Chapter 10 Chapter Twenty Two

1 Two minutes east of Hallorching Wells 3 Seven minutes from Queens Park 1 One minute east of Hallorching Wells 2 Four minutes east of Willesden Junction Station 1 One minute east of Hallorching Wells* *Please back off when the train enters the station * *Chateau Road Willesden Junction Dining Room Bedroom Bathroom Kitchen Bedroom Entrance Stairs Escape Door 229 The next morning's breakfast was sautéed tomatoes and a can of green beans, which my mother reheated on a pan. Halfway through breakfast, Mr. Xi said, "Well, he can stay for a few days." "He can live as long as he wants," said his mother.

Mr. Xi said: "This apartment is too small for two people, let alone three people." Mother said: "He can understand what you mean." Mr. Xi said: "What is he going to do, there is no school for him here, and we both have jobs, this is really ridiculous." Mother said, "Roger, that's enough." Then she made me some red ginger tea with sugar, but I didn't like it."You can live as long as you want," she said. After Mr. Xi went to work, she made a phone call to the company and took a day of "consolation leave", which is the leave when someone in the family dies or gets sick.

Then she said she was going to take me out to buy some change of clothes, pajamas, a toothbrush, and a workout outfit.So we left the apartment and went to the main street, which is called Hill Road, and the area number is A4088. It was so crowded inside that I panicked and lay screaming on the ground next to the watch department, and my mother had to take me home in a taxi. But she still had to go back to the mall and buy me clothes, pajamas, a toothbrush, and a workout outfit.I stayed in the guest room while she was out.I don't want to stay in Mr. Xi's room because I'm afraid of him.

Mom came back and bought me a strawberry smoothie and showed me my new pajamas, purple with five pointed blue stars, like this: I said, "I'm going back to Swindon." Mother said, "Christopher, you just got here." I said, "I have to go back, I have to take the A-level math test." Mother said, "Are you going to take the A-level math test?" I said, "Yes, I have exams next week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday." Mother said, "My God." I said, "Pastor Pi is the invigilator." Mom said, "That's great." I said, "I'm going to get an A, so I have to go back to Swindon, but I don't want to see my father, so I'm going to Swindon with you."

Mother covered her face with her hands, took a big breath and said, "I don't know if it will work." I said, "But I must go." Mother said, "Let's talk about it another day, shall we?" I said, "Okay, but I must go back to Swindon." She said, "Christopher, please." I drank a little milkshake. Later at night, around 10:31, I went out to the balcony to see if I could see the stars.In the end, I didn't see any of them, because the clouds were too thick, and there was so-called "light pollution", that is, street lights, car lights, searchlights, and lights inside buildings refracted tiny molecules in the atmosphere and blocked the light from the planet.I had to go back inside.

But I can't sleep.I got up again at 2:07 in the morning, because I was afraid of Mr. Xi, so I went downstairs and walked to Chater Road. There was no one on the street. It was much quieter than during the day, but I could still hear it in the distance. Only then did I calm down a little with the sound of cars and sirens.I walked along Chart Road, admiring the pattern of cars and telephone lines against the orange sky, and the decorations in the gardens in front of houses, including a gnome, a stove, a small pond and a garden. teddy bear. At this time I heard two people approaching, I quickly hid between a Ford station wagon and a skip, and squatted on the ground to hide.The two passers-by did not speak English, but they did not see me.I noticed two small brass wedges in the dirty water of the gutter near my feet, like the wedges on a mechanical watch.

I like this hiding place between the skip and the Ford station wagon, so I stay for a long time, and then I look at the street, and the only color I can see is a mixture of orange and black and orange and black, and even the vehicles in the daytime colors are difficult to distinguish. I don't know if you can see the mosaic, but I think you can imagine the pattern in my head: Then I heard my mother's voice again, calling out, "Christopher...? Chris Dover...?" She ran all the way, and I stepped out between the skip and the Ford station wagon.She came running up and said, "My God." She stopped in front of me, pointed to my face, and said, "If you do this again, I swear to God, Christopher, I love you, but... I don't know what I should do."

