In Ava’s English class on Wednesday, Ms. Palmer handed out another pop quiz.
Ava stared down at the page. There were only five questions. They would be five easy questions, if she’d managed to make it through the reading. But she’d fallen asleep again after staring at the same sentence for five minutes. She had no clue who Henry was, whether he was a wolf or a dog or a human, let alone what happened to him at the end of chapter 3. When Ms. Palmer asked them to put their pencils down, Ava turned her quiz over. She had left three of the answers totally blank. She avoided Jack’s eye throughout class and hurried from the room as soon as the bell rang, feeling sick to her stomach.
At dinner that night, Ava considered telling her mom and dad about her struggles in school. But the conversation swirled around the PTA meeting Mrs. Sackett had just attended, and Ava didn’t want to make her mother more upset than she already was.
“I was swarmed,” Mrs. Sackett said. “Even when I had nothing to say, they called on me and asked me for my input on pretty much every item on the agenda.”
“You’re a rock star, Mom,” said Tommy, pronging another piece of grilled chicken and depositing it on his plate.
“Why would they care what I think about whether the basketball team has orange or white piping on their new uniform shorts? Or whether the refreshment stand at the football game should add veggie burgers to the menu?”
“Ooh, they definitely should!” said Alex. Mrs. Sackett gave her a look. “Sorry.”
“But that’s nice, honey,” said Coach, a hopeful tone in his voice. “That they look up to you. Isn’t it?”
“Sure, I suppose, but I don’t know what makes me qualified to be in charge of all this. There are plenty of impressive parents in these meetings,” Mrs. Sackett continued. “April Cahill is a surgeon, and Dion’s mom is an attorney, and I even met a dad who works at the local TV station as a sports broadcaster.”
“So there are people you like?” Ava asked. She and her mom were so much alike, often quiet and reserved. Ava knew Mrs. Sackett had left some good friends behind in Massachusetts—she hoped her mom could find some good friends here, like she’d found Kylie.
“There are a few people I like,” she admitted. “But I feel this pressure to be so outgoing and authoritative, and that’s just not my personality. I’m not sure I’m up for this challenge, Michael.”
“Mom, you have to be up for it! For my sake!” Alex cried. “Student elections are just around the corner, and the more that you do, the better I look.”
Tommy snorted. Ava sighed.
“Alex, honey, you don’t need your mother’s help to get yourself elected into the student government,” said Coach. “Your classmates would be crazy not to vote for you.”
“Oh, and one other thing,” said Mrs. Sackett. “Somehow I got roped into baking twelve dozen cookies for the Activities Fair this Friday night. I don’t even remember agreeing to it, but then at the end of the meeting they reminded me about it. Everyone looked so excited that I was doing it that I just couldn’t bring myself to say I wouldn’t.”
“We’ll all help you,” said Alex quickly.
Ava’s heart sank. She hated baking cookies.
“Won’t we?” Alex said, more as a threat than a question, looking around the dinner table.
Coach had just taken a drink of his water. He froze midswallow, and then gulped. “Sweetie, Tommy and I have practice on Friday. You know that.”
Mrs. Sackett stood up. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m not even a good baker,” she said in a high voice that Ava had never heard before. “I didn’t sign up for this, Michael. I don’t have time for my job, for my family, or for myself.”
Coach stood up too and went around the table to take both of her hands in his. “Honey, I totally understand your frustration,” he said quietly. “But my job, my role here in town, they depend a lot on your relationship with the town.”
Mrs. Sackett nodded and grasped his hands for a moment. “I know. I just—I need some time to—to adjust, Michael.” She left the room.
The dinner table was quiet, except for Tommy, who had just taken a large bite of salad. He paused midcrunch, mouth bulging, looking guilty.
Alex broke the silence. “Don’t worry, Daddy,” she said brightly. “Ave and I will help her bake cookies, right, Ave?”
“Sure,” said Ava weakly. She studied Coach’s face and noticed that he had tiny worry lines around his eyes. She felt almost as bad for him as she did for her mother.
“And we’ll make your anniversary dinner the best ever, right, guys?”
Tommy and Ava nodded vigorously.
Coach’s mouth was set in a grim line. “Thanks, kids.”
That night Ava fell asleep after just three pages of White Fang.
On Thursday she got back the previous day’s pop quiz. There wasn’t even a grade on it; in large red letters across the top of the paper, Ms. Palmer had written “SEE ME!”
But when the bell rang, Ms. Palmer was bent over another student, answering a question. Ava glided out of the classroom, like a fish underwater, without getting stopped.
Ms. Palmer caught up with her before the end of the school day. “Ava Sackett!” she called as Ava was emerging from social studies with Kylie. Kylie gave her an uh-oh look and walked away.
“Did you see my note on your quiz?” asked Ms. Palmer, staring at Ava over her half-glasses.
“Um, yeah, sorry, had to get to my locker,” Ava mumbled, looking down at her green sneakers.
“Ava, I’m baffled by your uneven work,” said Ms. Palmer, not unkindly. “You are clearly very bright, and you say insightful things when called on in class discussions, but you don’t appear to be keeping up with the outside reading. Is everything all right at home?”
Ava thought about the sort-of fight her parents had had the night before, but she nodded. “Everything’s fine,” she said. “I just . . . I guess I just have trouble concentrating sometimes.”
“What do you mean, exactly?” asked Ms. Palmer.
“I don’t know . . . my mind just sort of wanders when I try to do the reading,” Ava replied truthfully. “I’ve been trying really hard, but . . .” Her voice trailed off as she remembered Coach’s pep talk from the night before. “I just have to try harder. And I will, I promise.”
Ms. Palmer nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks for your honesty. You know, I’m going to recommend to Mrs. Hyde, the learning specialist, that you participate in after-school study until you can improve on your homework performance,” she said. “Why don’t you try it out today, to see what you think?”
Before Ava could respond to say she had to do something after school, the bell rang.
“Go on to class,” said Ms. Palmer. “We can talk more about this later.”
Ava scurried away, wondering how this after-school study thing would work. She was supposed to meet Alex to go to Le Pain after school today. And very soon, football tryouts would start.