applause. Persey wished she could share their enthusiasm.
Kevin held his hand up for a high five, which Persey half-heartedly returned. “Sweet! This is going to be so awesome! You’re the best, Perse.”
The best. Persey seriously doubted it.
PERSEY WATCHED HER DAD’S FACE AS HE READ THE PIECE OF paper on the dining table. His fingers were in constant motion, spinning his ornate wedding ring over and over on his finger as he processed what he was reading. She could almost pinpoint the moment his temper went from slow roll to out-of-control freight train, all by the color of his face. His pale skin was like the worst poker tell ever: a flush of pink when his anger sparked, then a deep rose as it grew, and finally a purplish red like an angry zit as he crossed the point of no return.
“WHAT THE FUCK?”
She should apologize. Say she was sorry. Try to believe it. That’s what her twelve-year-old self would have done, but she was thirteen now, and knew better than to try and argue with her father. It only made things worse. Instead, she just stared defensively (tactically) at the floor.
“A sixty-one percent on your algebra test? How is it even possible that you could be this stupid?”
She wasn’t sure why she thought high school would be any different from middle school, where her bad grades had always been a surefire way of igniting her dad’s rage. Especially since he’d insisted she attend the same fancy prep school as her brother, even paying someone smarter than her to take the entry exam on her behalf. But once she was admitted to the Allen Academy, Persey was way out of her league, and only two months into freshman year, her academic situation already had her teetering on the brink of expulsion.
“Absolutely UN. AC. CEP. TA. BLE.” He pounded his flattened palm on the table with each syllable, as if he needed to make his point any clearer. Then he waited, staring at her, unblinking.
What did he want her to say? She’d never been good at math, and the anxiety she’d feel creeping up from somewhere deep in her stomach as she sat down to take each and every exam certainly didn’t help.
“Well?”
“I thought I knew the answers,” she began, carefully choosing her words. “But…but then I panicked. I just…Tests just aren’t my strong point, Dad.”
His steely eyes burned into hers. “That implies you’re good at something. That you have a strong point. Which you don’t,” he added before Persey could answer.
That’s not true. Okay, so tests and reading were a struggle. But she wasn’t lying when she said she knew the answers beforehand. She’d listened to an audiobook that covered all the material on the exam. She could have recited every formula verbatim if the teacher had asked her, but once she saw the questions on the page, it was as if her mind went blank.
Persey was savvy enough to know that her difficulty might actually be a form of learning disability and that there was probably medication that could help her, but her father didn’t believe in learning disabilities. Or mental health maintenance. Or weakness of any kind.
Which didn’t stop her from bringing it up again.
“Dad, I think I have, like, an actual learning disability. Maybe if I saw a doctor or—”
“Laziness isn’t a learning disability,” he said, cutting her off. Like a king issuing a decree.
“I’m not lazy,” she protested, unable to stop herself.
“Read my lips.” He rocketed to his feet. “Lay. Zee. And no child of mine is lazy, get it? You’ve got two, three years tops to get your shit together before no college in the world will touch you. No child of mine doesn’t go to college. No child of mine doesn’t try.”
“I did try!”
“A D-minus is trying? Are you kidding me?” He wrinkled his nose and angled his face away from her, as if his daughter smelled like rotting flesh. “This is basic algebra. A third grader should be able to get a D-minus on this exam. Or were you trying to get this grade?”
“N-no, sir.”
“Three x minus five equals seven,” he said, reading from the page. “Solve for x. How did you come up with seven? Literally, seven is part of the equation. It’s not even a factor of three!”
“Four.” She didn’t even hesitate. Standing there in front of her father, picturing the numbers and letter in her mind, she knew the answer. Quickly. Easily. But in a classroom with a ticking clock and