“If something doesn’t change,” Ms. Clarke told her, “you will not be graduating with your class this year. You will have to repeat the eighth grade.”

2

MARIANNE’S MOM WENT TO Harvard, but you’d never know it. Not because they weren’t rich (they weren’t), and not because her mom wasn’t smart (she was). She was a linguist and spoke five languages, including one called Berber, which wasn’t even written down, only spoken. Marianne couldn’t imagine that. Those kids didn’t even have to learn spelling in school! No, you wouldn’t know her mom went to Harvard because she never mentioned it. The only actual proof was the PhD diploma in an oak wood frame hanging on the wall in her mom’s office. If Marianne had gone to Harvard, she’d point to the diploma whenever someone questioned her. And she’d pronounce it “Hahvad,” with a British accent, because that felt right. Oh, you don’t think I should chew gum in the hallways? And she’d point. Hahvad, she’d say.

But with Marianne’s mom, the only way you could tell she went someplace fancy was from the big words she used. Words like “portend,” and “elucidate,” and “precipice.” And every small question had a long answer. Like, “Mom, if everyone is so mad at the president all the time, why don’t we just have an election right now?”

“It’s complicated,” her mom’s responses often began, as she pushed her reading glasses up onto her hairline. “Really, we have elections quite often. You see, you have to consider the mindset of the founders as they composed the constitution, and their previous experience of life under a monarchy…”

She usually lost Marianne by word five.

When Ms. Clarke told them that Marianne wouldn’t graduate from the eighth grade, Marianne found herself looking at her mom and wondering if she’d ever imagined, all those years ago in Hahvad, that her youngest kid would be a grade-repeater.

A grade-repeater. What would she tell Skyla? Would Marianne be with the seventh graders? They’d all look littler than her. She’d be a giant to them, especially the boys. And what if she didn’t graduate the next year, too, and all of a sudden she was a fully formed teenager using her driver’s license to take her classmates home from the eighth grade? What happened if someone never graduated middle school? Did they just get to drop out? How did they go to college? Would colleges know she’d been held back a grade? How would she ever move to Hawaii and go to U of H with Skyla?

And so this time Marianne listened. She listened to Ms. Clarke explain that Mr. Garcia said it would be numerically impossible for Marianne to pass if she didn’t score extremely high on the next quizzes and final test. She took in the information she’d known somewhere in the back of her head, that unfortunately Mr. Garcia “did not believe in the concept of extra credit, but rather ‘regular credit’” and that could “present a problem for Marianne.” She heard her parents get defensive and say they’d been checking Saturn Grades constantly, but still they had no idea her midterms would be so low. She listened to Ms. Clarke reply, “Ultimately, the choice to pass the grade or not is up to Marianne. I know she’s been evaluated for learning differences, and the conclusion was that this is a matter of hard work, dedication, and focus. She has to show us she’s serious about making a change.”