Chapter 25

There were four classes that morning, besides the study period. Elise waited until the third was over before taking out her phone.

Several messages were waiting for her.

Julian had sent one, direct and to the point.

Julian: How's your first day going? Settling in all right?

Adrian had rather more to say.

Adrian: Ellie, Ellie. Are you there?

Adrian: Haven't checked your phone? [nail-biting emoji]

Adrian: Paying attention in class?

Adrian: Don't sit too close to the board. You'll ruin your eyes.

Elise brought up the keyboard and answered each brother in turn. She said she was settling in well and left out how unfriendly her classmates had been.

Adrian answered almost immediately.

Adrian: Good. Your grades aren't the important thing. If you're tired in class, take a nap. If a teacher gives you trouble, tell me. I'll have a word with them.

For a moment, Elise could only stare at the screen. Then she remembered: as far as Adrian knew, her grades were nothing special.

He didn't particularly care whether she did well. She had him behind her, and he certainly wasn't going to let anyone criticize her.

Elise felt rather helpless. She had been listening carefully in every lesson. Whenever the teacher covered something she already understood, she used the time to study ahead. This time, she was determined to get into the university she wanted. Her education mattered to her.

Elise: Got it.

She opened her friends-only feed. Two hours earlier, Adrian had posted an update.

My little sister's first day at school.

Underneath was that same picture: Small, pathetic, and helpless.

Her brother had apparently become very attached to that meme.

Julian seemed to be busy. The bell for fourth period had already rung when his hurried replies arrived.

Julian: Good.

Julian: Come to the side gate when your morning classes finish.

Elise: ?

What did he want her at the side gate for during lunch?

She looked up as the teacher walked into the classroom carrying his textbook. She quickly sent an Okay and slipped her phone into her pocket.

The last class of the morning was math.

Mr. Wallace had a routine. Once he finished teaching the day's material, he called students up in turn to work through the textbook exercises on the board.

This part always made the class nervous. The questions covered what he had just taught; anyone whose mind had wandered would be found out as soon as they tried one. Then they would have to endure Mr. Wallace's cutting remarks.

He closed his textbook and set it on the lectern. The room grew noticeably quieter.

“A new semester, a fresh start. Let's begin with the first column.”

He traced a vertical line in the air with one finger.

“Owen Brooks. Evan Reed. Kayla Morris.”

He continued down the column, then paused as he reached Elise, who sat at its very back.

A slight frown appeared between his brows. Before classes, Ms. Parker had taken him aside for a long talk. She had spoken to all the other subject teachers, too, and the subject had been Elise Whitmore.

They needed to look out for the new girl. Her old school hadn't moved at Northbridge's pace, and she would have to get used to a different way of learning. They shouldn't be too hard on her at first and damage her confidence.

Mr. Wallace never said Elise's name. His hand moved to the side instead.

“Our math representative can take the last question.”

A girl in glasses stood up at once.

Elise looked from the teacher to the girl, puzzled. He had worked his way right down to the student in front of her, then abruptly chosen somebody else.

The rest of the class understood what he had done. Several of the students already called up exchanged meaningful looks.

Owen didn't care. He was thinking about his question on the board and headed straight for the front.

Kayla couldn't let it go. Why should she have to do a problem while Elise got to sit there?

Holding tight to her textbook, she spoke up.

“Mr. Wallace, isn't that a little unfair? Why doesn't she have to do one?”

She pointed toward the back. Everyone followed her finger to Elise's face.

Mr. Wallace hadn't expected an open challenge. He had made exceptions before, and nobody had objected then.

His expression hardened.

“She's new. She needs a few lessons to get used to how we work here. If you have a problem with that, come and talk to me in my office after class.”

Kayla looked angrier still. She shot Elise a fierce glare before reluctantly making her way to the board.

Vivian rested an arm on her desk, a small smile forming on her lips. Kayla was already thoroughly sick of Elise. This special treatment would only make everyone else resent her more.

Sure enough, after watching Kayla object and achieve nothing, several students snorted or curled their lips.

“Mr. Wallace, I'll do it.”

Elise raised her hand, her clear voice carrying through the room.

She didn't understand why he had skipped her, but her classmates obviously thought it was unfair. Besides, she had studied this chapter before school started. She was already several chapters beyond it.

She knew how to solve the problem.

Mr. Wallace stared at her for a couple of seconds. Then he remembered Ms. Parker's warning. Was the girl trying to be brave because she was afraid his exception would turn the others against her?

His voice softened.

“You've only just arrived. There's no need to force yourself. Get familiar with the textbook first. Make sure you've really understood this chapter.”

But she had understood it. Elise couldn't quite see the difficulty.

Beside her, Nora tugged at her sleeve.

“Elise,” she whispered, “we only learned this today. He's already said you don't have to go. You don't need to make yourself.”

Elise had helped her solve that other problem, and she had done it quickly and correctly. But that had been last year's material. Junior-year work was different, surely.

Nora did everything she could to escape a turn at the board. Getting a question wrong meant embarrassing yourself in front of the whole class. They already seemed to dislike Elise; if she made a mistake now, every one of them would laugh at her.

