by Belle Payton
The others were back to talking about the Powder Puff game. Alex slid out of her chair and stood up. The ten dollars was way more money than her milkshake cost, but it was all she had, and no one had offered to give her back any change. “Tally-ho,” said Alex.
As she was heading out the door, she did hear a faint “Bye, Alex!” behind her. She turned. Annelise was waving her hand meekly from side to side, and seemed to be the only one at the table who had noticed she’d left. Alex felt her eyes get hot, so she waved quickly back at Annelise and hurried out.
CHAPTER
FOUR
When Alex and her mother got home, they found Coach sniffling at the kitchen counter, tears zigzagging down his cheeks.
“I have yet to figure out a strategy for cutting onions without crying,” he said.
Mrs. Sackett laughed and bumped him aside with her hip. “Thanks for helping,” she said. She scooped the chopped vegetables onto the side of her large chef’s knife and plopped them into a pan warming on the stove, where they emitted a satisfying hiss. The aroma of sautéing onions, ginger, and garlic quickly filled the kitchen.
“It smells so good,” said Alex. “Want me to help chop?”
“Your father handled the worst part, but thanks, honey,” said Mrs. Sackett. “I’m making curry.”
“My favorite!” said Alex.
“My work here is done,” said Coach. He kissed Mrs. Sackett on the cheek and disappeared into his study, most likely to watch film.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and see if your sister needs a study buddy?” suggested Mrs. Sackett. “She’s been at it all afternoon, ever since she got home from your Powder Puff practice. She’s working hard for that science test tomorrow—I think she’s going to do really well on it. I’m so happy she’s been able to take her ADHD in stride.”
“Okay,” said Alex, heading toward the stairs. She trudged up them slowly and walked into Ava’s room without knocking.
Ava was sitting in her beanbag chair, scowling down at her book. She grunted something unintelligible.
Alex was about to flop down onto Ava’s bed but stopped to pull the coverlet over the pillow and move a mound of clothes out of the way. Then she flopped. “So what’s the test on?”
Ava looked up from her textbook. Her hair was sticking out every which way, and her eyes looked squinty and slightly unfocused, like a person emerging from a dark movie theater into a bright, sunny day.
“Cells. Animals and plants. It’s just so crazy-complicated. None of it makes sense.”
Alex nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I remember when we did that unit in accelerated science a few weeks ago. There are a lot of terms to memorize.”
Ava glared at Alex. “I think I remember you studying for it. You ended up scraping by with a ninety-four on the unit test, right?”
“Um, ninety-five, but yeah. I had to study my butt off,” said Alex.
Ava buried her face in her hands, then raked her hands through her short hair. Now Alex understood why her twin’s hair was in such disarray. “I need, need, need to do well on this test,” she said, half to herself. “If I don’t get at least an eighty, my grade will go down to a C, and if I get below a seventy-five, I could even get a D. That would mean I’m on academic probation. They might not let me finish the football season, let alone try out for basketball.”
“That reminds me,” said Alex. “I am so not on board with having Rosa in charge of our team. She is totally clueless about football.”
“And you’re not?” Ava blinked at her.
“Well, there’s clueless, and then there’s clueless,” said Alex. “I freely admit I’m not a football expert, but at least I’ve had a lifetime of exposure to it. I was practically born in the bleachers.”
“Which would mean that I was too,” Ava reminded her.
“Ave. It’s an expression.”
“I know, sorry.”
“Anyway, Rosa, despite not fully understanding the rules of the game, nevertheless thinks that as the captain she knows everything. But she doesn’t. And she is super bossy.” Alex pulled a piece of gum from her pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth right before she realized they were about to eat dinner. Oops. “So at one point I said—”
“Al?”
“I said, ‘Listen, Rosa. I’ve been watching videos about how to blitz, and I really think—”
“Al?”
“I really think we ought to—”
“Al!”
“Jeez, I’m right here. There’s no need to shout. What?”
“I need to keep studying,” said Ava gently. “Let’s talk about this later, okay?”