She made me promise never to leave the flat alone again, she said it was dangerous and you couldn't trust Londoners because they were strangers.She had to go shopping the next day, so she repeatedly asked me to promise that if someone rings the doorbell, she must not open the door.She brought me back Toby's feed and three Star Wars videos.I watched the video in the living room, and I didn't go back to the guest room until Mr. Xi came back.I really hope that there is a garden here in Block C, 451 Chart Road, 5NG, Northwest Second District, London, but unfortunately there is not. On the third day, the company where my mother worked called to inform her that she did not have to go to work because they had found someone else to take her place.She was very angry and said that it was illegal and she wanted to complain.But Mr. Xi said: "Don't be stupid, it's just a temporary job, please help me."

Before going to bed, my mother walked into the guest room.I said, "I have to go back to Swindon and take my A-level maths qualification." She said: "Christopher, don't mention this now. Your father called and threatened to sue me. Roger and I are having trouble again. Now is not the time." I said, "But I must go, because it has been arranged long ago that Pastor Pi will be the invigilator." "It's just a test and I'll call the school and we can ask for an extension and you can take it later," she said. I said: "I can't take the exam later, it has already been arranged, and I have reviewed it many times. Mrs. Ge also said that we can use the school classroom."

My mother said: "It's hard for me to get what I am today, but I'm about to lose it, isn't it? Give me a little..." She stopped suddenly, covered her mouth with one hand, stood up and left the room.I had the same pain in my chest from the Tube again, and I thought I could go back to Swindon for my A-level maths qualification. The next morning, I was in the restaurant looking out the window, counting the cars passing by in the street, to see if today would be a middle or auspicious day or an upper auspicious day or an unlucky day.But here is no better than taking a school bus. You can look out the window for as long as you like, and see as many vehicles as you want.I looked out the window for three hours and saw five red cars in a row and four yellow cars in a row, which means that today is both an auspicious day and an unlucky day, so this method will not work.But if I concentrate on counting the cars, my mind won't be thinking about my A-level maths exam and my chest won't hurt.

