“Take a seat,” Mr Glencross said, gesturing.
He sat down and the teacher placed a stapled wad of paper in front of him.
“You may begin.”
Portman took a deep breath and wrote his name on the page. As he looked at the first question he felt like his head was swimming. He closed his eyes, took another breath and opened them again.
“I can do this,” he told himself. “C’mon Dean, you’ve studied, and studied. Everyone’s helped you, and everyone’s counting on you. You can do this.”
**********
Luis spotted Portman on the way to his next class.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“I… I don’t know,” he answered honestly.
“When will you know the result?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Luis nodded.
**********
“Where’s Portman?” asked Dwayne at dinner that night. “I wanna know how it went.”
“That makes all of us,” Ken replied.
“There he is,” Fulton pointed. “Hey, Portman, how’d it go?”
Portman sat down dismally, and slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets.
“Have you got the results yet?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah. Mr Glencross confronted me a few minutes ago. That’s why I’m late.”
“So?” asked Guy, a curious, suspicious look on his face.
“Well… I got a ‘B-’!”
There were cheers of triumph erupting from their table. Portman grinned at them.
“I had y’all going there for a minute huh?” then he caught Guy’s eye, “okay, maybe not you, but everyone else I had going.”
“Not me,” Julie said. “I was the one helping you through most of your wrong questions. I had no doubt you’d get a ‘C’ at least.”
“That’s true. Allow me to show you my appreciation,” he leaned over the table.
“You kiss me, you die.”
“Just this once?”
“You got enough kissing from me last time I went into Heat, thank you very much.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
“Yep,” came a chorus of replies.