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My heart banged in my chest as I walked sightlessly to my desk. She’d read it. She knew. So what the hell did she think of me now? And what was she going to do about everything she’d learned?
“What’d you get?” Ten demanded as soon as I sat down. I glanced at him but I didn’t see him. Fear and anxiety completely fuzzed my vision; I could only feel the loss of my paper when he ripped the essay out of my hand.
“Hey! Fucker.” I snagged it back before he could unroll it. “Hands off, asshole.”
“Well, what’re you waiting for? The grade fairy to come along and magically transform it into an A?”
I set my jaw and sent him a look. When he merely stared back, waiting, I sighed and rolled my eyes. Trying to act as if it wasn’t the end of the world, I slowly unrolled the pages, hoping to God he didn’t notice the slight tremor in my hand.
When I saw an A staring up at me, my mouth fell open. I blinked, thinking my eyes were still fucked up. But the A didn’t go away.
“Holy shit.?
??
“What?” Ten ripped it out of my hand again, but I was too shocked to yank it back. “Holy shit,” he echoed. His mouth fell open too as he lifted his eyebrows my way. Then he leaned in to grin. “And you said you didn’t fuck her, you freaking liar.”
“Excuse me?” Instantly irritated, I jerked the paper back and cradled it to my chest. “I earned this score, thank you very much.”
He lifted his hands. “Hey, I’m all for fixing your grade with a make-up paper. But from a D to an A?” He glanced around before leaning in closer. “Man, that’s suspicious. What’d you have to do to get it?”
“Nothing,” I growled, scowling at him hard. “I had to re-write the paper.”
Ten lifted his eyebrows in disbelief. “Really? That’s it?”
“Yes.” Eyes snapping, I glared him down until he lifted his hands again and backed off.
“Okay, man,” he said, but his expression crinkled with mirth as if he knew better. “If you say so...teacher’s pet.”
“I do, goddamn it.”
When Dr. Kavanagh stood up and started class, Ten turned around to face the front of the room, but I continued to glare at the back of his head. I wanted to keep arguing with him, telling him how much it had taken to earn this grade. I’d damn well earned it too.
But like him, I also found it impossible to believe.
At the front, my teacher acted as cool and collected as always, as if she didn’t know everything about me I kept hidden from this town. Though I tried to keep inconspicuous about it, I watched her, waiting for the moment she’d look my way and reveal what she really thought of me now and what she was going to do about my turpitudes. But for the entire hour, she didn’t even glance in my direction.
I didn’t want to admit it, but that kind of stung. I’d shared something personal with her, and it hadn’t even seemed to hit her radar. Nothing about her had changed. Gritting my teeth, I glanced at the top of my desk, disappointed she didn’t seem as completely altered as I felt.
After class, I filed out with everyone else, refraining from glancing her way. I waited until I had a moment alone, away from people, before I ducked into a bathroom and trapped myself in a stall. Just to make sure it still had an A on it, I dug my paper back out of my bag. It didn’t have a plus sign next to it the way Sidney Chin’s essay had, but it still had that beautiful scarlet letter slashed across the top.
I glanced down to make sure it was the same paper I’d turned in, and I finally saw little grammar marks she’d made, correcting commas and misspelled words. No notes were scribbled in the margins until I flipped to the last page. After my final, closing paragraph, she’d penned in the line, Much better. I knew you could grasp the concept of the assignment.
I blinked. Was that it? I had told her about the time one of my mother’s men had beat the shit out of me when he’d gotten high in our living room. I’d told her about all the hiding places I’d found for my brothers and sister whenever my mother had drank too much and was pissed off. But the mack daddy of all, I’d told her how I’d saved up all my money to pay off some geek from high school to fix my GPA in the school’s computer system so I had a better chance at receiving a scholarship.
I was a fake and a liar who didn’t belong here. And now she knew it. If she wanted, she could make everyone else know it, too. She could ruin me.
I had no idea why I’d incriminated myself like that. She could’ve gone to the administration and turned me in. But my transgressions had eerily reminded me of that fucking Gatsby character in her book and how he’d cheated and lied to get everything for the woman he loved. I’d done just that for the three people I loved most in the world.
And all Kavanagh had to say about it was much better?
Jesus. What did that mean? Was she going to keep my secret? Was she going to use it as blackmail against me? Was she even going to mention it to me at all?
I flipped back to the front page and stared at the letter she’d given me. I had a feeling she wouldn’t have written in an A if she’d had any plans of getting me kicked out of Ellamore. She could’ve taken the paper straight to her sour-faced boss. But she had given me an A. And she’d handed the evidence back to me.
I blew out a breath, and finally, the muscles in my stomach relaxed.
Shit. She was giving me another chance. I was back in the game and actually felt good for the first time all semester about the possibility I just might succeed in all this.
