Magic in Costa Rica

Between Us

As soon as we got back to school, everyone started preparing for midterms, and basically all hell broke loose. I had four projects due within the span of a week, and spent every waking hour either doing school work, or going to actual work. I didn't even have time to write, which would've made me sad if I had time to think about being sad. Thankfully, and surprisingly, our midterm for English wasn't going to be very difficult. Mr. Miller assigned us two books, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby to read over the span of two weeks, and told us that he would be combining our exam with mid-year conferences. Mid-year conferences were one-on-one interviews between teacher and student to discuss the progress each student has made over the course of the semester. Apparently there would be some type of oral exam about the two books we were assigned incorporated into the mid-year conference. I was a little nervous, but at least we didn't have to complete some huge project.

My mid-year conference was scheduled on a Friday, so I had the whole week to think about what I was going to say, although I thought it was a little hard to prepare for. Carla, on the other hand, found a way to study. She wrote down dozens of interview questions on index cards, which she made me ask her during lunch so she could practice her responses.

"In which way do you believe you're writing has most improved over the course of the semester?" I asked, and she answered without a moment's hesitation.

"Great question, Mr. Miller. I think that my grammar and mechanics have seen the most improvements, and I have the data to back it up. My first essay, you made twelve corrections based on grammar, punctuation, and capitalization errors in my work. However, my errors have been reduced by 75%, as my last essay contained only three mistakes." She smiled proudly and I laughed. "What? Was that not good?" she cringed. I shook my head.

"No, no it was great, it's just a bit ironic. You wrote the wrong 'your' on the index card." I turned it to her so she could see. She slapped her palm to her forehead.

"Shit, I can't believe I did that! Well, that's what I get for not proofreading these." She snatched the card out of my hand and crossed out the apostrophe and the 'e' with her pen.

"Carla, I really think you're good. You don't need to study this much," I chuckled. Carla gave me a look and rolled her eyes.

"Well, I'm sorry, but not all of us have the security of being Mr. Miller's star student."

"What do you mean? Mr. Miller loves you!" I exclaimed. Carla shook her head.

"Oh, come on. You're clearly his favorite. You could go to your meeting wearing a trash bag and high on crack and he would still give you an A!"

"Hey!" I said, a little offended. "I work hard in that class!"

"I know you do, Alma. That's not what I'm saying," Carla sighed. "I'm just saying that you don't have anything to worry about with your conference, that's all," she waved me off. I put my hand on her shoulder.

"Well, neither do you. You're going to do great."

"Thanks, Alma." The lunch bell rang and we both scurried to our next class.

What did she mean when she said I was 'clearly' his favorite? I mean, I had gotten almost all A's but that didn't mean I was special. I earned my grades in his class, it's not like I got any special treatment. He did send me a lot of emails about my papers, which he rarely did for Carla's, but that was just because we connected on a purely literary level. He was a great teacher, and I was a good student, that's all there was to it.

* * *

The morning of my mid-year conference, I stood in front of the mirror for longer than usual trying to decide what to wear. I eventually settled on a black, button-down blouse with blue, fitted pants and a belt that I usually only wore to work. I wanted to look clean and professional. I tied my hair up in a bun and put on a pair of pearl earrings that Carla got me for Christmas. I was more nervous than I expected to be, perhaps still contemplating what Carla had said a couple days before. I took a deep breath and tucked a loose curl of hair behind my ear before heading out the door.