Geek Fire: A YA Superhero Adventure

2. Failing English

Even with the rotten yogurt feeling in her stomach growing worse, Emma made it through morning swim practice and math.

If only second period English didn't have to happen. When class started, a heavy stone bounced and kicked inside her belly. She hadn't turned in her project to turn-it-in.com. She didn't bring anything to turn in at all.

Halfway through class, Mr. Attwood passed around a printout of their grades with only their student ID numbers as identification.

When the sheet reached Emma, she traced her fingers over the smooth paper, until they found her number. A big, fat F stared at her. The zero on the My Future project dropped her grade to 48%.

The rotten yogurt feeling gave way to hollowness. Her eyes burned. She blinked, and her back went rigid. The rest of the class passed in a blur.

Somehow, seeing it in print made it real, even though she'd known it was coming.

On the whiteboard, Mr. Attwood's precise handwriting spelled out this week's poem. Robert Frost, too familiar.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by.

Emma snorted. Failing English was the one less traveled by for honor's students, but that didn't mean throwing away her whole future was the path that she wouldn't regret later.

The bell rang, and by the time she shuffled zombielike to the end of the row of English classrooms and around through the trailers to Advanced Placement Human Geography break ended. APHuG. The classroom felt like anything but a hug. In a fog, she passed Ms. Range's World War II posters. The Lincoln-Douglass busts, their closed-mouth smiles mocking her. The Man in the Iron Mask replica mask mournfully stared at her as she made her way to her seat in the center of the front row. Ms. Range loved that historically inaccurate movie.

Overwhelmed, Emma's eyes scrambled for a place to rest until she found the clock over the cluttered whiteboard. The charcoal gray numbers against the faint background clicked when they changed. 10:32 a.m. The clock was digital, so she never understood the faint click the numbers made when they changed, but click they did.

10:33 a.m.

Odd. So not divisible by two or four. Didn't end in five or zero, so not divisible by five. The digits added up to seven, so not divisible by three.

Maybe seven?

Seven into ten, would leave three. Thirty-three by seven would be four. Thirty-three less twenty-eight left five—fifty-three. No.

Not eleven. Thirteen?

Maybe eight times thirteen for... umm... eighty plus thirty-two... too much. Also, that would be even. Seven times thirteen, Seventy plus twenty-one made—

"Emma's crying," someone said.

"What? The ice queen is actually crying?" her stupid cousin asked.

Emma had told Hannah not to call her that at least a dozen times. But Hannah would tell her robots couldn't have their feelings hurt. It didn't seem to matter what Emma said.

"I'm not," Emma said, playing the numbers game to calm her roiling emotions. Okay, one hundred and three minus ninety-one left twelve. With the three made one hundred and twenty-three—but 10:33 wasn't divisible by three.

All of a sudden, Ms. Range was there, kneeling in front of her.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" Ms. Range's breath smelled like chocolate. Emma was pretty sure Ms. Range had a stash of M&Ms in her desk.