A few months had passed since anything worth noting happened. My diary lay under my bed, discarded by the passing of time. My birthday was coming up, but I wasn't really all that excited about it. Now that I had turned 13, there was nothing special about turning 14. I had a year or two to wait until birthdays would be exciting again. I was singing and humming a lot more than I usually did. It must've been spring fever. Jenny was missing a lot, but Mom and Dad had kind of accepted it by now. I don't think Dad will ever completely adjust to her absences. I was hanging out with Chris and Gordie almost as frequently as Teddy and Vern.

I jiggled the lock on my locker in a daze, humming along to a song I had heard that morning on the radio. The humming thing was pretty recent- it had started when I came back to school after Spring Break. I told myself that it was just spring fever- but I found myself stopping in front of the sheet music and staring in the window nearly every day after school. It would be a while until I dared go in there. I really didn't have a lot of allowance to spend. And Teddy kind of thought singing was pussy. Not that he ever said that out loud, but he dropped hints here and there. If he caught me inside the music store buying musical scores, I would never hear the end of it. I was secretly glad that we didn't see each other at school all that often- he would never catch me at humming.

As my interest in singing swelled, I found myself wishing pretty badly to be in the choir. But that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Not until the year ended. But I could sing in high school- Yes! Wait- Teddy would know. Urgh… I guess I would just have to live it down, because I was going to start pursuing my greatest interest. Wait a minute- it was my greatest interest? Humming... Yes- it had to be, didn't it? Well, at least now I know what significance humming had in my life.

Over the last few months, operetta records began filling my cabinet, with the occasional Bobby Rydell LP to go along with them for easy listening. And I didn't really need the sheet music, because I had begun singing with the records to the best of my ability. Oklahoma! was my favorite musical so far, and one of the only ones I had seen. But that was 5 years ago when I had seen the movie. I had liked it even back then, but now I couldn't remember the plot.

I tugged on the lock, but it didn't budge. Sighing, I reset the lock and began rolling in the combination. In the meanwhile, my mind drifted temporarily to Algebra class. For the record, Chris was now excelling and no longer needed my help, which was good, because I was the one struggling to understand now. I had gotten a C on my last test. Maybe I was just having a bad week. Maybe this unit was one part of Algebra that I would just never get. Or maybe it was this humming business. As long as I got a B overall, I wasn't too concerned.

English was becoming easier by the day. I had even begun liking writing story summaries a bit more than I normally did. I wasn't doing a whole bunch of reading, but I was writing every day. One thing I would never accustom to, however, was the actual English language part of the class- prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses and stuff like that. My grammar was pretty good, but I am not able to identify a single clause in any sentence I write. (remind me what a clause is again)

Chris walked up to me as I fiddled with my locker for the second time.

"Hey."

"Hey." My locker snapped open. "Have you seen Mr. Smith around? I think I left my History textbook in his classroom yesterday."

"No." He paused for a moment. "Liz, I um… Mr. Jeffries wanted me to give this to you. He handed me something and quickly turned away. I shrugged. It was just my progress report for Algebra. I flipped nonchalantly to the back page. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

A big fat F, written on the page in bright red ink, glared morosely back at me.

I was failing Algebra.

"I didn't mean to look…"

I shook my head. "It's fine, Chris. I'll just… pay better attention."

"Do you need help?"

"No. Thanks, though."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep." I stifled a sigh and slammed my locker shut, making a pact with myself. I would focus. I was going to get my head out of the clouds, out of this ridiculous singing and humming business. There was a real world around me, and I was going to face real-world problems. Humming didn't solve the world's problems.