Page 18 of The Do-Over
She held up her test, unable to find the words for everything that was racing through her mind.
He nodded. “I guess you know why I wanted to speak to you.”
She was shaking. She’d never been taken aside by a teacher like this before. “I had a bad day,” she said quietly.
But he was shaking his head. “It’s not just today, Thea. Your grades have been slipping for a while.” He opened something up on his computer and then turned the screen to face her. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Numbly, she dropped into the chair.
He pointed to a series of red squares on the screen. “These are your missing assignments.”
So many. She had known she’d missed a few assignments, of course. It had become difficult to get everything done on nights when there was a basketball game, and she’d had to triage her work. You only lost ten points for failing to turn in a math assignment. It hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal.
“And your exam grades have dropped,” he said. “This is the first serious drop, of course, but look. At the beginning of the year, you were making all A’s. Now it’s mostly B’s and B-minuses.”
“That’s not…so bad.” That’s what she had told herself when the first B-minus had come back.
“It’s not,” he agreed. “But I know you can do better, Thea. You’re going for a scholarship, aren’t you?”
She nodded slowly.
“These grades aren’t going to get you there,” he said.
Her heart clenched.
“I’ll let you retake this test,” he said. “One time. Because I know you’re capable of more. But I only give one second chance. If this doesn’t turn around—”
“No, it will.” She jumped to her feet, overwhelmed with relief. “Thank you, Mr. Archibald. I promise you won’t regret this.”
She hurried out of the room before he could say anything more.
* * *
They sat on the hood of Rob’s car, passing a cherry slushy back and forth and taking sips.
“I like that you don’t drink,” Thea said.
“I’d be kicked off the basketball team if I were caught,” Rob said. “It’ll be different in college.”
“Will it? You want to play basketball there, too.”
“Yeah, but we won’t be as supervised,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m going to turn into a total party animal or anything, but I’ll definitely experiment a little.”
“It’ll be nice to be in the city, too,” Thea said. “Chicago. I get excited every time I think about it.”
He grinned at her. “It’ll be nice to be there with you.”
Sometimes Thea couldn’t believe they had only been together for four months. It felt like a lot longer. Already, they were planning on going away to college together, and she was relieved by how easily the decision had been made. The idea of separating from him at the end of the school year felt unbearable to her now.
She took a sip of the slushy and leaned against his shoulder. “Have you gotten your acceptance yet?”
He shook his head. “But I’m not worried about it,” he added. “I’m sure they’re waiting for our SAT scores. The fact that we haven’t heard anything yet is a good thing.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, totally. If they were going to reject us, they’d just do it. They just want to make sure our scores are high enough, and then they’ll send us our acceptances.”
“And if they don’t take us?” Though she hadn’t put her fears into words, she couldn’t stop thinking about her less-than-stellar grades. There hadn’t been any more D-minuses, but she definitely hadn’t been performing up to her usual standard as of late.
