Brooke Ames found herself unable to get out of the car. Her mother, Martha, had driven her to Hope Academy on the most fateful day Brooke had ever known in her life. The day when she found out whether all the effort she had struggled to make over the last two years were going to pay off. Or prove to be just an over-ambitious waste of time. The day that would change all of her life, forever.
Results day.
Her mother got out of the car, walked round and opened the door on Brooke’s side.
"I can’t get out, Mum. What if I’ve not got my grades?"
"Well the results aren’t going to change just because you stay sitting there."
"But I so want to go to university."
"The other week you were saying you wanted to stay at home."
"That’s not true!" Brooke snapped. "Why would I have worked so hard if I wanted to stay at home?"
Martha realised that she was not being particularly sympathetic. She had hated school and back in her day she was just glad to leave and didn’t care about qualifications. She had been quite content to be a home-maker. But now, she too was thinking of going to night-school to see if she could get a part-time job, something in an office perhaps. "Come on," she said softly, "whatever you’ve got, you’ve got to find out some time."
Just then Brooke noticed across the car park a familiar figure going into the school building. "What’s he doing here?"
"Who?" Martha looked at where Brooke was staring. "Isn’t that that new chap who’s just moved in to number 23? He’s going to be a new teacher here, isn’t he?"
Brooke suddenly snapped upright and quickly got out of the car. "Whatever I’ve got, I’m not coming back here to do re-sits."
****
Inside, the corridor was cool and oppressively familiar, and bustling with activity. The results were being handed out in envelopes by some of the staff at a desk set up in the foyer. Disturbingly, there were cries of jubilation mixed in with faces blank with disappointment and, either way, everyone seemed to be hugging everybody else like they had just survived an air-crash.
Brooke got to the desk and gave her name and was handed an envelope.
"What did you need again?" said Martha.
"Two A’s and a B. Someone said I might just get away with two B’s."
"Well – go on – open it!"
Brooke took a breath. Here she would see in black and white officially what her worth was, in the eyes of the academic system. She looked down at the slip of paper. She could not believe what she saw.
****
"What you doing this afternoon?" Benson asked his son, Maxwell, who was sat at his new laptop computer and reading Facebook.
"Dunno. Nothing much. Why?"
"I thought you might like to come along with me and see put the new camera through its paces."
"You mean you want me to help you figure out how to use it."
"I’m open to advice. It wouldn’t hurt you to show some gratitude for me getting you that – " he indicated the laptop.
"I still don’t know how you afforded both a computer for me and a new camera for yourself."
"Well… they were a bargain. And they were both second-hand. I’m sorry if it’s not the latest model. Not that you seem to be doing that much school-work on it anyway."
Maxwell bridled at this remark. "I was wondering when that was going to come up. And another thing, where did you get that camera from?
"What’s it to you?"
"This is just a cheapy machine but that camera’s top of the range. You always were going on about how you had no money."
Benson sighed, disappointed. "Like I said, they were both a bargain. It wouldn’t hurt you to show a little gratitude, all the same."
Benson snapped the lid of the laptop shut. "Oh for God’s sake…" he said, and walked out.
Kids, Benson thought. What were you supposed to do to please them?
****
Brooke got back into her mother’s car, unable to speak.
"What was it again?" said Martha.
After a pause, Brooke said, "Two Bs and a C."
"That’s nearly good enough, isn’t it?"
"‘Nearly good enough’ isn’t good enough!"
"Don’t you raise your voice to me! What did that nice lady say you should do?"
hone my first choice and see what they say, which will almost certainly be ‘no,’ then phone up Clearing and see if I can scrape in anywhere else."
"That will be something," said Martha. "Not all hope is lost, eh?"
"You don’t understand," said Brooke. "It’s not the same as getting your first choice. I might not even be able to do the course I want."
"But you will still be at university."
Brooke looked at her mother with a mixture of anger and frustration. Why couldn’t she understand? Then she saw Robert Farrah again, this time coming out of the school building. It was all too much. Brooke leapt out of the car and hurried off.
****
It was some time later that Brooke happened to meet Maxwell as he was wandering, seeming equally lost in thought, down the end of the close.
"Hey, Brooke. How’d the results go?"
How many more times she was going to be asked this horrible question. "Max! I’ve failed."
"Don’t be daft. Of course you’ve not failed. You must have got something."
She handed the fateful slip of paper to Max.
"What was your firm offer?"
"Two A’s and a B," she found herself saying yet again.
"There’s still a chance then. And there’s always Clearing."
"Not you and all," she said bitterly. This time, she began to cry.
Max gently put his arms around her. "We’ll sort something out."
"I don’t think so," she sniffed.
"Come on. I’ll take you back to mine. Dad’s out, so we’ll have the place to ourselves."
End of Episode 13
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