The Report Card

Nora isn’t ready to face people yet, so she fakes a sickness and stays home, watching episodes on The Learning Channel all morning. The phone rings, and Nora tries to sound sick when she answers. The caller is Mrs. Hackney, who asks in a frenzied tone if her parents are home. Nora gives Mrs. Hackney her mom’s cell phone number, and the principal ends the call before Nora can say good-bye. Ten minutes later, Mom bursts through the front door and tells Nora that they’re going to school. Nora tries to deflect, but Mom doesn’t take questions. In the car, Nora learns that all her classmates got a zero on Mrs. Noyes’s quiz, and she realizes that when she didn’t answer Stephen’s phone calls, he took the plan’s next phase into his own hands.

Nora and her mom arrive at a meeting with even more people than the last one, including Stephen and his parents, Merton Lake and his parents, and the school superintendent, Mrs. Tersom. First, Mrs. Noyes explains how all but two students received zeroes on that day’s quiz (excluding, ostensibly, Merton Lake). Nora tries taking the fall for Stephen, but