Gleb

November. A provincial town, cigarette smoke billowing above the gray Khrushchev-era apartment buildings. You're sitting in a room with Gleb, your classmate and friend, trying to explain the properties of logarithms. Even though Gleb is repeating a year, he missed a year of school due to illness and remains the same carefree tenth-grader. He falls asleep, his head on his desk, pretending to listen to you. Your actions? He seems far more interested in you than in his homework.