What Score?

Monday, November 27, 2006

During the day, the weather was still warm enough to keep the windows open and the Christmas tree standing.

While Frances was busy decorating his choir folder with battery-powered Christmas lights, Mom was off to a lunch at First Watch with an old friend from Immanuel, Mrs. Cuthbertson. Carrie-Bri dropped off Rose at school and left for an early piano lesson with Annamaria before going to work that afternoon. Joe had been at the Green Lantern since eight in the morning, and Linnea was busy locating books of the Bible hidden inside a paragraph, part of her homework for kids choir at church. She finally succeeded, more quickly than Collette might have suspected.

After class, Rose tried to get away with eating a bowl of powdered sugar with a spoon, but Mom caught her before she had taken two mouthfuls.

And so Rose turned her attention to using an old history text as a coloring book while she and Collette finished reviewing her GRE material.

Meanwhile, the subject of the ACT had arisen again. Rose had been thinking about how Susie had a 31, Augustus a 34, and Ben-Hur a 35 – mostly on their first attempt – not to mention that almost all of the cousins had done the same on their first try. Rose was still waiting for her own scores from October, which were late.

“I’m so nervous!” She said several times that day.

When the mail lady whirled by late that morning, Rose tried to beat Mom to the front door.

“I’ll get it!” Rose said desperately. “I don’t want you to see what I got!”

“No, I’ll get it,” Mom said, and prevailed.

But it was all for nothing, as her scores had still not been returned. Collette began to wonder if they had been lost in the mail.

“I have to get a great score,” Rose said sadly, looking over material for Mizzou.

Suddenly good ACT scores had become important for Rose. It was a proud moment.