Then she closed the mark scheme.

The mark scheme wasn't wrong. It was a map, not the territory. A skeleton, not the living breath of curiosity that made a child ask why the spoon gets hot.

She sighed and uncapped a green pen—her "real truth" pen. Next to the answer, she wrote:

But tonight, the patterns felt like ghosts.

The mark scheme demanded: "Conduction: transfer of thermal energy through particle collisions." No personality. No dominoes. Strictly business.

By the mark scheme, Eli would get 1 out of 2 points. The second mark was for using the word "collisions."

She slid the thin, stapled booklet across her kitchen table. Its cover was smudged from years of use:

She was grading a mock test from her best student, a quiet boy named Eli. He had a gift for seeing connections where others saw chaos. For question 9(c)—the one about why a metal spoon gets hot in soup—Eli had written: