's binoculars, borrowed rather more permanently than her brother had originally sanctioned, became something of a running fixture in their friendship afterward, deployed at the slightest provocation for any dispute either of them felt required visual verification, from settling arguments about which house on their street had the tallest hedge to, on one memorable occasion, confirming a rumour about a new ice cream van's exact opening hours.

The story even reached, in garbled form, a couple of younger siblings at the local primary school, one of whom reportedly attempted the same excuse on his own teacher a few months later without any supporting evidence whatsoever, an audacious gambit that Yusra heard about secondhand and found so delightful she insisted on buying the boy a celebratory ice cream, on the grounds that ambition, even unearned, deserved some recognition.

By the time the geography project was finally marked — a solid B-plus, with a note in the margin reading only "resilient work, in more ways than one" — Marcus and Yusra had turned the whole saga into a running joke that outlasted the term itself, and Marcus still keeps the blurry nest photograph on his phone, less as evidence for any future teacher than as a reminder that the most unbelievable excuses are occasionally, gloriously, completely true.

Discussion Questions

1. Why do you think Mr. Aldous eventually believed Marcus's unusual excuse?

2. What does Yusra's reaction to the crisis show about the kind of friend she is?