Alex sighed heavily. This was definitely not her day for feeling included in anyone’s life.
On Monday morning Ava staggered into science class. Her head was buzzing, as though a hive of bees had flown in through her ears. She’d been up until midnight, practicing drawing diagrams of plant and animal cells. There was so much vocabulary! “Plant cell . . . eukaryotic . . . cell wall . . . chloroplasts . . .” She muttered these things under her breath as she headed to her desk and plunked down her heavy backpack. “Animal cell . . . also eukaryotic . . . no cell wall . . . no chloroplasts . . .” Her mind was groggy from not enough sleep, but she felt pretty prepared. Luke had come over for another extra session after dinner last night, and he’d helped her sort out all the strange-sounding terms, like Golgi bodies, ribosomes, and endoplasmic reticulum, until she finally felt like she understood what they meant. Plus, she had that reassuring feeling that if she ran out of time, she could just write Mrs. Hyde’s name on her test and then go into her office at lunchtime to finish it. Mrs. Hyde was the school’s learning specialist, and Ava had been working closely with her on different test-taking strategies to deal with her ADHD. Getting extra time was one of them.
“Pssst! Hey!” Corey plunked himself down into the desk next to hers. “There’s a sub,” he said, gesturing with his chin toward the front of the room.
Alarmed, Ava looked toward Mr. Cho’s desk. Sure enough, Mr. Cho was not there. Instead she saw a short, heavyset woman in a red dress and black, cat-eye glasses.
“Mr. Cho’s daughter had her baby,” Corey explained.
“But the baby wasn’t due for three more weeks!” said Ava.
The whole class knew Mr. Cho’s daughter was expecting Mr. Cho’s first grandchild, a boy. He had been telling them excitedly about it since the second day of school. Ava knew the plan—when the baby was born, he and his wife would fly to California to help take care of their new grandchild. He’d planned to be out for a whole week.
The substitute wrote her name on the whiteboard.
“Mrs. Fowler? Is she Greg and Tim’s mom?” Ava asked Corey.
Corey gave her a look. “Yeah, duh. Didn’t you listen when Mr. Cho told us that was the plan?”
Ava sighed. “I miss a lot of stuff teachers say,” she admitted.
Mrs. Fowler cleared her throat.
Kids seemed not to notice and kept on talking.
She clapped her hands twice.
People continued talking. Ava watched her out of the corner of her eye. She always felt sorry for substitutes. They were either too nice, allowing kids to get away with stuff their regular teacher would never allow, or unduly strict, yelling way too much to show who was boss.
Finally Mrs. Fowler flicked the lights, and the class settled down. She smiled at them. “Mr. Cho told me that tactic would work with you, and he was right!” she said.
Ava noticed Mrs. Fowler had lipstick on her front tooth. She examined Mrs. Fowler more closely. Behind the broad smile, Ava could sense that she was nervous. Ava wondered if this was Mrs. Fowler’s first subbing job. She knew that Greg and Tim were twins and that they had five younger siblings. She also knew that Mr. Fowler had been deployed overseas. She wondered who was looking after the little Fowler kids.
Mrs. Fowler was distributing the tests facedown on everyone’s desks. “We’ll begin in just a mom
ent,” she said. “Please be sure all your things are stowed away, and of course, I don’t want to see any cell phones. Or X-ray glasses.” She laughed lightly, but no one else did.
Ava thought it was bad timing for a teacher to make a joke while handing out a test to a class full of nervous seventh graders. A rookie error, as Coach would say.
When Ava turned over the test, her heart began thumping. The black type swam before her eyes, as though the letters were floating in water. But she took in a deep breath, blew it out slowly, the way her mom had taught her, and focused.
The first part was short answers. Her job was to fill in the blank with the correct cell part based on the definition.
A layer of cellulose fiber that gives the plant cell most of its support: __________
Ha! I know this! She almost said it out loud. She wrote “cell wall.”
The jellylike material outside the cell nucleus in which the organelles are located: ___________
She knew that one, too. Thank you, Luke. They’d studied that one together. She wrote “cytoplasm.”
