THE LEAKED PAPERAisha is 17.Tomorrow is the mathematics exam.At 11:36pm, her phone vibrates.Her best friend, Tracy.“WAKE UP!!! 😂😂😂”A photograph arrives.The mathematics examination paper.Tomorrow’s paper.Every question.Aisha stares at the screen.“Where did you get this?”Tracy replies:“Don’t ask stupid questions. Just read. 😂”Another message:“Only four of us have it.”Aisha should close the phone.Instead, she looks at Question 1.Then Question 2.Question 6 is difficult.A minute later another message arrives:“Check your email. Answers attached.”Aisha hesitates.Then opens them.For the next two hours, she studies harder than she has studied all term.Not mathematics.The answers.By 2am she can reproduce almost every solution.The next morning Tracy is waiting under a tree.“Ready?”Aisha smiles.“For once.”They enter the examination room.Papers are placed face down.Aisha is strangely calm.The teacher looks at the clock.“You may begin.”Aisha turns over the paper.She stops breathing.Question 1.She has never seen it before.Question 2.Different.She turns the page quickly.Question 3.Question 4.Question 5.None of them.Across the room Tracy is flipping pages too.Their eyes meet.No smiles now.The leaked paper was real.It was just last year’s paper.Aisha looks at the clock.Two hours.Then Question 1 again.It is something their teacher explained three weeks ago.Aisha remembers the lesson.Vaguely.She had understood it then.But last night, instead of revising mathematics, she spent two hours memorising somebody else’s answers.She picks up her pen.For the first time all night, there are no answers coming through her phone.Just Aisha.And the mathematics she actually knows.