Chapter 5: The Makeup Seat

My mother came through the doors of the testing center at six that evening still wearing her apron.

Bernice Haverty had left a full section of the Dry Creek Diner to a cook and a busboy.

She had driven forty miles through the tail end of the storm with her hazards on.

She found me on a bench in the hallway and held my face in both hands.

"They said you were stuck on a highway," she said. "They said kids were lost."

"I'm okay, Mom. Tegan's alive. She's in the hospital."

"Tegan walked out?"

"With ten others. I stayed."

She pulled me in and held on to me hard, and then she asked what the vice principal wanted with my seat.

I told her all of it, in one go, from the doors to the cream blazer.

My mother's face went flat in a way I knew from customers who skipped out on checks.

"Where is this vice principal?"

"Mom, please don't."

"Where?"

She found her at the registration desk and said her piece before she had finished crossing the floor.

"Ma'am, my daughter has studied for this exam since she was fourteen."

"Mrs. Haverty," the vice principal began.

"She stayed on the bus like you told her to."

My mother's voice rose.

"Now the board wants her seat because a girl who ran into a storm told lies about her."

"Mrs. Haverty, it isn't my decision."

"Then whose is it?"

"The board's," the vice principal said, and she looked at me with an apology in her eyes. "I've been told to hold the seat."

I took out the admission ticket I had carried in my front pocket for three weeks.

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