Back To Our Roots, Book One

LXIX. He Really Should Have Thought That Through

"Um, excuse me, ma'am? Do you have a minute?"

The health teacher looked over at the doorway. "Ah, Mr. Smythe. I was expecting you."

He half-smiled, walking into the room. "Yeah, um, I'm curious about my health grade. I think you may have made a mistake."

"Can I show you something?" He nodded and she pulled a paper out of a folder and slid it across her desk to him. "This is your quiz."

He looked at it. It was covered in blue ink. "That is my quiz," he confirmed. "The quiz I bombed."

She smiled. "Yes. You always seemed to know everything when there were no grades, but put a grade on it and you fail."

"Yet I have an A?"

"Look closely at this paper. Zero precent. The first page was truth or false questions."

"And?"

"And, even just guessing, you should have gotten at least half of them right. Only someone who knew all the right answers could pick all the wrong ones."

Sebastian didn't have a response to that.

"All your grades in health are like this. Usually enough to pass, but not enough to be considered good. Why?"

"I don't know what you mean." He couldn't look her in the eyes.

"Sebastian, you could be helping people with your knowledge. Do you understand that? You could save lives."

Sebastian set his hands on her desk, finally meeting her eyes. "I think you're the one who doesn't understand. People's lives can't be in my hands. I'm the son of a murderer."

"Oh? I think you're a lot more than that. That's not what people think when they see you. Clarington thinks of you as his ex-boyfriend that he really didn't deserve. Richardson thinks of you as his loving boyfriend. Anderson, Hummel, Sterling, Duval, Thompson, Wes, Harris, they all think of you as their friend."

"And you? The other teachers? Tell me that's not what jumps to their mind."

"I think of you as a boy who is wasting his potential and letting his past define him," she said simply.

Sebastian sighed, running a hand through his hair. "You really think I could do it?"

"Of course. I believe in you, and I bet your friends do too."