The Unknown Place
The Unknown Place
Robert, an 8-year-old schoolboy, and his family become stranded on a terrifying and enigmatic land called Dead souls. Robert and his family have a tremendously difficult time navigating their way back home. However, the venture is not going to be that easy...
1. Final Exam
The story starts at that time when I was in 3rd grade, it was my last exam. It was my science paper, and I was really shaky about it because I didn’t learn much and I was totally relying on my friends to help a bit, and although they agreed to it, I was still worried as some of them might betray sometimes, and you never know.
First, I was both happy and sad. Happy because after giving the paper, we will get a 2 months holiday, and sad because no one knows what section all my friends will be in. But with the experience of three years being in the same school, I knew for a fact that you would not be with your closest buddy in the coming year, leave alone regular friends. You are gonna lose your favourite teacher too. In our school, the students change every year, which is kind of weird. Well, by the time I was thinking all this, my mom, Janice Cooper, said, “Robiee, Robert Cooper. Come and get your breakfast.”
During breakfast, mom told me that I must take something that will give me the energy to give the paper. Basically, something rich in carbohydrates. Well, all I know is that you never take ‘energy’ when you are about to give a test, rather, you take omega 3 because it sharpens your brain. But, as usual, mom wouldn’t budge and she gave me something that is rich in carbohydrates. So, I ended up eating a bowl of cereal with some milk in it and set off for school with a packet of M&M.
After half an hour, I reached there and I came to know that all my friends were waiting for me to come with them and enjoy the last day. Then I came to know that the class 5th children will sit beside the whole class 3rd. That means I can ask a class 5th kid the whole question paper! I was immensely relieved to hear this. It was like a blown opportunity for us, basically for me and not for the other kids because I found out that my partner was a friendly kid, and as a bonus, he was a nerd. All the others were badge-holders, and all badge-holders are kind of selfish and grumpy.
In our school, you don’t have to do any hard work to get a badge, though, you just have to go to the principal's office on the 1st day of the new session with a neat and clean application, requesting to give you a badge, and not only small badges like discipline head but even sports captain. And talking about badges, there’s an opportunity for the kids to get the college captain badge if their mother or father is in the school as a teacher. But it only happens in the junior section.
Our school is divided into 2 buildings at a distance of 1 km. The junior section, in which I am, is classes 1 to 5. And the senior section, in which there are lower-kindergarten and upper-kindergarten, and classes 6 to 12. But I didn't understand one thing if the section is named ’senior section,’ then why are there lower and upper kindergartens? So, by the time we were talking about that sort of thing, the bell rang and we had to go inside our class. After I entered the class, I found out that roll numbers 1-30 of my class will have to go to class 5 because half of the fifth-grade kids will sit in our class. So when they gave us the question paper, I saw that I could ask a ton of questions to my partner and I told him that if he didn’t tell me the answers, I’ll say to the teacher that this guy cannot answer the questions of the third grade though he was in the fifth grade. He was a moron. He said ok, and when the answer sheets were given to all the kids, I felt really scared because I spent almost the whole day learning the names, symptoms, causes and ways of prevention of different types of lifestyle diseases and didn’t have a look at anything else. So, the first worksheet was on diseases only, so it didn’t take me a lot of time to complete that. After 2 hours, the paper was over and I was feeling pretty relaxed because I asked for 90.0% of the paper from the fifth-grader. But my guardian came real quick to pick me up from school, so I didn’t get much time to spend with my friends and play.
When I reached home, my father, James Cooper and my elder brother, Andrew Cooper, started asking how the paper was. I told them that the paper was awesome. Then I found that mom made my favourite dish, spicy cottage cheese with salted cucumber. Well, the cucumber was not in the spicy cottage-cheese curry, it was for the salad. After I ate my food, I went to sleep around 2 p.m.
When I woke up at 4, I thought of an idea. I thought that all of us could travel to Xendland, a glorious city with an absolutely magnificent view and the country capital of Chesdell, a country, for the holidays. So, I went to ask dad if we can do so, but dad said that if my percentage will be above 90, only then we will go. See, this is the problem with dad, whenever you’re in a good mood, dad screws up and makes you rage. I was really mad at him, and whenever my mood is off, I go to my younger brother’s room, Jurg Cooper, and we talk a little bit after I talk, I feel a little relaxed, so that's what I did.
He studies in class 2nd and he is basically the topper of the whole 2nd grade! His percentage was 98.5% last year and he is really good at history, and whenever any kid in 2nd grade is bored, he’d either watch TV or play with some of his friends in the colony or something like that, but Jurg is an exception. Whenever he gets bored he studies and does his school homework, and if you ask him about this, then he'd say that every great scientist or big-headed human prefers studying over anything which is common because this quality makes every famous guy an exception. And out of 24 hours, he spends almost 8 hours studying. And to be honest, sometimes mom gets in tension that if he’ll study a lot, he will rot his brain and will not be able to do any physical activities. When he was born, it was predicted that he’ll become a great scientist, and maybe, the one who predicted that was right.
So, I just went to the kitchen to get some snacks like milk with protein powder mixed in it and some oreo biscuits with it. But mom forced me to eat some pulses with rice.
Man! who eats pulses & rice for snacks, and it sounds a little weird too. I explained to mom when to eat what, but she was not ready to listen to me at all. So, all I could do was bring my science book and show her the chart of when to eat what. But she was not ready to listen to me, so I had to eat it. And for dinner, we ate the same thing, and as a result, dad was extremely mad at mom. In her defence, she said why didn’t dad tell her not to ‘store’ it for ‘future use.’
But it was nothing like that mom stored it, instead, she forgot to make a dish for the night, and there were some pulses and rice left from the evening snack, so she made up his story about dad not asking mom not to store it for dinner.
When we were about to sleep, a message came on mom’s mobile at about 9 o’clock that the mark sheets will be shown the very next day, of only 3rd grade. So I informed dad that we have to go to see the mark sheet tomorrow, and my younger brother was listening to everything and he started to say he also wanted to go to my school and he was begging me for that and almost broke into tears, so I had to tell dad that he will also come with us, and for the first time dad said, “ Yes.”