“YOU HAVE FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. IF YOU FINISH EARLY, YOU CAN READ A BOOK.”

Yaaaasssss! Now we’re talkin’.

I got right to work and smoked the first ten problems. I showed my work in detail, and wore my lead out bubbling in those answers. Then I hit a problem that stumped me.

This was the formula that Doug and I were having trouble with last week. Ugh. What was it? Maybe I’ll just skip this one for now . . .

The next problem was easy. And so were the next twenty. Mr. Dooley had even thrown in a few joke questions like, What is the name of your middle school? Ha. What a joker. I breathed easy as I scratched out my work, sure that Mr. Dooley would be impressed by my first middle school test grade! I glanced up at the clock as I finished up the last problem.

I popped onto my feet, returned the sunflower pencil to the jar, and took my test and scan sheet up to Mr. Dooley.

“ARCADE! FIRST ONE TO FINISH. LOOKS LIKE YOU HAD THE LUCK OF THE SUNFLOWER WORKING IN YOUR FAVOR.” Mr. Dooley winked and placed my scan sheet in the top right drawer of his desk.

“I think you’re right, Mr. Dooley! I won’t be surprised if I get an A . . . A for ARCADE!”

*  *  *

I got an F . . . F for FORGOT! It turned out that when I skipped question eleven, I forgot to skip a bubble! So I entered the rest of the answers in the wrong rows. Mr. Dooley had run our scan sheets during the morning break, so I got the bad news right away.

“Welcome to the fail club,” Wiley Overton said to me as I tried to pass him on the way out of class. He held up his scan sheet to show me his failing grade, almost like he was proud of it. “Everyone’s buzzing about how the bookworm failed the math test. How’d you do it?”

“I skipped a problem, but I forgot to skip the bubble. My answers got all off. Is that what you did?”

He scratched his head. “Nah. That would be really dumb! I just didn’t know how to do the math. I can fix my problem with a tutor. Not sure what you can do about yours.”

“I guess I need to PAY MORE ATTENTION WHEN I AM BEING TESTED.”

Wiley actually laughed at my attempt to imitate Mr. Dooley. “I’m sure you’ll do better next time.” Then he looked down at his math book and sighed. “Math is supposed to be my good subject.” He unzipped his huge backpack to shove the book in.

Hey, wait. Was that . . . flamingos?

I stepped in to get a closer look. Wiley quickly zipped up his pack. “Back off, bookworm, I got personal space issues.”