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I spend fifty minutes suffering through the most painful academic experience of my life. Even before the bell rings, I am chastising myself for being so stupid. So flawed. Even though my mom’s not my DNA donor, I was grown in her womb; her smartness should’ve rubbed off on me somehow.
How can I just not get math?
I jump at the bell, then reluctantly hand in my quiz. I jump again when my phone vibrates in my pocket; I haven’t even made it to the classroom door yet. I don’t check the caller ID; I know who it is.
“Hi.”
“Lizzie, it’s Mom,” she says, trying to sound calm when I know her well enough to know that she’s not.
“I know,” I say, weaving around two girls blocking the door. “Hi.”
Pause. “Your heart rate just shot up: What happened? You were in math class, right? Is everything okay?” The way her voice sounds right now reminds me of the time in middle school when she forgot there was a museum field trip and the tracker showed me across town during school hours.
“Geez, calm down,” I say. “I’m fine. It was just a quiz.”
Silence.
“Did you fail?” she asks quietly, saying “fail” like some people say “cancer.” I hear her take a breath and hold it on the other end of the line and I can almost see the thoughts running through her brain. Mom places an incredibly high value on doing well in school.
“How should I know?” I say. “I only just handed it in. I won’t get—”
“Lizzie, you know.”
Pause.
“Yes.”
She lets out her breath like a popped tire. “I’m going to come home for a few minutes after Bet’s done with night class. We’ll have a family meeting to discuss this.”
“But, Mom, I—”
“We’ll discuss it tonight,” she says sharply. “I think we need to—”
Service cuts out and my bars are too low to call her back. I’m left to wonder as I leave the math corridor and head down the main hallway what Mom thinks we need to do this time.
After psych and government, I race to my locker, then flip around and rush toward the commons, where I’m blasted by the smell of fried foods. My stomach grumbles—it’s been too long since my vending-machine breakfast—but there’s no time to stop. I cut through the circular space, weaving my way around tables and kids with trays toward the exit to the student lot. I imagine Ella standing in the entryway of our house with a stopwatch, tapping her toes. The longer it takes me to get there, the less time she has.
“Hey, Elizabeth!”
I look over and see David Something from student government smiling a salesman’s smile. “Take a load off,” he says, his voice carrying over the lunchtime noise. The other football players at his table look at me curiously as David pats the empty seat next to him.
I smile back and wave politely but keep walking. I stifle a laugh when I hear one of David’s friends say, “Burn!” just before I reach the doors.
I make it outside and check my phone for the time: I’m doing okay. Even though lots of kids go off campus for lunch, no one is nearby, so I jog to the car. I throw the bag on the passenger seat and drive home no more than five miles per hour over the posted speed limits. All I need is to get a speeding ticket the same day I fail a trig quiz.
I drive through the gates and down the driveway, then park and turn off the car but leave the keys in the ignition and the bag on the passenger seat. Ella is walking toward me before I’ve shut the door. With her stick-straight hair and matching cardigan and skirt, I might as well be staring at myself. Most of the time it’s just how things are, but today, maybe because I’m already worried about the quiz, it’s the bad kind of surreal. The only difference between us at the moment is our posture: Hers is tall and confident, mine is slumped.
“You okay?” she says when she’s close enough for me to hear. “I felt it.”
I nod, thinking of the sudden sense of unease that comes over me when Ella or Betsey panics about something. “Did Mom totally freak out?”
Ella glances at the front door and then refocuses on me. “A little,” she admits. “I think she’s just disappointed.”
“Ugh,” I say. “She said she’s coming home for a family meeting tonight. She never comes home at night!”
When we were born, our mom gave up her real passion of being a scientist so she could work nights and be home during the day with us. Instead of doing the genetics research she loves, she’s using her other degree to be an ER doctor, somehow functioning on three hours of sleep a night.
“I know. It’s weird,” Ella says, stepping forward to give me a quick hug. “But it’ll be okay,” she says into my hair. “We’ll figure it out.” Dramatic as she is, in a real crisis, Ella’s always there. We pull apart and smile at each other: Mine’s forced, because she’s trying to lift my spirits.
