I hold the piece of paper with both hands. My heart hammers loudly inside my chest, drowning out the noise of the other kids around me. My face flushes red and my hands are slick with sweat. It is all right, I tell myself. Just one out of four. Only 25%. It will neither make me nor break me and there will be other chances, in the future, perhaps.
But my reasoning fails to convince me, as it always has. I vacillate between opening it now or saving it for home, where its trauma might be mitigated in solitude. If I open it at home, nothing will change save that my possible disappointment will be known only to me. But Courage seizes me at last. In a single foolhardy instant, the barriers come crashing down and the meticulous reasoning of hours vanish like smoke. I flip open the folded paper.
A row of A's march down the page. So there had been nothing to worry about, after all. A grin spreads across my face. It takes me a millisecond to absorb the information and half a second more for my breathing and pulse to return to normal. The storm as passed. The sky is bright and as blue as the sea. Giddy, I stuff the piece of paper into the bottom of my book bag and set my sights for home.
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