Tess Morrison is struggling. Suffering from an anxiety disorder after a tragic accident that claimed the life of her younger sister, Julia, she's simply trying to survive high school--which is tough, since she's the newest student at Eagle Point. En...
"Sure, we can figure it out. Buenos días, Señora," Isaac said, returning their teacher's greeting. He followed Tess into the classroom and sidled to his seat, glancing back at her once and grinning that dimpled grin. Tess's mind was swimming with glee when she took her place at her own desk.
Hours floated by. The trials of conjugation in Spanish, the puzzles of a new unit in Calc, and the endless buzz of voices in the halls during their passing periods hardly drew Tess's notice.
She was happy—really happy—for the first time in as long as she could remember, and she had never felt quite like this before. Her heart leapt each time she thought of Isaac. She hardly wanted to think of anything but her date with him, how he'd been so kind to her, and how he made her feel. The stress of schoolwork had, amazingly, faded into the background.
At lunch, she poked at her serving of an unidentifiable casserole.
"I know you're all wondering: it went really well," Jacqui announced out of the blue. "I am, of course, talking about Tess's date with Isaac, which she totally had on Saturday."
Tess blushed. "Jacqui, seriously?"
"Ooo," said Amy. "What'd you do?"
Smiling at Amy, Tess said, "We went to see the new Thor movie."
"Really? Zack and I went to see that last weekend! Did you—"
But Mackenzie cut Amy off. "I have been wanting to see that movie for ages. Can I just say that Christopher Hemsworth is the hottest famous Chris?"
This elicited some giggles from everyone at the table—everyone except for Tisha, who did not seem to be interested in the conversation. Tess caught Tisha looking at her and, feeling strangely embarrassed, she broke eye contact right away.
"Hey," Zack said, nudging Amy with a wounded look. "Hemsworth? Really?"
She shrugged. "Sorry, babe. Have you seen his hair?"
"Or his everything else?" Jacqui added, popping a slice of mandarin orange into her mouth.
Saved by Mackenzie's deft switch of topics, Tess simply allowed the conversation to follow its new course, nodding in all the right places as everyone debated the merits of each famous Chris they knew.
After lunch was Chem, and then came Lit. Tess plodded through analysis of another chapter of The Scarlet Letter. Although she often had students read, which made Tess sick with nerves, Ms. Keene read the chapter that day; she had a way of lending drama and emotion to the story when she read aloud that almost made it interesting to Tess. When the chapter reading was done, their assignment was to define a list of antiquated vocabulary words using context clues from the book. Tess was so glad she'd be able to use words like abstruse, dearth, and emolument. They'd sure come in handy.
Then the bell rang, and the capstone of the afternoon arrived: Senior English. Tess stayed in her seat, waiting as the rest of her classmates filed in one-by-one. She waived at Jacqui, who waved back with a grin.
When the bell rang again to signal the start of class, Ms. Keene held a stack of papers up above her head.
"All right, class," she called. "Remember these? You're dying to get your research proposals back, I just know it."
She began to make her rounds, passing the graded assignments back to each person. "For the most part, very good work. Some of you have some work to do, but keep in mind that this is the first assignment. We have time to learn. I will request a revised research proposal to be turned in along with your list of sources; if the revision changes your grade substantively, I'll record the second grade. It will demonstrate not only your commitment to academic excellence—" and here Ms. Keene paused good-naturedly to allow for the few chuckles that circulated the room— "But also your understanding of the concepts and ability to integrate the feedback. Make sense?"
Tess had been anxious about her proposal, but her day had been going well, and Ms. Keene's comments were encouraging. As she looked around the class, Tess saw a variety of expressions on the faces of her peers; some were musing over their grades or Ms. Keene's comments, their brows knit, while others were grinning and whispering to one another. Tess couldn't assess whether the reactions were good or bad.
Nevertheless, when Ms. Keene placed Tess's proposal on her desk, face-down, Tess was feeling optimistic. Then she turned the paper over.
There was no grade at the top. Instead, a neat, cursive message in red ink requested, Tess: Please see me after class.
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