In the afternoon, my mother took me to Hampstead Park by taxi. We sat on the hill and watched the planes take off and land at Heathrow Airport in the distance.I was eating a roll of red ice cream from an ice cream stand.My mother said that she had already called Mrs. Ge and said that I would take the A-level math test next year.As soon as I heard it, I threw the ice cream away and screamed, my chest hurt so bad I couldn't breathe.A man came over and asked me if it was okay. My mother said, "What do you think?" The man walked away. I was tired from crying, and my mother took me back to the apartment by taxi.The next day was Saturday, she asked Mr. Xi to go to the library to help me borrow some books about science and mathematics, including "Mathematical Quiz One Hundred Questions", "Origin of the Universe" and "Nuclear Energy".But these are books for children, not very suitable for me, so I don't read them.Mr. Xi said: "I finally know that my efforts were not in vain." I hadn't eaten anything since throwing away the red ice cream in Hampstead Park, so my mother made a table with as many stars as I had when I was a kid.She made a strawberry milkshake with a measuring cup full of milkshake powder and strawberry spice, and said that if I drink 200 CC, I will get a bronze star, if I drink 400 CC, I will get a silver star, and if I drink 600 CC, I will get a silver star. Can get a gold star. When my mother and Mr. Xi were arguing, I sat in the guest room with the small kitchen radio and tuned the frequency between the two stations so that I could only hear some noise, then I turned the volume to the maximum and turned the The radio is placed next to my ear, and the deafening sound makes my head hurt, so that I will not have other pains—such as chest pains—neither I can hear the argument between my mother and Mr. Xi, nor can I think that I can’t The thing about taking the A-level maths test, or the fact that Block C, 451 Chatter Road, 5NG, NW 2, has no garden, and the fact that you can't see the stars. On Monday, when the night was dark, Mr. Xi came to my room and woke me up from my sleep.He drank a lot of beer, because he tasted like his father had drunk with Raleigh, and said, "You think you're very smart, don't you? You never think of anybody else, do you?" You're enjoying yourself now, aren't you?" His mother also came in, pulled him out, and said, "Christopher, I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry." The next morning, after Mr. Xi went to work, my mother packed her clothes into two big boxes and asked me to go downstairs and take Toby to the car.She put the suitcase in the luggage compartment and we drove off.But it was Mr. Xi's car, so I asked her, "Are you going to steal this car?" "I just borrowed it," she said. I said, "Where are we going?" She said, "Go home." I said, "You mean Swindon?" She said yes." I said, "Will Father be there?" She said, "Please, Christopher, don't give me any more problems, will you?" I said, "I don't want to live with my father." She said, "For a while...for a while...it'll be all right, Christopher, okay? It'll be all right." I said, "Are we going back to Swindon for my Maths A-Level?" Mother said, "What?" I said, "I'm supposed to take my Maths A-level qualification tomorrow." The mother said word for word: "We're going back to Swindon because if we stay in London...someone will get hurt. I don't necessarily mean you." I said, "What do you mean by that?" "Be quiet for a moment," she said. I said, "How long do you want me to be quiet?" "My God," she said, and then, "Half an hour, Christopher, I want you to be quiet for half an hour." We drove all the way to Swindon, which took us three hours and twelve minutes.On the way to stop for gas, my mother bought me a bar of milk chocolate, but I didn't eat it.We were stuck in traffic as everyone slowed down to watch for an accident in the oncoming lane.I tried to find a formula to see if the traffic jam caused by the accident was purely because everyone slowed down to watch the excitement, and it was affected by the following factors: (1) The density of traffic flow (2) The speed of vehicles (3) The driver's own braking speed when he sees the brake lights of the vehicle in front come on.But I was so tired that I hadn't slept the night before because I was worried about not being able to take the Maths A-Level exam, so I fell asleep on the way. When we got to Swindon, my mother had the key, so we opened the door and went into the house.She said, "Hello?" There was no answer because it was 1:23 in the afternoon.I was very scared, but my mother said I was safe, so I went back to my room and closed the door.I pulled Toby out of my pocket, let it run around on the ground, played minesweeper myself on the computer, and made it to "expert" in 174 seconds, slower than my previous best time Seventy-five seconds. At 6:35 in the afternoon, I heard my father driving his van back home. I moved the bed to the door and blocked the door to prevent him from coming in. When he entered the house, he and my mother yelled at each other. Dad yelled, "How the hell did you get in here?" Mother also shouted: "This is also my house, could it be that you forgot?" My father yelled, "Is your 'mistress' here too?" I picked up the antelope drum that Uncle Terry bought me, knelt in the corner of the room, buried my head in the corner, and started beating the drum hard, moaning, and it lasted for an hour.Then my mother