"I promise that I'll never fall in love with you. Cross my heart, hope to die."
"Here's to hoping."
Harper Young was sure that moving in with her aunt would be an improvement. It wasn't. This was all due to three tiny little problems.
1) Embry Call...
" These are moments of exaltation and ecstasy. A glimpse of this wonder can be the reward of a lifetime. "
-Chien-Shiung Wu
Ups! Gambar ini tidak mengikuti Pedoman Konten kami. Untuk melanjutkan publikasi, hapuslah gambar ini atau unggah gambar lain.
Wrong
Harper stared at bright red against pristine white. A crease that wasn't there when she turned in marred the otherwise perfect page. She was so close, so incredibly close yet so far apart. She could almost feel her blood rushing to her ears creating white noise until she couldn't really hear anything. And she could almost feel like a sandbag had settled on her chest and refused to move. She could almost feel the tears that were sure to come later. The girl beside her quickly averted her eyes from Harper's test. The first page was fine but the second and the third she swore were covered in red exes. The same shade as the poor grade, a 69.5/100.
Harper and her math teacher hated each other. This much was now more or less a common fact to anyone in their class and anyone who has had the displeasure of hearing her rant about him during lunch or Biology or honors English or- Really the list could go on and on. She had a list of expletives she would willingly call the middle-aged egotistical white man.
Instead of crying or going into a panic, Harper got angry. The paper began to tear as she gripped it tightly in her hand. She had stayed after class and turned the page to the free-response questions that had been marked down. Just describing math terms, answering word problems using full sentences. Easy stuff for Harper, it had always been so easy.
"What did I do wrong, Mr. Andrews?" Harper asked quietly, bowing her head. She had stayed after class to ask him as her confusion and anger grew. She had read through her answers once, twice, thrice and they seemed fine. Even when she was taking it they seemed fine.
"Hmm, let's see," Andrews began as he fiddled with his glasses before roughly grabbing the pages. He snorted once he got to where the open answers were. Harper tried not to be phased but her hands balled into fists. "You misspelled 'derivative', you stated this wrong, it's 'as the limit approaches zero', not 'as the limit gets closer to equaling zero', you mixed up antiderivative and integral-"
"They're the same thing," Harper cut in sharply, her face growing red. Andrews glowered up at her and rose an eyebrow.
"Yes but the question specifically referred to the antiderivative," he insisted. "Or is that too difficult of a concept for you to understand?"
Harper wondered if she was being a victim of racism or sexism. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry-
"What can I do to raise my grade, sir?"
Mr. Andrews looked cocky. He looked both impressed that he got her to crack that easily and the fact that she referred to him as sir. "I don't offer extra credit in my class, Miss Young," he stated placing the test back on the table and sliding it over to her.
