The Anything Friend

by Michela DiMarco

CHAPTER 6

  “People only see what they are prepared to see.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Elizabeth arrived to school a half hour before the exam and took her seat in the classroom. It felt as though her head was filled with pudding instead of Calculus. She was anxious enough about being back in school, not knowing fully what happened the previous day. She didn’t want any distractions before her test. She stared at the Calculus problems trying to convince herself she was ready but found that she was reading the same problem over and over again without any solution.

  Ms. Petrova walked in the classroom and set her purse and oversized crème colored shoulder bag down on her desk. “Elizabeth, you do not need to worry about the test. You are a smart girl. You are going to do well.”

  Elizabeth forced a smile. “I’m not so convinced Ms. Petrova. I…I missed class yesterday, I didn’t get home until late and then I was so tired that I couldn’t study.”

  “People say that Calculus is the hardest math class most students will ever take. You could have taken Pre-Calculus or Trigonometry but you accepted the challenge. One of the best ways to learn anything is to teach it to someone else.” Elizabeth thought about it for a second. She didn’t have the patience to teach anything to anyone. It wasn’t repetition that annoyed her. It was the fact that she sometimes learned things differently than she was taught and