That’s when she offers the hand, and I shake it. Sweat and all.
As I stroll back across campus, the terror I had been feeling is slowly replaced.
Scoutwillfollow orders.
I’ll make sure of it.
twenty-eight
I hurrytoward the science building, feet pounding against the pavement. Grades from our last exam are posted outside the professor’s office, and I don’t want to waste a second not knowing mine.
Normally, Ellis and I would race over and hold hands as we peeked. I would read hers first, then she’d read mine. But now?
I’m alone.
Not even asshole Rowan is here to make me feel the throb of competition.
So I slow my steps at the barrenness of the situation. With a hard swallow, I scan the sheet in front of me, finger trailing down the numbers until I reach mine.
And my heart skips a beat.
What is that-that…gradethat starts with a 7?
I failed?
There’sno wayI failed. I nailed the answers. Iknow I did.
A few other students push past me to check their scores, but I’m frozen. Unable to think. Blinking again, I check the number a third time. A fourth.
It makes no sense. My answers were perfect… I thought they were.
“Shannon?” I snag the coat of the girl wandering up to the score sheet. She always seems to do well in class.
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember what you wrote? I want to make sure I answered the same.”
This starts a lively discussion with the students around me, all of us comparing answers. And yep. I think I got it all correct.
The more my answers match theirs, the hotter my chest burns. Theremusthave been a mistake.
My glasses nearly slip off my face as I knock on Professor Klive’s door.
“Enter.”
The older man with a shocking plume of white hair is bent over an overloaded desk, shuffling through papers while pulling on his white lab coat.
“Miss Turner. Come in,” he says with a cursory glance my way.
I shut the door and wander toward the seats in front of his desk. Typically, he’s been very chill. Laid back. Whenever we have questions, he answers them fully and kindly. But he’s avoiding my eyes as he continues bustling about his office.
“I wanted to discuss my grade on the exam.”
“Hmm? Yes, tragedy has struck, I suppose. You can attempt to make up for the poor grade with the next one.”
“But I answered the same as the other students who got As and Bs…”
He shrugs, then plops down in front of his laptop and pulls something up. I stand there, anger and hope tearing at each other inside my chest.