came into the room and said that my father was gone, that he was staying with Raleigh for a while and that we would find another place to live in the next few weeks. I found Toby's cage from behind the hut in the garden, took it into the house, cleaned it, and put Toby in it. I asked my mother if I could take my math A-level exam tomorrow. She said, "I'm sorry, Christopher." I said, "Can I take my math A-level qualification?" She said, "You're not listening to me, are you, Christopher?" I said, "I'm listening." The mother said: "I told you, I called your headmaster and told her you were in London. I told her you will take your exams next year." I said, "But now that I'm back, I can take the test." Mother said, "I'm sorry, Christopher, I'm trying to make things right, I'm trying not to make things bad." My chest was hurting again and I crossed my arms and rocked back and forth, moaning. "I didn't think we'd come back either," said the mother. I continued moaning and rocking back and forth. Mother said: "Forget it, it won't help." She asked me if I wanted to watch the "Blue Planet" video about life under the Arctic ice and the migration of humpback whales.But I didn't say a word, I knew I couldn't take the math A-level appraisal exam, the feeling was as painful as pressing your thumbnail against the hot radiator blades of a stove, it hurt so much that you wanted to cry, even if you put After the thumb was removed, it was still aching. Mother cooked me some carrots and broccoli with tomato sauce, but I didn't eat them. I didn't sleep at night either. The next day, my mother drove me to school in Mr. Xi's car because I missed the school bus.When we were about to get in the car, Mrs. Xi happened to pass by, and she said to her mother, "You are so brave." Mother said, "Get in the car, Christopher." I couldn't get in, the doors were locked. Mrs. Xi said, "He finally dumped you too?" My mother opened the car door and got in, locked the door on my side, and we drove off. When we got to school, Sharon said, "You are Christopher's mother." Sharon said she was happy to see me again and asked me how I was.I said I was tired.My mother explained to me that I was depressed because I hadn't been able to take my math A-level exam, and I wasn't eating well or sleeping well. Then the mother left.I drew a picture of the school bus from memory, lest I think of the pain in my chest.That picture is like this: After lunch, Sharon said that she had talked with Mrs. Ge, and my math A-level test paper was still divided into three sealed bags and placed on Mrs. Ge's desk. I asked her if I could still take the test. Sharon said, "I think so. We'll call Pastor Pi this afternoon to see if he can still come and be your invigilator. Mrs. Ge will write to the Examination Board saying that you will still take the exam as planned and hope they Agreed. But we're not sure it will work." She paused and added, "I think I should tell you first, so you can think about it." I said, "Can I think about it?" She said, "Do you really want to take the test, Christopher?" I've thought about this question, but don't have a clear answer.I'd love to take my Maths A-Level exam, but I'm very tired, and when I'm tired I don't think very well about maths, especially when recalling certain arguments, such as the probable number of a prime number being less than (χ ) I can't remember the logarithmic formula.This makes me panic. Sharon said, "You don't have to take the test, Christopher, and no one will be offended if you say you don't want to. It's not wrong, or illegal, or stupid. You do what you want That's right." I said, "I want to take the test because I don't like making a schedule and then deleting it, it makes me sad." Sharon said, "Okay." She called Pastor Pi, who arrived at the school at 3:27 p.m.He said, "Boy, are you ready to start?" So I wrote my first math A-level examination paper in the art classroom. Pastor Pi was the invigilator. When I was writing the examination paper, he sat behind the desk and read a book——Dietrick Bonhoeffer "The Apostle Coast" - while eating a sandwich.In the middle of writing, he also went outside the window to smoke, but he kept watching me throughout to prevent me from cheating. I opened the test paper and read it again, but I couldn't remember how to answer it.I wanted to punch or stab someone with my Swiss army knife, but there was no one in sight but Reverend Pi.Pastor Pi is a tall man, and if I stab him with my Swiss army knife, he won't be able to be my invigilator for the next exam.So I did what Sharon taught me, when I wanted to punch someone in school, I took a deep breath, and I counted fifty breaths while I mentally cubed the base, like this: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343, 512, 729, 1000, 1331, 1782, 2197, 2744, 3375, 4096, 4913...etc This made me calmer.But the test is two hours long, and it's twenty minutes past now, and I have to speed up, and I don't have enough time to go through it. When I came home that night, my father came back, and I screamed, but my mother said she wouldn't let me get hurt, so I went to the garden, lay down and looked at the stars, and lost myself.When my father came out of the house, he stared at me for a long time, then punched the fence hard and walked away. I was able to get some sleep that night because of my maths A-level exam, and I had a little spinach soup for dinner. The next day, I wrote the second test