They Rejected My Daughter novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Open Tryouts

The outside reviewer was a retired college professor with a gray braid and a metal ruler.

She opened the Ridgeline library at nine on Saturday morning and put a handwritten sign on the door: Math Challenge Tryouts. All Eighth Graders. Scored by Me.

Twenty-six students came.

I did not go in.

I sat on a bench in the hall outside with Ruby, because a parent was allowed to wait there and the other side of the door was not mine.

Ruby could not try out.

She belonged to Cedar Hill now, and she had said so herself before I could.

She sat with a book open on her knee and did not turn a page.

Down the hall the board president came walking with a flat cardboard box, and three families followed him in a loose line.

The bus driver had his cap in his hand.

The woman in scrubs had come straight from a night shift.

The grandmother with the cane held her grandson by the sleeve, and the boy had his notebook under his other arm.

"Audrey," the board president said. "I would like to do this here, where it was done."

"It's your board."

"It's not a pleasant job." He opened the box. "But it's the right one."

He gave each family an envelope.

Each one held a letter on district letterhead, signed by all five members, and it did not say after careful review.

It said: We were wrong. We took something from your child, and we are sorry.

The grandmother read hers twice with her lips moving.

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