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Patience. It was definitely not my strong suit. And if Principal Oliphant made me wait any longer, I was going to stick a pencil in someone’s eye. Maybe even mine.
My English teacher was nice enough to let me schedule this meeting in the last ten minutes of class, and that rare display of leniency wouldn’t happen again. Besides, in a high school with over two-thousand students, Principal Oliphant’s schedule was near impossible to get on. I’d won the lottery when I got the email this morning from the secretary.She has a ten-minute opening during fourth period at 11:50 AM.
I glanced at the clock hanging crooked on the wall for the seventh time. In five minutes and thirty seconds, my time slot would be up. My time to make my case to her would be taken over by whatever was next on her hectic schedule. Brushed aside or swept under the rug, or another analogy that meant what I had to say didn’t matter outside my ten-minute window.
Patience, Maisie, patience.
Nudging my glasses further up my nose, I studied the front of the four-page stapled stack in my hand, but really, I knew the words by heart.
Principal Oliphant, I’m short on time and I value yours, so I’ll make this quick. The reason I requested a meeting with you is because I want to discuss the decision of cutting the student ranking system, therefore cutting valedictorian. As you might know, I have been maintaining my high academics since the beginning of high school in preparation for the top spot, so this is a topic I feel passionately about. Colleges consider to valedictorians and salutatorians first for scholarships, and to cut it entirely may make our school less competitive in terms of academics.
Words I believed with my whole heart and soul. Heck, I might even agree to give my firstborn baby for this. And, sure, it might’ve been overkill to write a whole essay on it, but I didn’t trust myself to not fly off the handle. Even though I inherited practically nothing else from her, my temper definitely came from my mom.
The clock ticked on. Four minutes.
“Maisie?” came Principal Oliphant’s bright voice, and all at once, my bouncing leg stopped. I looked up, spotting the blonde woman standing at the mouth of her now-open door. “I’m ready for you.”
And I’m ready for you, I thought in determination, shoving to my feet.
Principal Oliphant’s office was sparsely decorated, with a few bookshelves lining the far wall, more of a décor piece than anything else. The dust on the ledges hinted she didn’t touch it often. She liked a lot of blacks and whites, it seemed, with only the occasional splashes of color in the paintings on her wall. Neat, clean, professional. The ideal office for a principal.
But to me, she wasn’tjusta principal. The history that stretched between us was extensive, and even though our contact in the last four years had been minimal—aka, only if I was forced to interact with her—I was banking on that.
“Have a seat,” she offered, gesturing to one of the basic gray chairs opposite her desk. She tucked a blonde piece that had escaped her bun behind her ear. “What’s this about?”
Cue intro.
Without glancing down, I started on my first lines. “Principal Oliphant, I’m short on time and I value yours, so I’ll make this quick. The reason I requested this meeting—”
“Maisie.” She lifted her palm to silence me, throwing me off before I could really begin. “Is this about the school board’s decision to discontinue the student ranking system?”
Ookay. I glanced down at my paper, but I knew it wasn’t see-through. “How’d you know?”
“Mrs. Diego spoke with me on Friday. Apparently, you two talked about it last week.”
Mrs. Diego had been my favorite math teacher for three years, ever since I was able to start taking senior classes my sophomore year. Even being in the advanced classes wasn’t quite enough. Mrs. Diego tasked herself to find tough equations that would stump me. “We have to keep that mind stimulated,” she’d said once.
She also made for a great listening ear for me to rant to over losing valedictorian.
“I had hopedyouwould’ve been the one to tell me personally,” I said to Principal Oliphant now, going off-script and tapping into that “passion” I probably should’ve kept under wraps. At least until we got further than thirty seconds into our time together. “Given the fact that we both knowIwould’ve been valedictorian.”
I’d been nursing my GPA from its infancy, a religious routine that had ruled my life for the last four years. No, I couldn’t skip school on Student Skip Day—I had homework to turn in. No, I couldn’t take the elective that sounded fun—it wouldn’t weigh enough toward my GPA. And now, with one bogus email sent from a Do Not Reply server, four years of progress…poof. All gone.
Principal Oliphant reached up and rubbed a spot above her eyebrow, an action that was familiar. “Unfortunately, Maisie, this isn’t only my decision. It’s the school board’s decision.”
“Shouldn’t it be a student-voted decision?” I demanded, fighting to keep my voice level. “Since it’s directly affecting the students?”
“This is the year we’re testing it out, eliminating the valedictorian award. There are many reasons we’ve made this decision. GPA isn’t the most accurate way to judge a student’s performance, along with the fact that the student ranking system promotes unhealthy competition amongst peers.”
Oh,please. She’d be hard pressed to name one person who actually took academics seriously enough to get “competitive.” No one came to Brentwood for academics. Me, sure, but no one else was ready to use their protractors like pitchforks. “What would you call football, then? Or any other sport that Brentwood High idolizes?”
“Maisie.” The line to her mouth took on a sympathetic tilt, eyes softening. It was almost like I hadn’t spoken, or maybe she interpreted my silly questions as rhetorical, because she didn’t answer. “I’ve watched you grow up. You’ve always been a dedicated, smart girl. You know that with our history, I want nothing more than to offer you opportunities to grow. This, though…I just can’t swing.”
Our history. Hearing it come from her mouth, the phrase “our history” sounded so much more significant than it was. Then again, I practically grew up in her house from first grade until the beginning of freshman year, so maybe it was me who downplayed the significance. At this moment, though, she was as familiar to me as a stranger on the street.
“Jefferson High has student ranking,” I told her, gripping my collection of papers tightly enough to crush them. “I could always transfer.”
Principal Oliphant’s demeanor didn’t change. It started to come off too much like pity. “If you were to transfer, you go from being Brentwood High’s top student to Jefferson’s tenth best. Or lower.”