paper.Reverend Pi was still reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Apostle Coast, but this time he didn't smoke.Sharon told me to go to the bathroom before the exam, and told me to take deep breaths and count quietly by myself. While I was playing Last Hour on my computer that night, a taxi pulled up outside the house.Mr. Xi was sitting in a taxi. When he got out of the car, he threw a large cardboard box containing his mother’s belongings on the grass, including a hair dryer, some shorts, some Laya shampoo, a box of muesli, and two books. -- "The True Story of Diana" by Andrew Morton, and "The Rival" by Jillie Cooper -- and a silver frame with my picture in it.The frame shattered the glass when it fell on the grass. He took some keys out of his pocket, got into his car and drove away.His mother rushed out of the house, chased him to the road and shouted, "You don't have to come back either!" She picked up the mixed fruit and threw it at the rear of his car.Mrs. Xi watched the excitement from the window of her house. On the third day, I made the third test paper.Pastor Pi read the Daily Mail instead and smoked three cigarettes. Here is one of my favorite test questions: Prove the following result: The three sides of a triangle can be written as n 2+1, n 2-1, and 2n (n >1) The triangle is a right triangle. Please use the opposite example to prove that the converse is wrong. I was going to write how I answered the question, but Sharon said it wasn't very interesting, I thought it was.She said that people don't like reading books with solutions to math problems, and that I can put the solutions in an "appendix" at the end of the book, so anyone who wants to read it can read it.I decided to do it. My chest didn't hurt as much and I was breathing better, but I still felt bad because I didn't know if I did well or not.And because Mrs. Ge had informed the exam committee that I would not take the exam, I was also worried that the exam board would refuse to accept my exam paper. It would be ideal if you knew something good was about to happen, such as a solar eclipse or a gift of a microscope at Christmas.If you know something bad is going to happen, like filling your teeth or going to France, it's a bad thing.But not even knowing that something good or bad is about to happen is the worst thing. That night my father came around and I was sitting on the couch watching "College Challenge" and answering science questions.He stood at the door and said, "Don't bark, okay, Christopher, I won't hurt you." My mother was standing behind him so I didn't yell. He leaned closer, squatted down, and said to me like he was showing no malice to a dog, "I want to ask you if you did well in the exam." I was silent. Mother said, "Tell him, Christopher." I am still silent. Mother said, "Please, Christopher." Then I said, "I don't know if I got all the answers right, because I'm too tired and I haven't eaten, so my brain is not very sharp." Father nodded and didn't speak for a while, then he said, "Thank you." I said, "Why?" He said, "Just...thank you." Then, "I'm very proud of you, Christopher, very proud of you, and I'm sure you did well." Then he was gone and I continued watching my "College Challenge" show. The following week, my father told my mother to move out, but she couldn't because she had no money to rent.I asked her if her father would go to jail for killing Wellington so we could live at home.But the mother said that the police would arrest the father only when Mrs. Xi raised the "telling theory". "Telling Nailun" is to ask the police to arrest a person who committed a crime, because the police will not arrest a person who commits a minor crime unless the person asks.Mother said again that killing a dog was only a misdemeanor. It all worked out, though, when my mother got a job as a cashier at a garden center.Doctors also prescribed medicine to take every morning to treat her depression, but the medicine sometimes made her dizzy and she would fall if she got up too hard.In this way, we moved into a room in a big red brick house. The bed and the kitchen are in one room. I don’t like it because the room is small and the corridor is painted brown. The bathroom and toilet have to be shared with others. I want Mother must wash it before use, otherwise I don't use it.Sometimes others occupy it, and I will wet my pants.The hallway outside the room smelled of gravy and the bleach the school used to clean the toilets, and the room smelled of stinky socks and pine wood aromatics. I didn't like the long wait for the results of my Maths A-Level exam, and whenever I thought I couldn't see my future clearly in my mind, I started to panic.So Sharon said I shouldn't think about the future, she said: "Just think about the present, think about things that have happened, especially happy things that have happened." One of the joys was that my mother bought me a wooden puzzle game, and it was this shape: you had to take it apart from the top half to the bottom half.It's really tough. Another happy thing is that I helped my mother paint her room a "wheat white" color, but I got the paint on my hair, and she wanted to wash it off with shampoo while I was in the shower. Ken, so the varnish stayed on my head for five days before I finally took the scissors and cut the lock of hair off. There are more unhappy things than happy things. One of them is that my mother doesn't get off work until 5:30 pm every