The questions began.

The team across from them slammed the buzzer just as fast as Vi, and Marianne flinched a little every time.

Question after question after question and it was as if the Ermines were a team of one. Vi answered almost everything, losing momentum slightly when the other team hit the buzzer a split second before her once or twice.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dan lean toward the buzzer, only to be too late at every turn. And Nina, seated next to her, kept glancing over at her parents, like she had to check their reaction to every moment. In between those glances, she breathed so loudly and rapidly that Marianne wouldn’t have been surprised if the cameras picked up the noise.

The camera’s lens pointed right at Marianne. And she could’ve sworn that all the parents stared at her.

Marianne found herself surveying the row of family members. Could they tell she was a D student? Could they sense it or deduce it from her blank face?

In so many ways, she’d tried for years to “look” stupid. Like a uniform. Not because she wanted to, but because she had decided to embrace what she was. She knew “dolled up,” as her mom would say, and “not smart” sometimes went together in people’s eyes. Like Lorelai Wheeler, who had been just the right amount of cute.

That day she had on tinted lip gloss and a couple of shades of eyeshadow. Did that make them see the stupid?

When her eyes hit Mr. Garcia, she flipped her attention back to the moderator.

She couldn’t look at Mr. Garcia. He was why she was there. He’d forced her hand. He’d made it impossible to pass. Because winning this? Not. Possible.

“Belize!” she heard Nina squeak out, before immediately slapping a hand to her forehead and crying, “Oh, no, wait!” at the same time Amir the Moderator responded, “Incorrect.”

Mr. Garcia was like a Quiz Quest traitor! He had tricked her into thinking that he supported her by standing up to Lucas and made her think he liked her after all the Quiz Quest practices and then gave her that D on the test.

No, no. It wasn’t his fault. She knew that.

She was the one who got the bad grade. It was all her and her bad brain. Mr. Garcia always said: You get the grade you earn. She was a D student.

And in the eyes of the world that made her a D person.

“Charles Dickens,” she heard Vi say, her syllables clipped, her gaze zeroed in on Amir.

Onto the extension round. Vi didn’t even confer with them.

“Jane Austen.”

“The House on Mango Street.”

“Langston Hughes.”

A couple of questions later, Dan figured out a math problem, but he was too late. The other team buzzed in first.

Nina kept mouthing things to herself.

Marianne, who knew she wasn’t one to talk, nudged Nina with her knee. Someone had to remind the smart ones to stay sharp!