The clock ticked as Ava worked her way through the rest of the test. The only sound was the scratching of pencils on paper, the clomping of Mrs. Fowler’s sensible shoes as she made her way around the classroom, and the occasional cough. It was a little weird to have the teacher walking around while they were taking the test. Mr. Cho never did that. He always sat at his desk and graded papers and stuff.
Stop letting your mind wander, she reprimanded herself. She stared back down at the text in front of her and went on to the next question. I’m not doing too badly, she thought excitedly. She guessed at a few of the terms, but they were educated guesses.
She read the two short-essay questions and smiled. One was to compare and contrast a plant and animal cell. The other was to explain what a prokaryote was. She knew this. Luke had drilled her on prokaryotic cells. Hurray!
And then the bell rang.
“Pencils down, please,” said Mrs. Fowler.
Ava hastily scrawled Mrs. Hyde at the top of her paper. She’d go to the learning specialist’s office during her lunch hour and finish the essay questions.
Mrs. Fowler smiled at Ava as she collected her test.
Just before lunch, Ava and Alex met at their lockers.
“How did it go in science?” Alex asked her, spinning her lock right, left, right.
“I think it went well,” said Ava. “I have to go finish the two short essays now, but I know my stuff.” She tugged at her locker, but it didn’t open. Sigh. One of these days she’d be capable of talking and spinning a combination lock at the same time. She started again.
“That’s awesome, Ave,” said Alex, smiling warmly.
“Ava!” Emily and Lindsey rushed up.
Alex’s smile froze on her face.
Ava wished Emily and Lindsey could be a little less obvious that it was her, not Alex, they wanted to see.
“Hi,” said Ava, finally jerking open her locker door with a clang. It had started sticking recently, possibly because she often had to slam it closed in two stages—first at the top, then at the bottom—before its contents could spill out across the hallway. Carefully she opened the door a few inches more, using her knee to stop the books from sliding out. Mrs. Hyde had suggested early on that they arrange for Ava to get a second locker, so that it would be easier to keep her stuff organized, but Ava had thought that would be too embarrassing, especially as she was new to the school.
“We had an idea to discuss with you,” said Emily, getting right to the point. “We’re wondering what you think about moving Edie to wide receiver, and making Callie a blocker. She is totally the strongest one on the team, and—”
“Sorry, but I can’t talk right now,” said Ava, slamming her locker door closed again. “I have to go finish my science test.”
“No problem,” said Emily. “Maybe we can find you at the end of lunch.”
“Are you guys headed there now?” asked Alex in her false-cheerful tone that Ava knew well.
Lindsey turned and blinked at Alex, as though surprised to find her standing there. “Oh! Yup. Let’s walk there together. But we can’t sit with you, because the orange and blue teams are sitting at separate tables again today. For spirit.”
“Oh, I knew that,” said Alex in that same false-casual way. “I was going to find Rosa and Annelise. Good luck on your test, Ave.”
Ava headed off in the other direction, toward Mrs. Hyde’s office. She sighed and shook her head. Why did Alex have to care so much about a dumb game? Why would anyone care so much about a game with “Powder Puff” in the title?
CHAPTER
F IVE
“Oh, hello, Ava,” said Mrs. Hyde as Ava poked her head into the learning specialist’s office a few minutes later. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” said Ava, stepping inside. “I just came to finish my science test. I didn’t have time to get to the last two short essays.”
Mrs. Hyde furrowed her brow and then stood up, shuffling several stacks of papers around on her desk. “Hmm,” she said. “Mr. Cho didn’t drop it off.”
“Oh, that’s because we had a sub,” Ava explained. “Mr. Cho’s daughter had her baby, so Mrs. Fowler—that’s our sub—gave us the test.”
“Ah, that explains it,” said Mrs. Hyde. “Just run over and ask Mrs. Fowler to drop it off here. She probably didn’t realize she was supposed to do that. If you don’t have time to finish it during your lunch block, you can do it right after school, and I’ll write a note to Coach Kenerson explaining why you were late to practice.”