They would be better off keeping their heads down.

Kayla turned back with an amused expression.

“But she's the one asking to do it, Mr. Wallace. And it would make things fair.”

She hadn't liked seeing the teacher favor Elise. Now that Elise was volunteering, she wasn't about to help her get out of it.

The problems grew harder in order. The last extended question was the most difficult, and that was the one Elise would get.

Kayla didn't believe for a second that she could solve it.

Elise frowned slightly. There was no reason to refuse a question she knew how to answer. And Kayla seemed so certain she couldn't do it that a stubborn little urge to prove her wrong rose inside her.

“I know how to do this one. Let me take it instead of the math representative. Otherwise, it isn't fair to everyone who's been called up.”

Owen was already standing at the board, chalk in hand, ready to begin. The interruption made him glance at Elise before he turned away again.

Whether she could do it had nothing to do with him.

He had spent the entire summer taking extra classes so he could overtake the student who had beaten him on the final exams: his own desk partner. Nobody else particularly concerned him.

Mr. Wallace saw that Elise still wanted to come up, despite everything he had said. At last, he shook his head.

“All right.”

Whispers broke out below the board.

“She's actually going? How stupid. She's just going to embarrass herself.”

“I don't believe she can do it. I'm not even sure I could solve that one.”

“The last one's the hardest. Bad luck getting that question, but she's the one who insisted.”

The students went up one after another, each taking a section of the board. They copied out their questions and began writing their solutions underneath.

Vivian watched Elise's back, comfortably prepared to enjoy herself. She knew exactly what Elise's grades had been like. Even in math, she had barely scraped past a passing mark; she had never reached sixty-seven out of a hundred.

She was bound to make a fool of herself in this class eventually. Vivian simply hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

For a while, the room was filled with the scrape of chalk.

Elise worked quickly. She was the first to put down her chalk and return to her seat.

When everyone had finished, Mr. Wallace started at Owen's end of the board and marked the answers from left to right. Six students, six questions, with Elise's at the very end.

Each question was worth ten points.

He studied Owen's solution for a moment, nodded in satisfaction, and wrote a red 10 beside it.

Back at his desk, Owen allowed himself a small smile. A question like that was easy for him.

The next two answers also received tens. Kayla and another student lost two points apiece for minor calculation errors.

Then Mr. Wallace stopped in front of Elise's work.

“What has she written? I can't understand any of it.”

“Have we even learned that formula? Did she make it up?”

“Inventing her own formulas. Wow. A first in the history of math.”

Laughter spread across the room.

The exercises at the end of a chapter were supposed to test that chapter's material. Some of the formulas and symbols in Elise's answer were completely unfamiliar. Naturally, they assumed she was making things up.

Mr. Wallace stood looking at the board, the red chalk held between his fingers. Slowly, he put his hands behind his back. Then the laughter reached him, and he turned.

The students met his eyes for a few seconds and fell silent.

Why did he look almost contemptuous? As though they had shown him how little they knew, and he could hardly bear it?

Once the room was quiet, he turned back and wrote a 10 under Elise's answer. He paused, then added + 2.

The class stared.

Elise had got full marks?

And two extra points? That put her above Owen.

The smile on Owen's face slowly disappeared. He frowned, unable to understand why Mr. Wallace had given her that score, and finally took a proper look at her solution.

Why couldn't he understand the working at all?

Kayla was equally bewildered. Even favoritism had to have a limit. That formula was obviously wrong. They hadn't learned anything like it today.

“Mr. Wallace, did you mark that wrong?” she called. “How can she possibly get full marks? This is completely unfair!”

Mr. Wallace had had enough. He picked up the ruler from the lectern and pointed at the students who had been laughing, Kayla among them.

“What am I supposed to say to you? What did I tell you before summer break?”

They looked at one another, at a loss. What had he told them?

“I told you to do more than finish your summer homework. Start reading ahead in junior-year math. Get as far as you can. How many of you actually did it? Stand up if you did. Let me see whether there's even one of you!”

His outburst silenced the room.

They had been confident in their grades. As for preparing ahead, surely reading the first chapter the day before school was enough. Who bothered looking any further?

Mr. Wallace came down from the front and pointed at the student who had laughed the loudest.

“She did the reading. All the way to Chapter Five. And you're laughing at her? She made up a formula, did she? Go on, then. Make one up for me.”

The student's face burned red. He couldn't lift his head.

He hadn't read ahead. He also hadn't imagined that Elise would get so far, use what she had learned to solve today's exercise, and get every step right.

Wasn't she supposed to be a terrible student? How was anyone meant to have expected this?

Owen frowned. He had put all his energy into strengthening his grasp of last year's material. In junior-year math, he had only prepared through Chapter Three.

Elise had already reached Chapter Five?

“You're going to drive me mad, every one of you. You can't be bothered to do the work yourselves, but you've got plenty of time to laugh at somebody else. She's just transferred from an ordinary high school. Aren't you ashamed?”

Kayla's face had gone red under the barrage. She bent her head low, afraid that looking up would draw his attention and bring the rest of his anger down on her.

