ONE.
Even to this day, she still can't quite get rid of that feeling when you stand in front of a blackboard with the rest of the class staring you down, and you have a math problem in front of you. It is a feeling of panic, like a bird trying to beat its wings in a cage. There are two options: get the answer right, and be humiliated when the teacher congratulates you, thus garnering mixed respect and/or resentment from your peers, OR get the answer wrong, and be humiliated when the teacher scolds you, but at least the rest of the class won't hate you because your failure would make them feel secretly triumphant of their own intelligence.
Like many situations before, she was standing in front of the blackboard, a simple math problem upon the blackboard. Her hand trembled; she knew the answer but she didn't know what she should do. A few minutes passed and her classmates started to murmur. Insults were exchanged, and snickers followed. The teacher rose, called her name, and asked if she could hurry and come up with the answer.
She picked up the piece of chalk, hovered over the blank line below, and wrote down the answer in the clear legible handwriting her mother had always drilled into her. She stepped back, the teacher looked over the answer, and then nodded in agreement.
Always the perfect child.