One Hundred Reasons To Leave My Mother

I walked into the classroom holding my AP Statistics midterm.

A bright red 98 was written in the upper-right corner. Beneath it, Mom had added:

Carelessness is not an excuse.

My classmates immediately began whispering.

“Sophie got punished again, just because she didn’t get a perfect score.”

“Her mom is the grade dean and teaches her Statistics. If she still can’t get a hundred with every advantage, whose fault is that?”

Olivia rolled her eyes.

“If my mom told me what to study before every test, I could get a ninety-eight too.”

I tightened my grip on the paper and said nothing.

Mom had never revealed a single test question to me. To avoid appearing biased, she would not even let me attend her after-school review sessions.

Ten minutes earlier, she had called me into the glass-walled Student Services office.

Everyone passing through the hallway could see inside.

Mom projected my test onto the screen and enlarged the multiple-choice question I had missed.

“How did you get something this simple wrong?”

“I overlooked one of the conditions.”

“Carelessness is not an excuse.”

She opened the door and called in several other students who had missed the same question.

“Take a look at Sophie’s test. Even though she’s my daughter, I will not lower my standards for her.”

They stared at me. Some looked sympathetic. Others tried not to laugh.

Mom pushed a lunch detention notice across the desk.

“For the next week, you’ll spend every lunch period in here redoing the entire test.”

I looked at her.

“What about the others?”

Her expression hardened instantly.

“Are you questioning my decision?”

“Why am I the only one being punished?”

“Because you’re my daughter.”

She spoke slowly, emphasizing every word.

“Everyone is watching to see whether I’ll favor you. You have to do better than the other students, and you have to accept harsher consequences.”

Just then, Olivia walked in.

She had scored an eighty-seven. During the test, the proctor had also found several statistics formulas written on the back of her water bottle label.

Under Westbridge policy, that should have counted as cheating.

“Dean Hart, I wrote those formulas while I was studying last night. I forgot to remove the label.”

Olivia lowered her head, her eyes quickly filling with tears.

Mom’s voice immediately softened.

“I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure with Student Council. This time, you’ll receive a warning. Don’t let it happen again.”

“Thank you for believing me.”

Olivia took the bottle and smiled at me.

Believing her.

She had brought formulas into an exam, yet Mom was willing to believe she had simply forgotten about them.

I had scored a ninety-eight, but Mom needed to humiliate me in public to prove how impartial she was.

As I left the office, I heard someone whisper,

“Dean Hart is really strict with her daughter.”

Another student laughed.

“She should be. Sophie gets every advantage. There’s no excuse for her not to get a perfect score.”

Mom heard them, but she said nothing.

Back at my desk, I pulled a palm-sized notebook from my backpack.

It contained a record of everything that had happened over the past few years.

Picked up a classmate’s calculator. Received a conduct notice for disrupting testing conditions.

Ate a protein bar when my blood sugar dropped. Spent a week in the glass office during lunch.

Olivia lost the assignment log. Mom blamed me for not reminding her to bring it.

I added a new entry.

Scored a ninety-eight on the AP Statistics midterm. Wrong answer displayed in front of other students. One week of lunch detention.

Then I wrote:

99.

Mom had used me to prove her impartiality ninety-nine times.

One more, and I would take this notebook to the school board, transfer out of her class, and move into the apartment my father had left me.

In a few months, I would leave Westbridge Academy for good and go somewhere no one knew Dean Hart—or assumed I had been given every advantage because I was her daughter.

“You’re actually keeping track?”

Olivia was suddenly standing beside my desk.

“You have a grade dean for a mother and private tutoring all summer, and you still couldn’t get a perfect score.”

A few students nearby laughed.

She leaned down and lowered her voice.

“Dean Hart treats me more like a daughter than she treats you. You’re just the tool she uses to prove she’s fair.”

I finally looked up at her.

“Are you so desperate to steal my mother because your own didn’t want you?”

Olivia’s smile disappeared.

Her mother had left when she was four and had never come back. Everyone at Westbridge knew it.

“Say that again.”

“No wonder you’re always trying to steal someone else’s mother.”

Her face flushed red.

“You’re going to regret that, Sophie.”

She turned and walked out of the classroom.

She would go straight to Mom, cry, and twist everything I had said.

Before, that would have frightened me.

This time, I simply put the notebook back into my bag.

Ninety-nine.

Maybe Olivia was about to help me reach one hundred.