Under Her Wing

Chapter 20

Amalia POV

Greg and I entered my trailer. There was such an awkward silence between us.

He gestured for me to sit down at my dressing table.

I lay Danielle's hoodie across my knees, playing with one of the toggles to distract myself.

I looked at him through the mirror as he rummaged in his briefcase for something. He eventually pulled out a stack of papers.

"So I want to give to an English and a maths test today. Just so I can get an idea of where you're up to," he said, placing to two test papers down in front of me.

"Have you got a pen?" I asked nervously.

"Sure," he said, putting it down beside the papers.

"Which one first?"

"Whatever one you want, but there's a writing section at the back of the English paper so you might want to start with math and get that boxed off," he suggested.

Great I thought to myself.

School was never my strong point. I could read well enough but everything else was a bit of a struggle. My mom never helped with school or encouraged me to even try.

I set the English paper aside so I could concentrate on the math one first. Opening it to the first question, I realised I was way out of my depth. Was I meant to be able to do this at my age? Was I really that far behind?

Greg took a seat on the sofa, switched on his laptop and concentrated on whatever other work he had to do. I'm glad he didn't just sit staring at me failing.

I wanted to be with Danielle right now more than ever.
I put the pen down for a moment, pulling Danielle's jumper over my head, attempting to convince myself it was the same as a hug from her.

I worked my way through the paper, leaving most of the questions blank, I didn't know where to start with half of them.

I turned to the English paper, there was a reading section, a grammar and a writing section.

Hopefully I'd be fine with the reading. It was a reading comprehension, I felt fairly confident with my answers and moved onto the grammar part.

What the heck is a determiner?

What's an expanded noun phrase?

I didn't want anyone to find out about this. I don't want Greg to tell anyone about how low my score would be.

The writing part. Come on Amalia, I thought to myself desperately, needing to do well on this.
I read the brief before scribbling down a quick plan. I tried to get lost in the writing, focusing all my attention on whatever I was creating.

"Times up," Greg said, making me jump a little.

I handed him the two papers.

"I'll have a good look through these and come up with a learning plan for you," he said, taking them off me.

I nodded and handed him back the pen. I watched through the mirror as he had a quick look through my answers. I saw him frown and felt my chest get tight.

My hands were getting clammy and I felt like the walls of my trailer were trapping me in.

"Knock knock,"

I looked to see Danielle smiling in the doorway of my trailer. I was so relieved to see her.

"You all done here?"'she asked warmly.