The Boy Who Has No Belief - Victoria Quinn Page 0,44

implicitly, knew she wasn’t like the other horrible people who had stomped on my heart.

12

Emerson

I walked in the door after a long day and found Lizzie watching TV on the couch. “Did you do your homework?”

“Hello to you too…” She was on her phone, in her pajama shorts and softball t-shirt.

“If you want to be left unsupervised, you need to act like you’re being supervised.” I left my purse on the counter and pulled out my laptop.

She stayed on her phone.

I looked at her. “Lizzie?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I knew my daughter better than that. “Lizzie.”

She sighed and dropped her phone, wearing that irritated expression on her face. “Just leave me alone.”

My daughter had never said anything like that to me before. “Lizzie…” I moved to the seat beside her and looked at her. She still wouldn’t look at me, so I stared at the side of her face. “Sweetheart, you’re scaring me. You can talk to me about anything. You know that.”

With her arms crossed over her chest, she continued to look down. Then she squinted her eyes, took a deep breath, and burst into tears. “I got an F on my math assignment.” She quickly covered her face with her hands because she was embarrassed to cry. She never cried. She was stronger than that.

“What?” I asked in shock. “How…how is that possible?”

She continued to cry into her hands, muffling her sobs.

“Lizzie.” I grabbed her wrists and pulled them from her face. “Tell me what happened.”

She turned away, trying to hide her face. “My teacher said I didn’t do it the way he taught, so he marked all the problems wrong…and then accused me of cheating.”

My eyebrows rose and nearly jumped off my face. “He did what?”

“And I didn’t cheat. Derek didn’t help me. I mean, he taught me everything I didn’t understand and then helped me do some practice problems, but then he had me do the worksheet on my own…”

“I believe you, honey.”

“So, the teacher gave me an F and said if I do it again, he’ll report me to the principal.”

An explosion erupted inside my head, furious with this motherfucker. I wanted to scream and shout, but I took a breath and calmed myself because losing my shit wouldn’t make my daughter feel better. “Honey, everything is going to be okay. I’ll talk to your teacher tomorrow and sort the whole thing out.”

Her cries had subsided, but she didn’t look at me. She wiped the snot away from her nose with her thumb and gave a sniff.

“Don’t stress about it. Once he understands the situation, it’ll be alright.”

She tightened her arms over her chest.

“Lizzie, why are you so upset?” I could see Lizzie throwing a fit and dropping a bunch of f-bombs, but not sitting there and crying. It wasn’t like her at all.

Her chin bowed to the floor. “I just… Derek made me feel like I could do anything. I finally didn’t feel stupid. I finally felt like I could be something, you know? And then I do my best and my teacher says I’m doing it wrong and I’m cheating…and I’ll be lucky to pass the class with a C-.”

I felt like someone had just punched me in the chest. I felt sick, listening to my daughter describe the moment her dreams were shattered. “Your teacher is wrong, Lizzie. Derek is right.”

“Well, Derek doesn’t give me grades. Derek doesn’t get me suspended.”

“I promise you won’t get suspended, Lizzie. We will sort this out. Your teacher is just an…” I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. I lost my patience and blurted out the truth. “Asshole.”

Lizzie turned to me, smiling slightly through her tears.

There was my little girl. I moved my arms around her shoulders. “Derek told you the truth, honey. You can be anything you want to be. But unfortunately, some people like to stand in the way of that. Some people like to put down others to make themselves feel better. Derek likes to lift people up—and your teacher doesn’t.”

“Why?” she whispered. “Why do people like to be…mean?”

I shrugged, at a loss for words. I didn’t understand why people could be so cruel. “I wish I knew, honey…but I don’t.”

Math was her last class of the day, so I planned to pick up Lizzie from school and confront her teacher. If that motherfucker thought he could accuse my daughter of being a cheater, he had another think coming.

I didn’t ask Derek if I could leave early until it was time for me to go. I knew he