Mom took a sip of her water, then set the glass down and rubbed her fingertips against her temples. “I don’t want you to have to go through it all again—what you went through this spring. All that work and then all that disappointment.”

But what was the alternative? Not working as hard so the disappointment wouldn’t be so big?

In the Bennetts’ yard, Kelsey squealed as Julia chased her. Mitch’s knife creaked against his plate as he cut himself a bite of grilled chicken.

“Mrs. Sloane said she’d look back at your learning plan to make sure the school is following through on all your accommodations,” Mom said. “Maybe you could use your notes for some of your tests so you wouldn’t have to memorize so much. And maybe you should be getting extra time for little quizzes, too. Not just the bigger assessments.”

Annabelle cringed. It was embarrassing enough to have people ask where she’d been when she took extra time for tests. If she got to take out her notes when everybody else didn’t and left the room for extra time on every tiny quiz, too? Ugh.

Mitch spoke up. “Well, I think this could be a good opportunity to strategize. Come up with a new action plan for next year, right?”

Those were typical Mitch words: opportunity and strategize and action plan. The whole reason they’d moved to Gray Island was that Mitch had found an opportunity to capitalize on—someone from his old job had told him there weren’t any finance people on the island, so if the year-round families wanted help investing their money or making business plans for their stores or planning for their retirement, they had to go to the mainland.

“Right!” Mom agreed. “Maybe Mrs. Sloane will have suggestions we haven’t thought of. Things that have helped other students in the past.”

“Maybe,” Annabelle said.

Or maybe Mrs. Sloane would say she wasn’t really Gray Island Academy material after all.

She cleared her throat. “What . . . what if Mrs. Sloane says they don’t want to keep giving me financial aid?”

Mom and Mitch both had successful businesses now, but Mitch had two daughters from when he was married before, and they were both in college. Annabelle knew their tuitions cost a lot. She was pretty sure Mom and Mitch couldn’t afford to pay any more of her Academy tuition than they already did.

And if she had to start over at public school, then everyone would know she hadn’t been smart enough to handle the Academy. And the other girls from swim team would say things like “Oh, you decided our school was good enough for you after all?” And they’d say it like they were joking, but they wouldn’t be, really.

Mom set down her forkful of chicken and pushed her plate away.

“That’s not going to happen,” she said.

And that was that. Conversation over.

Chapter 6

After dinner, Annabelle shuffled through the mail that Mitch had left on the table in the hallway. The official copy of her report card should be coming any day now, and she hated the idea of Mom picking up the fancy version that was always printed on thick cream-colored paper with the Academy logo as if it were some keepsake to treasure.