day, so I have to go to my father's house to wait between 3:49 pm and 5:30 pm, because I can't be alone at home.My mother said I had no choice but to put the bed against the door so my father wouldn't come in.Sometimes he tries to talk to me at the door, but I ignore him.Sometimes I hear him sitting on the floor outside the door for a long, long time. Another unhappy thing was that Toby died, for he was two years and seven months old, which is very old for a mouse.I said I wanted to bury it, but my mother didn't have a garden, so I buried it in a big plastic pot filled with soil, the kind you normally grow flowers in.I also said I wanted to get another one, but my mother said no, because the room was too small. I solved that wooden puzzle game.I worked out that it has two metal hosels that go straight across like this: you have to angle it so that the two hosels slide all the way to the bottom and don't get caught where the top and bottom meet, to separate them. One day, my mother picked me up from my father's house after get off work, and my father said, "Christopher, can I have a word with you?" I said, "No." Mother said, "It's okay, I'm here." I said, "I don't want to talk to my father." "I'll make a deal with you," my father said. He was holding the kitchen timer, a plastic timer with a half-cut tomato, and he turned it, and the timer began to tick.Father said, "Five minutes, okay? Just five minutes, and you can go when it's up." So I sat on the couch, he sat in the armchair, and my mother stood in the hallway.Father said, "Christopher, listen to me... we can't go on like this, I don't know about you, but this... this is so sad. You're in the house and you won't talk to me... You have to try and believe me... I don't care how long it takes... I don't care if it takes one minute today, two minutes tomorrow, three minutes the day after tomorrow, even if it takes years, because it's important, it's more important than anything else Everything matters." He tore off a small piece of skin from the edge of the nail on his left thumb. Then he continued: "Let's just think of it... let's think of it as a plan, a plan that requires us to work together. You have to spend more time with me, and I... I have to tell you Showing that you can trust me. It might be difficult at first because... because it's a tough project, but it's going to get better, I promise." He rubbed his temples with his fingertips and said, "You don't need to answer, you don't need to answer right away, just think about it. Also, uh... I bought you a gift to show my sincerity, and at the same time Apologies to you, and also, because... you'll see what I mean anyway." He got up from the armchair, went to the kitchen door and opened it. There was a large cardboard box on the kitchen floor, and there was a blanket in it. He bent down and fished out a sandy yellow puppy from the cardboard box. He came back, handed the dog to me, and said, "He's two months old, a golden retriever." The puppy sat on my lap and I stroked it gently. For a while no one spoke. Then the father said, "Christopher, I will never do anything to break your heart again." There was another silence. The mother came in and said, "I'm afraid you can't take him, the room is too small, but he is here and your father will take care of him, and you can come and take him for a walk anytime." I said, "Does it have a name?" Father said, "No, you can name it." The puppy nibbled on my finger lightly. When five minutes came, Tomato yelled loudly, and my mother and I drove back to the room she rented. In the second week, there was a big storm. Lightning struck a big tree in the park near my father’s house and knocked it down. Many men with chainsaws worked together to saw the branches into sections and took them away on a trailer. A charred tree stump remains. My math A-level appraisal test results came in, and I got an A, the best grade.My mood is like this: I named the puppy Sandy, my dad bought him a collar and leash, and I was allowed to take him for walks to the store and back.I often play with it with a rubber bone. My mother had the flu, and I had to stay at my father's house for three days, but I wasn't afraid, because Sandy slept on my bed, and he would bark if someone came into my room in the middle of the night.My father planted a vegetable patch in the garden, and I helped.We grow carrots and beans and spinach together, and when they're ready I'm going to pick them up and eat them. I went to a bookstore with my mother, and I bought a book called "A-Level Advanced Mathematics".My father told Mrs. Ge that I would take the A-Level Mathematics Advanced Appraisal Examination next year, and she said, "No problem." Not only will I pass the exam, I'll get an A.In another two years, I will take the A-level physics certification exam and get an A. After all this is done, I will go to another city to go to university, not necessarily in London, because I don't like London, there are universities in many other places, and these places are not necessarily big cities.I could live in an apartment with a garden and a bathroom, and I could take Sandy with me and my books and my computer. Then I would take a "first class honors degree" and become a scientist. I knew I could do it, because I went to London alone, and I solved the mystery of who killed Wellington and got my mother back, and I was a brave boy.I also wrote a book, which proves that I am very capable.