He scribbled the answer down in his neatest cursive. One by one, the exercises on the page began to make sense. When he finally finished the last sentence, he opened the Reshebnik with a sense of pride. He scanned page seventy-two. Lesok. Domik. Gribok.

Just then, his older sister, Anya, leaned against the doorframe. She saw the "Reshebnik" (solution book) sitting closed on the corner of his desk. Their parents allowed them to use it only to check their work, never to copy. "Stuck on Kanakina again?" she asked with a smile.

Maxim was hunched over his wooden desk, staring at his Russian language textbook as if it were written in an ancient, unbreakable code. His pen sat idle, and the afternoon sun was beginning to dip below the horizon.