reading,â she called back, âbe sure you spell the title right in your reading log, okay, Albie?
Johnny Tremain.
Just the one
e.
â
I looked down at the book.
Johnny Tremain,
thatâs what it said.
I smiled.
Then I opened the book, and I started to read.
being where
youâve been.
N ormally we didnât have quizzes in math club, because it was a club not a class, but on Monday we had one. Mr. Clifton called it a âwhiz quiz,â to try to trick us into thinking it might be more fun than a regular quiz, I bet, but I was not tricked. It was all about multiplication, and I got almost all the answers wrong.
After math club was over, I stayed behind to tell Mr. Clifton something when nobody else was in the room.
âI donât think I should be in math club anymore,â I told him.
Mr. Clifton set down the stack of papers he was holding. âAlbie?â he said, like my name was a question. âWhy would you want to drop out?â
âI just . . .â I scuffed my foot along the carpet. âIâm not very good at math. I think I . . .â I scuffed my foot some more, harder. âI donât think I should do any math anymore.â
âAlbie.â That time my name was not a question.
Mr. Clifton didnât say anything after that, and I figured maybe he was waiting for me to look at him instead of at my shoes. So finally I did. Even though my shoes were more interesting.
âI want to show you something.â Thatâs what he said.
Mr. Clifton walked around behind his desk and pointed to something on the wallâa small blue piece of paper in a square black frame. I followed him so I could look at it more closely. I stood on my tiptoes and stuck my nose right close to the glass.
It was a report card.
NAME:
Daniel Clifton
GRADE:
4th
SCORES
SCIENCE:
A
SOC. STUDIES:
B+
ART:
A-
READING:
A
MATH:
F
âThatâs
yours
?â I asked, settling down from my tiptoes.
âYep,â Mr. Clifton said.
âMr. Clifton,â I told him, very seriously, âyou should probably take that down. Because otherwise someone might find out that you got an F in math.â
Mr. Clifton just laughed at that, a real guffaw. âI keep it there on purpose,â he said.
My eyes went wide. âYou
do
?â That sounded crazy to me. Because why would anyone ever want to hang up an F report card, in a frame and everything? The worst report card Iâd ever gotten from Mountford Prep had three Uâs for Unsatisfactory, and I threw that one down the garbage chute. I definitely didnât
frame
it.
âYou canât get where youâre going without being where youâve been.â
Thatâs what Mr. Clifton said while I was still staring at his F report card.
âHuh?â Thatâs what I said.
âMy grandmother always used to tell me that,â Mr. Clifton explained. âWhen I was a boy.â
âOh,â I said.
I wonder if Mr. Cliftonâs grandmother ever saw that F report card.
âWhen I was a kid,â Mr. Clifton said, âI hated math.
Hated
it. Because I was bad at it, and because I thought it didnât make any sense.â
I nodded at that, because it was true. Math
didnât
make any sense.
âSo thatâs why I decided to become a math teacher.â
I stopped nodding when Mr. Clifton said that last part. Because
that
was a thing that didnât make any sense.
âWhat?â I said. âWhy?â
He shrugged. âI figured if math didnât make any sense to me, it probably didnât make sense to lots of other people. So I promised myself that if I ever
did
figure it out, Iâd become a math teacher so I could help other people whoâd had trouble, just like me.â He reached up and straightened the report card in its frame so it was exactly even to the ground. âIt took a lot of hard work, but Iâm glad every day that I made that
Janet Taylor-Perry
Kate Hewitt
Jason Starr Ken Bruen
Heather Blake
Sandra Owens
J. M. Gregson
Rosalind James
Patricia Hall
Daphne du Bois
James Hadley Chase