Fourteen and a freshman in high school, Sarah Little could think of nothing worst than having to come to school with a bright red zit the size of Machu Pichu on the tip of her nose. She arrived at Minot High School that morning a bit frazzled and upset, after having to remind her mother for the N-teenth time NOT to drop her off in front of the building. She would much rather be dropped off in front of the City Hall and walk the extra seven minutes to school on her own, despite the hail that was falling steadily the size of wombats outside.
To add to the trouble, in first period, Sarah discovered that her best friend was wearing the same exact shirt that day. How embarrassing! To have to spend the entire day with someone wearing the same shirt as if they had planned it, as if they were in the 4th grade again! There was no other choice, but for her to trudge to her locker and pull out that crappy black fleece sweater that she kept in there for “emergencies”—the sweater that always caused her hair to fly up in static lightning storms, making everything she touched turn into a field of hyperactive electric shocks.
The day did not improve. In Italian class that day, they were having a quiz on the conjugation of the near past participles. “Io ho. Tu hai. Egli… egli… arghhh! I won’t be able to have these memorized before 8th period!” she thought frantically.
So she determined the wisest thing to do was to make a little cheat sheet for herself out of the corner of her math notebook. When she got to class, she slipped the little piece of paper under her quiz and was sure no one would notice.
Mr. D (short for Mr. Di Giovanni) started to announce the quiz. “Numero uno, classe, numero uno…”
“Psst. Sarah.”
It was Nathan. The boy Sarah had had a crush on since the first day of school. He was the captain of the boys’ freshmen soccer team and every time he called her name, she blushed a fuchsia color.
“Sarah. Can I borrow a pen?”
Sarah couldn’t look him in the eye. “Yea, sure, take mine.”
“Sarah! What are you talking about back there?” shouted Mr. D.
“Nothing. Sorry,” Sarah blushed again. Then she fished around her backpack looking for another pen to write with. By the time she found one, Mr D was already onto number 5.
“Classe, numero cinque, numero cinque classe…”
Number five already! She raised her hand and asked Mr. D to repeat himself. He refused and Sarah sat there at the back of the room with her head hanging low.
After the teacher had finished reciting the questions, he came to where she was and sat besides Sarah and began to repeat the questions to the quiz she had missed. In a scramble for her to grab her pen and begin to write them down, her quiz paper flew up in the air and down fluttered her little cheat sheet like a floating butterfly, slowly slowly making its way, right down to the floor, to land right on top of the teacher’s shoe.
“What’s this?” Mr. D picked up the paper. “Aha. So not only were you talking, not listening, but you were planning to cheat as well. You know what that means?” He raised his voice louder calling the attention of the entire class to the back of the room.
“A big fat zero.”
Sarah was mortified. She sat there for the remainder of class with a lump in her throat the size of a cannon ball.
As the bell rang to end the day, Nathan handed her her pen back.
“Uh. Thanks.” And he walked out the door, laughing about what, she was certain she did not want to know.
Sarah felt the tears welling up inside of her. She tried to hold them back, but one tiny drop managed to escape and run down her cheek and across her nose to the tip of Machu Pichu. It struggled, but could not make it’s way over the peak and so sank down into the crevasse between her nostril and her cheek bone and stayed there.
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