The last hurdle was a poem about a lonely sail in the mist. He had to memorize it. Maxim paced around his room, reciting lines to his stuffed animals. "Belyat parus odinokiy..." (A white sail shines lonely...)

: Dividing 45.5 by 5 shouldn't have felt like climbing Everest, but his brain kept insisting the answer was "potato."

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, Maxim took a deep breath. He snapped photos of his neatly filled notebooks and attached them to the email with the subject line that started it all: He clicked Send .

Maxim stared at his desk. It looked like a battlefield of crumpled papers, dried-out pens, and a math textbook that seemed to grow thicker every time he blinked. The Great Math Marathon

The silence that followed was beautiful. No more decimals, no more suffixes, no more lonely sails. Maxim flopped onto his bed, closed his eyes, and realized that being a 5th grader was a full-time job—but today, he was officially retired for the weekend.