Harry scowled at me. I didn’t know how old he was, really, and I had no idea how he’d come to be homeless and living in the park where we played chess each morning. I did know that he was a formidable opponent.

“You,” he grumbled, eyeing the board, “are a horrible person.”

Three moves later, I had him. “Checkmate. You know what that means, Harry.”

He gave me a dirty look. “I have to let you buy me breakfast.” Those were the terms of our long-standing bet. When I won, he couldn’t turn down the free meal.

To my credit, I only gloated a little. “It’s good to be queen.”

I made it to school on time but barely. I had a habit of cutting things close. I walked the same tightrope with my grades: How little effort could I put in and still get an A? I wasn’t lazy. I was practical. Picking up an extra shift was worth trading a 98 for a 92.

I was in the middle of drafting an English paper in Spanish class when I was called to the office. Girls like me were supposed to be invisible. We didn’t get summoned for sit-downs with the principal. We made exactly as much trouble as we could afford to make, which in my case was none.

“Avery.” Principal Altman’s greeting was not what one would call warm. “Have a seat.”

I sat.

He folded his hands on the desk between us. “I assume you know why you’re here.”

Unless this was about the weekly poker game I’d been running in the parking lot to finance Harry’s breakfasts—and sometimes my own—I had no idea what I’d done to draw the administration’s attention. “Sorry,” I said, trying to sound sufficiently meek, “but I don’t.”

Principal Altman let me sit with my response for a moment, then presented me with a stapled packet of paper. “This is the physics test you took yesterday.”

“Okay,” I said. That wasn’t the response he was looking for, but it was all I had. For once, I’d actually studied. I couldn’t imagine I’d done badly enough to merit intervention.

“Mr. Yates graded the tests, Avery. Yours was the only perfect

score.”

“Great,” I said, in a deliberate effort to keep myself from saying okay again.

“Not great, young lady. Mr. Yates intentionally creates exams that challenge the abilities of his students. In twenty years, he’s never given a perfect score. Do you see the problem?”

I couldn’t quite bite back my instinctive reply. “A teacher who designs tests most of his students can’t pass?”

Mr. Altman narrowed his eyes. “You’re a good student, Avery. Quite good, given your circumstances. But you don’t exactly have a history of setting the curve.”

That was fair, so why did I feel like he’d gut-punched me?