3
Ted woke up the next morning to his radio alarm clock with the volume cranked all the way up.
“Good morning, listeners!” said the DJ. “That song was “Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett. Get ready for two more October favorites, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show!”
“Not today,” said Ted.
He smacked his hand down on top of the alarm clock, felt for the off button, then threw on some clothes and shuffled downstairs.
Good morning, Teddy! read the note on the kitchen table. Just a reminder that I am at an early meeting, and I won’t be able to drive you to school or pick you up afterward. Here’s some money for the bus.
Ted slowly worked through a mouthful of toast, squinting down at his mom’s handwriting.
P.S., it’s Wednesday, and you know what that means.
He groaned. It was test day.
Trash day, his mom’s note continued. Please bring the trash cans to the curb when you get home from school.
Ted crumpled up the note and threw it into the recycling bin. Trash cans were not something he could think about right now. That was for After-School-Ted. Right now, Before-School-Ted had a bigger issue at hand: the test. Specifically, getting to it.
He swallowed his toast, grabbed his bus fare and his backpack, opened the front door, and stepped out into the October air.
* * *
The number 42 bus stopped just a couple of blocks from Ted’s house every twenty minutes according to the schedule posted online.
Come on, Bus, Ted thought.
He pulled the strings of his sweatshirt tighter around his chin, switching between glaring at his flashcards and glaring at the cross-street where the bus was supposed to appear, any minute now.
Don’t do this to me today.
Ted checked the time on his phone—the bus should have been there three minutes ago.
He began to pace.
Finally, he heard the rumble of the bus. It inched up to the stop, and after what felt like eight years, the green-and-yellow door swung open.
“Hold up there, son,” said the bus driver. “There’s a passenger coming out.”
Ted’s eyes bulged.
“I’m sorry, dear,” an old lady called from just inside the bus. “I’ll just be a moment . . . I’m not moving so fast today. It’s the hips, you see, they want to stay on the bus.”
“Take your time, Millie,” said the driver.
Something clattered and fell.
“Whoops! Don’t mind me, that’s just the cane . . . do you mind—oh thank you, ma’am, you are too kind.” The old lady hoisted herself and her cane down to the sidewalk. “Thank you for your patience, young man.”
Ted forced a smile on his face. “No problem.”
He climbed aboard, paid the bus fare, and found an empty seat by the window.
Finally.
The bus lurched forward and then stopped.
Ted peered out the window and saw that a trash truck had pulled in front of the bus. “Trash day,” he whispered, remembering his mom’s note. He watched as two workers hopped off of the truck and slowly picked up each trash can along the street, one at a time, before spinning like dancers in the world’s slowest and smelliest dance and dumping the contents into the truck.
“Sorry, folks,” the bus driver called. “Looks like we’ll be running a few extra minutes behind schedule.”
* * *
The bus reached Ted’s stop twenty minutes after class started. He flew off the bus and across the Thomas T. Tenley High School parking lot, slamming one foot in front of the other. His backpack slapped limply against his back.
Was this parking lot always so long?
He reached the blue double doors and burst through them in a blaze of sweat and panic.
“No running,” called a hall monitor.
Ted ran past him.
He stumbled down a staircase, turned a corner, slid down the hall, and lunged at the door to his history classroom. The doorknob turned and Ted half walked, half fell into the room.
His classmates all looked up at him from their tests.
“Welcome!” chirped Ms. Stevenson from behind her desk. “We’ve already started, but you’re not too far behind.”
She held out a blank test. “Here you go!”
“Thanks.”
The test trembled a bit in Ted’s hands as he walked down the row of desks to his seat.
Adam’s face looked smooth and calm as he looked down at his test.
Jenn was smiling slightly as she worked on hers.
Can I even call that work? Ted wondered as he sat down. They’re just pretending to do what I’m about to actually do. His heart was still pounding from the run. Okay. Ignore it, Ted. Just focus.
When Ted looked down at his test, though, the writing seemed to wobble on the page. He read the first question three times before the letters behaved themselves and settled into words.
What impact did President James K. Polk’s comments to Congress in 1848 have on the California gold rush?
Ted tapped his pencil against his temple. He remembered Ms. Stevenson talking about President Polk. It had sounded like “President Poke,” and he had drawn hedgehogs in button-down shirts all over his notes that day. Ted could picture the hedgehogs, just not the information that he had written next to them.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ted saw Jenn calmly turn a page on her test.