Luckily, Ava’s science classroom wasn’t far from Mrs. Hyde’s office, and luckily, Mrs. Fowler was still there when Ava walked in. Still, she was panting slightly as she explained to Mrs. Fowler the procedure for delivering her test to Mrs. Hyde so Ava could finish it. This was stressful; she wouldn’t have much time for lunch, and she did not want to be late for football practice.
Mrs. Fowler frowned. She was sitting at Mr. Cho’s desk with a big stack of papers in front of her. Is she already grading our tests? Ava wondered.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Ava. “Mr. Cho left me no instructions about allowing any students in your class extra time on tests.”
“He—he didn’t?” asked Ava in a small voice. “Maybe he forgot, because he left in such a big hurry? Because I’m supposed to get extra time, see, and—maybe you could give him a call?”
“A call?” repeated Mrs. Fowler. “I don’t think so, um—Ava, is it? In fact, I think I’ve already finished grading your test.” She thumbed through the pile. “Yes, here it is. You started out quite strong, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to learn to work a bit faster. It’s probably a better strategy to move on to the next question if you get stuck on something.” She studied Ava’s test. “Yes, you had twenty-two out of twenty-four on the short answers, but you didn’t even start the essays.” She held up the test so Ava could see the big red 66 at the top.
Ava opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again. She stared at the big numbers. That was a D! Her first one ever. Her stomach felt queasy. She knew it was her responsibility to say something, to explain the situation. But she didn’t want to have a big scene with Mrs. Fowler. Maybe I misunderstood, she thought. This was the first time she’d tried the extra-time strategy for a test. Doubt was creeping in. Maybe she’d just ask her mom about it tonight.
With a slightly quivering chin, she mumbled something to Mrs. Fowler and hurried to what was left of her lunch period.
During social studies, Kylie asked Ava how the science test went.
“Okay,” said Ava. “Actually, kind of not great.” She started to tell Kylie what had happened, but just then Tim Fowler, who was sitting on the other side of Kylie, leaned in.
“Psst! Hey, Sackett. How’d my mom do today?”
“Oh, ah,” began Ava. “Well, she—”
“Because she was so pumped to get this subbing gig,” conti
nued Tim. “Since our dad’s been deployed, she’s been trying to find a steady job for a while. They told her if this science teaching situation goes okay, they’ll make her a regular sub at AMS until a position opens up in the district somewhere.”
“I didn’t even know your mom was a teacher,” said Kylie.
“Yeah, she’s been certified for, like, ten years,” said Tim proudly. “But with all my younger brothers and sisters at home, this is her first time back to work. My grandma’s moved in to help take care of my siblings.”
Mr. Antonucci clapped his hands to get class started, and Ava slumped down in her desk. This situation was growing worse and worse. How could she tell her mom now? Mrs. Sackett would be sure to call the school and make it an issue, and Mrs. Fowler would probably get in trouble for not following the rules. She might even get fired over this situation.
Should she just take the bad grade? That was the worst scenario of all. First, she had studied so hard for that test. And a D on this test would for sure sink her semester grade below a C, and that would put her on academic probation. Ava couldn’t imagine not being allowed to play football when she’d worked so hard to get on the team!
She thought about Luke, her tutor. She tried to imagine the look on his face when he found out what grade she’d gotten. He’d be so disappointed in her. They’d both been so sure she’d do well.
And then an even more awful thought occurred to her. Maybe her parents would fire Luke, because he’d failed in his job at tutoring her.
Mr. Antonucci continued to drone on about last night’s reading, which had been about Thomas Jefferson and his presidency. Ava had actually done the reading—it had been a nice break from studying—and for once thought it was semi-interesting, but now she was fretting too much about Luke to pay attention. She felt like she was being forced to make a terrible choice: say something to her mom or Mrs. Hyde and risk getting Mrs. Fowler dismissed from a job she really needed, or say nothing about her bad grade to anyone, and risk getting Luke fired.