All around the room, students shrank into their seats and hoped he wouldn't call their names.

At last, somebody ventured a small question.

“What about the extra two points?”

Having let out his anger, Mr. Wallace sounded calmer.

“One for studying ahead. She deserves credit for that. The other is for presentation.”

They compared the six sections of the board and said nothing.

The others' lines slanted upward, some so steeply that the last words seemed about to take off. Letters grew and shrank from one word to the next. Even Owen's writing was crooked.

Elise's was neat and evenly spaced. Chalk on a board seemed to come as easily to her as a pen on paper. Each line sat properly beneath the last, the lettering delicate and clear. It looked as good as the classroom's weekly blackboard display.

That was the sort of work a teacher wanted to mark.

Nobody had anything left to say. They had to concede it. A supposedly hopeless student had solved the problem correctly and somehow managed to make her work look that good, too.

Owen pressed his lips together. He looked at the 10 beside his own answer, then at Elise's twelve points, his hand slowly tightening.

His desk partner tried to comfort him.

“Don't let it bother you. She probably just got lucky and happened to read that far. Once you've done Chapter Five, that question isn't hard. Any of us could do it. It only shows she has a good attitude toward studying.”

Owen barely took in the reassurance. An unfamiliar sense of danger was rising inside him.

If it was luck, why had Elise been so certain she could do it? And she had been the first to finish and come down from the board. Could someone work that quickly just from having read the chapter ahead of time?

Vivian hadn't expected this. Elise had escaped humiliation and earned a stream of praise from Mr. Wallace instead.

Had she actually been studying in secret?

Vivian stared hard at the textbook in front of her. So what if she had? Vivian had a secure place in the top ten of the class. A better attitude wouldn't make Elise any brighter. She still wasn't going to catch up.

Beside Elise, Nora was pink-cheeked with pride on her friend's behalf.

“You're amazing,” she whispered. “You've already studied the later chapters?”

Elise nodded. “I went through them before school started. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up.”

Nora's eyes shone. Compared with Elise, she really was lazy. No wonder her grades were so bad. Elise's family didn't have much, but she was beautiful and worked hard, too.

Nora fell a long way short of her.

Still, a thought began to take hold. Perhaps she could work like Elise and stop coming last, too.

A few people in front were whispering that Elise had only been lucky.

Nora clenched her small fists.

“You work so much harder than they do, and they're calling it luck!”

Elise had heard them as well.

“The monthly assessment's coming up,” she said gently. “They'll see when the results come out. Don't get angry with them.”

Only then did Nora relax her hands.

“Okay!”

She wanted to see Elise beat every one of them.

After that lesson, the class became much less bold about mocking Elise. The openly hostile glances faded into something closer to ignoring her.

When the lunch bell rang, students began leaving for the cafeteria.

Now that she had a friend, Nora could hardly wait to take Elise along to eat with her. But Elise remembered Julian's message about the side gate.

“I've got something to do. You go ahead.”

“What is it?”

“Just something I need to do.”

Nora tilted her head, puzzled. “Should I bring you some lunch?”

“No, thanks.” Elise smiled. “I should be back soon.”

She left the classroom. With almost everyone heading for lunch, the side gate was quiet.

From a distance, she spotted the Maserati she had helped Julian buy, parked beside the road.

As she approached, Daniel got out, carrying an insulated lunch container.

“Where's Julian?” she asked.

“At the office.” Her brother had plunged back into work; even arranging this errand had required a moment snatched from his busy day.

“He was worried about the cafeteria food,” Daniel explained respectfully. “About how clean it would be. He's asked the chef to prepare your lunch fresh every day so we can bring it over.”

The household's award-winning chef could hardly be compared with the cafeteria cooks. He used carefully chosen ingredients, fresh and clean, and cooked to Elise's tastes. The household nutritionist had been consulted about balancing her meals, too.

Julian didn't feel comfortable leaving her to eat in the cafeteria. That was why he had sent Daniel.

“Every day?” Elise asked.

She had never imagined that the mysterious visit to the side gate would turn out to be a lunch delivery.

She looked at the container. It had three full tiers.

“Don't worry,” Daniel said, noticing her glance. “It's all freshly cooked. Still piping hot.”

“No, I meant...” She hesitated. “Isn't that too much? I'm afraid I won't finish it.”

Daniel smiled in understanding. He knew she didn't eat much.

“The portions are small. There's a bit of everything, so it only looks like a great deal from the outside. I'll bring it every day you're at school.”

Besides managing the house, Daniel also handled some secretarial duties. Elise felt uncomfortable asking someone with so much to do to bring her lunch every single day.

But whatever she said, he only repeated that Julian had instructed him to do it. He was quite determined.

In the end, she could only carry the container back to the classroom.

Inside were five different dishes and a bowl of congee. There wasn't too much of any one thing; altogether, it was enough for her lunch.

Nora returned before Elise had finished eating. She stopped at the sight of the little food containers spread across her desk.

“Wow. That looks so good!”

Then she noticed the insulated carrier.

“Did your family bring you lunch?”

Elise nodded. Julian had arranged to have it sent, after all.