Annabelle followed her mom to Mrs. Sloane’s office, and they sat on the benches in the hall where kids had to wait for their punishments when they’d gotten in trouble.

She thought back to the first time she’d been inside Mrs. Sloane’s office, when she visited the Academy the summer before sixth grade. Back then, she still let Mom choose her outfits and braid her hair to the side on special days. She’d worn a pale yellow dress and ballet flats that had a shimmer in the leather, and she’d tried to count the shimmery flecks as she waited for Mrs. Sloane to let her in.

She’d known the answers to all the questions Mom had made her practice answering: her favorite subject, and what she did outside of school, and her favorite book.

But then Mrs. Sloane didn’t ask any of those things. She spent most of the time peering down through her glasses at Annabelle’s fifth-grade report card and the results of the tests Annabelle had taken as part of her application to the Academy. The only thing she asked was how hard Annabelle was willing to work.

“Really hard,” Annabelle had promised.

Now, looking at her final seventh-grade report card, Mrs. Sloane would probably think she’d lied.

The office door swung open, and its creak echoed in the empty hallway.

“I’m so glad it worked out for you to come in today,” Mrs. Sloane said, shaking Mom’s hand first and then Annabelle’s.

“Thank you so much for making the time to meet with us,” Mom babbled. “Nothing is a bigger priority to us than Annabelle’s schoolwork, and we think it’s so important to talk about this year now, while we have time to make some changes before eighth grade starts.”

Mom took a seat at one end of the hard, gray sofa that sat against the wall of Mrs. Sloane’s office, a few feet away from her cluttered desk, and pulled out Annabelle’s learning plan. An educational psychologist had written it up after Annabelle had all that extra testing in the winter of sixth grade, just a few months into her first year at the Academy, when she was already falling behind. Mrs. Sloane walked over to her desk chair, and Mom talked and talked about accommodations and tutoring and final exams.

Annabelle sat down on the other end of the couch and examined the gray and white area rug underneath her feet. The rug hadn’t been there the last time she was here, and she tried to imagine Mrs. Sloane picking it out.

Mrs. Sloane had probably wanted something that wasn’t too cheerful, since almost nobody went into her office for a happy conversation. Something too cheerful would rub that in.

“Annabelle?”

Mrs. Sloane’s voice now. So Mom had finally stopped talking.

“I’m sorry,” Annabelle said. “What was the question?”

Mrs. Sloane gave her a patient smile, but it was the kind of patient that strained to cover up exasperation. Annabelle was an expert on that kind of patient, because she got that same look from teachers. The nicer ones, anyway, who bothered to hide their annoyance.