C for Cacography

"Rebecca Thompson!" Becky's teacher, Miss Anderson called her from the front of the class.
Becky, who was engrossed in a most interesting conversation with her best friend, Lily, was quite reluctant to get out of her chair and walk to the teacher's desk for an almost certainly long, boring discussion about her latest marks for her Math paper. 

Of course, she wasn't nervous for her marks! The lowest grade she'd ever got was an A and that was for Chemistry, her worst subject. The only thing which irritated her teacher was her bad handwriting, or cacography, as Miss Anderson called it. Her Ls looked like Es, she always missed out the line on the T, trivial things like that. Still, she did not want to waste her time listening to her teacher's remarks.

 By this time, she had already reached the front. She sat down in the chair opposite to Miss Anderson and flashed her a winning smile. Her teacher frowned at her, something which she had never done, and pursed up her mouth.

"Take a look at your paper, Rebecca," she said sternly, pushing the test sheet towards her.

Becky shot a confused look at her teacher and accepting the paper, opened it to the first page. And gasped. There were at least thirty red slashes on the paper, almost covering her writing.

"Rebecca, I am very disappointed. As you already know, this is the end-of-the-year paper and a fail will mean summer school. There are silly mistakes and your handwriting is hundred times worse than usual! You have performed the worst in the class in mathematics and I hope you are ashamed! Oh,and I also suggest practicing your handwriting for at least two hours everyday!"  Miss Anderson proclaimed coldly.

"I…well, I…Miss, I studied for at least three hours! I have no idea how this could have happened!" Becky said, not really wanting to meet her teacher's eyes.

In reality, she had hardly studied at all. Sure, she had been in her room for three hours, but instead of studying, she had been reading the newest Harry Potter book which was actually quite long. She had been very confident, seeing as she had not studied at all for the previous math quiz and got full marks. She wished that she had studied now. She wished that during the test paper she had checked her answers more thoroughly. Most of all, she wished that she had worked harder to improve her handwriting. If she had, she would not have to go to summer school with all the bogus students in her grade.

As Diana Anderson looked at her, her face softened a little bit. 

"Rebecca, I know that you are not a bad student. You were always the highest scorer on every test I gave you and you are mostly well behaved in class. I wouldn't send you to summer school, but I'm quite sure you know that I cannot decide. However, there have been students who have gone there for barely a week and then shown a large improvement in their studies. Those students are then given a new set of test sheets and based on the grade awarded on the test paper, they either continue summer school or stop. Such is the rule in this school," Miss Anderson said, patting Becky's shoulder sympathetically.

Becky looked up again, a little more cheerful.

"Thanks,Miss. I'll try being one of those students," she said with a small smile.

She stood up and walked back to her place.

While this long conversation was going on, the class had begun to get curious. Was Becky Thompson actually getting told off? The star student of the class was being scolded for bad marks? 

As soon as Becky got to her place,her classmates had began to bombard her with questions.

"What was Anderson saying,Becky?"

"How much did you get? Was she mad?"

 "Ooh…was she disappointed in your handwriting? She always is, isn't she?"

All Becky did was shake her head and put a finger on her lips, smiling. She tilted her head towards Miss Anderson and shushed them. She would have to deal with her parents' questions later anyways.