Page 5

I looked up from the couch. My mom had just walked out of her office. And she was staring at my hand on my chest. She probably thought I was having a heart attack or something.

“I’m good.” I let my hand fall to my thigh even though the pain hadn’t eased even a tiny bit. “Just thinking.”

“Care to share what you’re thinking about?”

Not really.

My silence was enough to make her come over to the couch with the pile of papers in her hand. My mom was a teacher. But unlike my uncle who didn’t want Scarlett anywhere out of his sight, my mom had boundaries. She taught at a public school down the road.

I eyed the paper on the top of her stack. She’d given someone an F on an essay. That was rough. She normally only taught math, but she was filling in for a teacher on leave. She’d been so busy recently.

“Did he not write anything insightful?” I asked.

“Hm?”

I tapped the essay.

My mom shook her head. “He didn’t do the assignment. I asked everyone to write an essay about our latest reading and he wrote an essay about why he shouldn’t have had to do the reading in the first place.”

My eyes scanned down the page and I tried to hold back my laugh and failed. There was a whole paragraph about the nuances of Harry Potter and how if teachers wanted students to like reading, they should assign interesting readable books.

“I think he probably deserves an A for that argument.”

My mom just shook her head. “Absolutely not. He’s an arrogant attention whore and he’s going to wind up failing out just like he failed out of the last school he went to. I’m not sure there’s a school in Manhattan that he hasn’t attended.”

He sounded like trouble. I bit the inside of my lip. I wondered if Mr. Halifax thought I was an attention whore? And then my stomach churned. What if this student was trying to hook up with my mom? Gross. Thinking that was gross made my stomach churn more. Did Mr. Halifax think I was gross?

No. Never. This student was trying to get attention from a married woman. Mr. Halifax was single. There was no ring on his finger. It was completely different.

“You’re not often home on Friday nights,” my mom said.

I shrugged. “Well, no football tonight.”

“Still. Why don’t you call Scarlett and have her over? We can have a girls night.”

That sounded kind of perfect. But... “She’s hanging out with Axel tonight.” I didn’t know that for sure for sure. But the odds were high enough. I was so happy for my best friend. But I already missed her a bit. Everything was different now that she was engaged. Of course it was. I just wished Mr. Halifax would wake up so it could be different for me too.

“Well, we could watch a movie,” my mom said.

I stared at the big pile of papers. “Aren’t you in the middle of grading those?”

“I can do both.”

I didn’t want my mom’s pity. She was busy. I wasn’t. “No, it’s fine,” I said. “You should finish those.”

“You sure?”

I nodded.

She started to stand up.

“But, Mom?”

“Yes?”

“What would you do if you had a crush on a guy who thinks you’re invisible?”

“I don’t think anyone could possibly think you’re invisible. You light up every room you walk into. You’re my shining star.” She kissed the top of my head.