He put a star next to the first question and skipped to the second question.
What were the three main routes that people used to reach California?
Ted narrowed the five answer options down to three, but then he got stuck again. He drew another star and moved to the third question.
Soon the first two pages of the test were covered in stars like a constellation of doubt.
Adam had taught him a test-taking strategy he’d named “Preemptive Panic.” You starred all of the test questions you weren’t sure about, added them all up, and subtracted that number from the total number of test questions to see what your worst possible score could be. That way you could be prepared for the worst and get a somewhat happy surprise if you guessed some answers correctly.
So far, only nine questions were starless. His paper looked like the kind of night sky that people see out in the countryside or in the desert.
Behind him, he heard the scrape of Adam’s chair being pushed back.
Adam strolled up to the front of the room, his backpack slung over one shoulder, and handed his test to Ms. Stevenson.
“That was fast, Adam! You weren’t rushing your California gold rush test, were you?”
A couple of students chuckled quietly.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Ms. S,” said Adam. “Could I please leave early, since I’m done?”
Ms. Stevenson smiled. “Of course. Have a great rest of your Wednesday!” She took a look at her watch. “We still have about fifteen minutes left for the rest of you to finish. Take your time!”
I am, thought Ted. That’s the problem.
He looked back at his test paper.
Who was Samuel Brannan?
On the corner of his test, Ted drew a large question mark wearing a cowboy hat and boots with little spurs.
Jenn slowly flipped her test to the front page, picked up her bag, and headed to the front of the room.
Ted watched her hand Mrs. Stevenson her test and walk out the door to join Adam in the hall. Before the door closed, he caught a glimpse of them high-fiving.
One by one, the rest of his classmates finished their tests and filtered out of the door. The stack of tests on Ms. Stevenson’s desk grew taller and taller.
Soon, Ted was the last one left.
At five minutes before the bell, Ms. Stevenson gave a polite cough. At two minutes before the bell, she said kindly, “Ted, you’re just about out of time.”
Ted wiped the sweat off of his upper lip and nodded. He circled random letters for the last eight answers and then admitted defeat. He shoved his pencil back into his backpack, stood, and handed his damp test paper to Ms. Stevenson just as the bell rang.
* * *
Ted couldn’t focus in any of his other classes. He buzzed with a nervous energy that he just couldn’t shake, even after running laps in second-period gym class. For the rest of the day, he just kept doodling little boxes on everything, as if he could climb right in and forget about what a disaster that test was.
Maybe I should have just cheated with Adam and Jenn, he thought as his science class talked about genes
“This,” his science teacher said, pointing to a slide with a sour-looking guy on it, “is August Weismann. Some people used to think that if you got a major injury, you could pass it on to your kids. August did an experiment to prove them wrong. He took some mice and cut off their tails, and then waited to see if their babies would be born with shorter tails or no tails at all.”
He clicked to the next slide, showing a picture of some mice. Their tails were, as far as Ted could tell, normal.
“As you can see, that’s not how life works. Even if you lose your tail, the next generation gets to start over.”
Ted drew another little box on his notes. Starting over sounded nice.
His pocket vibrated; Adam had texted their group chat.
I think Nina’s coming to the diner with all of us after my recital tomorrow night . . .
Ted’s heart did a running jump into his throat. He had somehow forgotten that Nina also played piano.
Jenn sent a heart eyes emoji.
OMG. Ted can finally make his move!
Adam instantly responded.
Yes! Get her number, dude! Be her Ted in Shining Armor!
Ted checked that the coast was still clear and then quickly texted them back.
If my mom even lets me out of the house when she sees what I got on that test . . . maybe. LOL.
Adam sent a GIF of a baby giving a thumbs-up.
Jenn, this random baby, and I all believe in you.
Ted tried and failed to tune back in to what his teacher was saying. He had been flustered before; now he was doubly flustered.
He imagined casually sliding into the diner booth next to Nina. She wouldn’t be able to decide between a chocolate milkshake or a vanilla milkshake. He would offer to get one and she could get the other. They would share—two straws in each milkshake.
Of course, none of that would happen if his mom made him stay home because he failed that test. It would all come down to his grade.
Who knows, maybe I’m a lucky guesser, Ted mused.
He slid his phone back into his pocket and waited for the bell to ring. The sooner Wednesday ended, the sooner he would get his test back—the sooner he would know.