Another Thursday morning. Another gray day. Gray sky, gray street, gray houses, gray kids – it’s all the same. Edward waits at the bus stop, hoping that this time the bus doesn’t break down before he gets to school. He can’t afford to miss any more school.

He sighs in relief when he sees the bus chugging toward the stop, moving at its normal pace. That’s usually a good sign. He climbs on with the rest of the kids, piles into a seat with two younger boys, and tries not to fall off the end. Only two more stops, then they’ll be at school.

Edward doesn’t talk to any of the other kids on the bus. Doesn’t even look at them, in fact. He’s not entirely sure he knows any of their names, and they certainly don’t know his. When the bus finally stops at the school, he gets off as quickly as possible and heads to a classroom with the other nine-year-olds. He sits in a safe seat, off to the side, not too close to the teacher but not too far away, either.

The teacher strides into the room at exactly seven o’clock and begins roll call. At least a quarter of the seats are empty – not unusual, the other East District bus probably broke down again. Edward squirms in anticipation. More opportunities for him.

“Smith!” Ms. Jenkins barks.

“Here!”

“Stinson!”

“Here.”

“Talbot!”

“Here!” Edward yells, trying to sound confident. He reviews in his head the steps in long division while he waits for attendance to finish. Then Ms. Jenkins jumps right into the math lesson.

Edward hurriedly flips through his old notebook until he finds a page with space left on it. Pencil at the ready, he waits for Ms. Jenkins’ first question.

“Yesterday we learned long division,” she announces. “Who can tell me what 330 divided by 24 is?”

Edward raises his hand before he’s even finished writing the problem.

“Jameson?” Ms. Jenkins calls. Edward keeps his hand up, in case Jameson gets it wrong.

“Thirteen point seven five.”

“Exactly. Ten points.”

Ms. Jenkins fires question after question at the class. Edward isn’t called on until he’s afraid he won’t get his chance at all.

“Talbot? 1,058 divided by 8?”

“Umm… one hundred thirty-two point… two… four,” he finally says.

“No. Minus fifteen. Adams?”

“One hundred thirty-two point two five.”

“Correct. Ten points.”

At the end of the lesson she hands out stickers to the kids who earned fifty points. That’s how it is – every fifty points you get a sticker. Edward slumps in his chair a little when he realizes he’s even further from fifty than he was at the beginning of the day.

Next they move on to reading. Edward races through the passage, raises his hand for every question – and only gets called on once. The fifteen points he earns are only enough for him to return to the score he had when he walked in. He needs to get twenty-five more before lunch.

The kids from the other bus troop in just as Ms. Jenkins is ending the reading lesson.

“You’re late,” she tells them. “Minus twenty, all of you.”

Edward feels bad for them, but he’s glad it’s not him this time.

After they get in their seats, Ms. Jenkins announces that it’s time for English grammar. Edward sinks even lower in his chair. This is his worst subject. Ms. Jenkins talks forever about subjects and verbs and objects, but in the end he’s only more confused than when he started. He still raises his hand for every question, though, and, to his disappointment, Ms. Jenkins calls on him more than any other time.

“What’s the direct object in this sentence?” she demands.

“Dog?” he ventures.

“No. Minus ten. What’s the subject of this sentence?”

“Umm… dog?”

“No. Minus fifteen.”

There go all his points. He doesn’t raise his hand again, because that would risk going into the negatives. You don’t want to go into the negatives. His stomach growls, and he tells it to be quiet.

One more lesson before lunch. Science. Today they’re learning about physics.

“Who can tell me the rate of acceleration due to gravity?”

Edward knows this one! His hand shoots up, but Ms. Jenkins calls on someone else. It goes on like that for most of the lesson, until Ms. Jenkins seems to realize he’s there. She calls on him twice, and he almost jumps up in excitement when his answers earn him forty points. He’s almost to fifty.

Then Ms. Jenkins says something that ruins his mood immediately.

“Brent, Dalton, Gilmore, Manning, Neufeld, Stinson, and Tiller, you’ll need to stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed for lunch.”

The kids, most of them clutching their stickers, flood out the door and toward the lunch room. Edward looks at his empty hands in dismay and trudges slowly behind them. At least he isn’t in the negatives, like the poor kids who stayed behind, but he still has no stickers for the third day in a row. Maybe he’ll get some after lunch. He was lucky yesterday.

He sits down at the table with the other sticker-less kids, while the smart kids get their food. They’re even serving something good today – applesauce and a piece of chicken, if you’re lucky enough to have two stickers.

Edward’s stomach growls again, and he rests his head on the table as the kids come back with their food. Smelling it is bad enough, but he doesn’t have to look at it.

He hears Jameson whisper to his friend, as he starts to nibble on his chicken, “My mom says when her dad went to school, they didn’t have points. They had these things called grades instead, and you couldn’t get anything for them. She also said they didn’t learn physics till they were teenagers – they must’ve been stupid!”

Stupid, Edward thinks. But wouldn’t that be nice…