GRE and Math Class

I am in high school and am going with my best friend, Wallace from Veronica Mars, to take the GRE. We did not sign up ahead of time, but the person in charge of admitting people to the test (an assistant principal?) hands us each one of those three-part sheets for making copies, with the white, yellow, and pink pages, and ushers us into the testing room.

The lady teacher administering the test makes some comment about me indicating that I am trashy. She apparently reached this conclusion because I am Latina. I yell at her about it, and then she offers as further evidence my outfit, which is actually sort of fancy-conservative and which I only wore because I had nothing else clean. I ask the other kids to raise their hands if they agree with the teacher, and nobody who actually knows me thinks that I am trashy at all. We keep shouting at each other for so long that a lot of kids leave because they no longer have time to take the test and make it to their last class. There are one or two more kids than computers left in the room, so I say that I will not take the test since I had taken the GRE before and done pretty well on it and had just wanted to prove that I could do better.

As I am walking through the commons area on my way to class, my brother calls me. I take out the cell phone I had borrowed from him and am having all my calls forwarded to, but it is broken and I can't answer. I push all the buttons on the phone and nothing happens.

I get to my class and can tell from what is written on the board that it is remedial math. I say I don't belong here and ask if I can go to my counselor to change my schedule. The teacher, who has had me before and knows I should be in a higher level class, denies me permission and tells me instead to study a poster on the wall full of equations from calculus. At this point, I realize that because I didn't turn in a form telling which courses I want, I have been put in all remedial classes.

I get out the calculator I have borrowed from my brother to work on the equations on the wall, but most of the buttons are missing.

Then I start working on some project that my teacher, who has turned into Orson Scott Card, is planning to write about in his upcoming column. I am making something that involves mixing several components, including cornmeal and urea. I don't quite finish in class so pack up the project in a cardboard box to finish at home.