Luis, Leonardo, and Lucas told stories and challenged people to discover the lies hidden in the tale. For two weeks, they had been defeated, but this time they gathered and planned the day. They were not going to let the reporter beat them for a third time.
They had remained undefeated for almost a year, no one had ever succeeded, at least not in finding all three lies at the same time. Their pride did not allow them to accept that they had been defeated.
The audience grew once again, the article that bold reporter had written managed to attract the people.
Luis approached the platform and, standing next to his two friends, pointed at the reporter, smiled, and said, "Ready, Mr. Times?"
The reporter looked straight at them and, smiling, replied, "As ready as always, little liars."
Luis explained the rules to the people and began the story:
Some time ago, while staying up late doing homework, since good grades must be kept, I encountered some supernatural phenomena in my house. Being highly perceptive, I assumed they would not cause me any harm. They were known as "The Pale Face," "The Stereo's Echo," "The Night Whistle," "The Whispering Porch," and the one that caught my attention the most, "The Chasing Shadows." That Wednesday, I was sitting in the living room.
While doing "my algebra homework happily" (let me clarify right away that yes, I actually enjoy mathematics).
Sitting at my desk, the temperature slowly began to drop. As I was already used to certain changes in that house, I did not pay much attention.
I continued working while the Pale Face appeared right at the corner of my vision, reading my notes. I greeted the face with a smile and turned the page to finish the problems assigned by the teacher.
It was three in the morning and I was still working on the exercises when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. A shadow passed through the wall, ran into my room, and left with the same speed. It went into my parents' room and then into the bathroom, disappearing.
The scene repeated once more and I tried to find an explanation for what I had seen. The shadow could not be mine, nor from something blocking the light. I kept watching where it had appeared and where it had vanished, but nothing else happened.
My curiosity would not let me rest without an explanation. I could not concentrate and without realizing it, I had finished all one hundred exercises. I did not check them because I assumed I had done them well. I closed my notebook, checked some things on the computer, and went to lie down...
The reporter raised an eyebrow, thinking the story was over. He wrote some notes in his notebook and looked at Leonardo, who seemed to be next, but it was Lucas who stood up to continue. The reporter smiled, knowing that a tactic such as changing the order would not affect him.
Lucas looked at the audience and, with a smile, continued:
The next day at school, Luis told us what had happened, and of course our excitement grew. Leo and I looked at each other with a grin and told Luis that same day we had to stay up late and see the shadow that wandered through his house.
Luis agreed and we planned some team project. The easiest ones to make up were the lab assignments since we had that class on Fridays. We went about our classes, because good grades had to be kept.
Finally, in the second-to-last period, we had math class. We handed in our assignments and the teacher gave us more exercises while he reviewed ours, because he used ours to check against the rest. Usually, our grades on exercises were above ninety correct answers, and we each tended to make mistakes on different ones.
The teacher began reviewing Luis's work and after five minutes he got up, asked Luis something, then returned to his desk. With a doubtful and astonished look, he kept reading.
Seconds later, the teacher suddenly stood up and stopped the class. He erased the exercises on the board and, hitting the desk with both hands, raised his voice.
"Listen up, young people. I am going to show you a simpler method to solve these problems. Forget what I have taught you." We were all surprised, since the teacher had already given us an easy method to solve these difficult problems. From reading several books, we knew they were long and complicated, but his method cut them from twelve steps to just four. And now he was going to give us an even simpler way.
Excited, Leo, Luis, and I paid attention. The teacher wrote the problem on the board, the first step, and the result. Then he drew an arrow, splitting a number to reach a ten, and left the other part to complete the operation. He explained how it worked, and it was so obvious and simple that we could not hide our amazement.
Then he closed his folder abruptly and pointed at Luis, saying, "This method was discovered by Luis, let's give him a round of applause." There were some award claps, I annoyed the hell out of him clapping the loudest. The teacher gave him a perfect score of 100.
Luis was not exactly a brilliant student, and the expression on his face, with a grin from ear to ear, made the moment even more striking. Leonardo and I patted him on the back in congratulations and asked how he had done it and why he had not told us.
Luis shrugged and said that the night before he had been unable to concentrate after seeing that strange event and that it had all happened by sheer luck. We both smiled, because Luis did not believe in "luck," but he seemed so convinced that we let it go. Instead, we finished our exercises and began planning what project we could invent in order to see the shadow.
In the end, we stuck with a lab report. Night came, and even though we waited until the same time Luis had mentioned, nothing happened. We went to sleep as time passed...