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The smoky smell of cooking bacon drifted down the hallway of 104 Driscoll Avenue, up three stairs, around a bend, and through Missy’s barely cracked door to tickle her nose. Missy Maker’s brain calculated, as her mouth watered, before she was even fully awake. She let the smell of bacon pull her up into a sitting position and then lead her down the stairs and into her family’s kitchen. If G-ma cooks the whole pound . . . .

Missy saw two things as soon as she rounded the corner of the Sixth Grade Hall at Cherry Hill Academic Prep School or “CHAPS” as it was fondly called. CHAPS was more than just a middle school. It was an entire school campus made of four large buildings including the elementary school or The Lower School and the high school or The Upper School plus an administration building. CHAPS had a reputation, at least among parents, for having strong academics and a great STEM program. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. In her six years in attendance, Missy had come to feel that this was not really the case. In her experience, all the students seemed to care about were sports and popularity; two things she knew nothing about! The CHAPS schools shared a set of offices, a gymnasium, an auditorium, and a cafeteria, which were all housed in the Gates Admin Building, named for a famous and wealthy CHAPS alum, not Bill Gates, though that was one of many school myths that circulated every year. The campus included several sports fields and green areas, and one big, inconvenient, disruptive and unfair rule: no cell phones during school hours. That meant that all cell phones remained locked in lockers or switched off in backpacks all day, every day, no exceptions. Even if they were allowed, as soon as you made it past the main parking area, all signals disappeared and connections dropped. The whole CHAPS campus seemed to be in a bubble of bad reception.

“Settle down. Settle down!” Mrs. Frisch repeated for the third time. The fashion club was having its first official meeting of the year and everyone was excited to talk about designing and how the club worked and to learn more about their first competition of the year.

The bus ride back to school seemed to take twice as long as it had taken to get to the competition. Spectators and club members kept up the chatter on the bus, while Missy counted telephone poles along the route and tried not to think about why she felt sad. After all, this was her first ever real fashion competition, and her team had placed among the top contestants. She guessed that was pretty good for a look they had put together in a weekend, using recycled materials.

Painted blue in Missy’s favorite shade: not baby blue, not light blue, but cornflower blue. Missy’s room was her sanctuary. She could escape there and be alone or invite friends over to play or spread her things all around to work. Missy’s room was larger than most of her friends’ bedrooms, because for ten years, she had shared it with her sister Molly. Now that Molly lived in an apartment in her college town, Missy had the room to herself. Her sister had taken her own double bed and dresser for her new bedroom, and Missy now had all the space to herself. That space included everything Missy could ever need: books and bookshelves, a desk and laptop computer, a sewing machine and table, her very own dress form, a walk-in closet—big enough even to fit a bean bag chair, which was the envy of all her friends, and a view of her backyard through the matching oval windows above her desk.

“EEEP. EEEP. EEEP. EEEP. EEEP.” Missy came awake through a fog of exhaustion as she slammed her fist on the button of her radio alarm clock. She sat up and looked around her room. Missy sighed heavily.

All month long, students heard reminders to support the mathletes at their upcoming meet. Even though CHAPS was known for its high-caliber academics, all non-sport activities had to beg for supporters besides parents to show up to events. As the math event got closer and closer, the halls buzzed with chatter about the upcoming basketball game against their rivals from St. Mark’s Academy.

By Wednesday, Ms. Jameson had graded their latest math assessment. She shared that three students had “aced” the test. Missy smiled to herself, assuming she must be one of the top three. So, when Ms. Jameson handed her test back, Missy couldn’t believe the last page was covered in red ink. Since the instructions had directed the students to show their work, Missy had only received half-credit for the correct answers to the last three questions. Instead of a perfect score, Missy was looking at a bright red C circled in the upper right corner of her test. Tears stung her eyes as she held them back and calculated her numeric grade: Eight math questions in total. The first five were worth eight points each, and the last three were worth twenty points each, which gave her a score of 70 out of a possible 100.

Missy finally made it up to her room. She felt exhausted and overwhelmed. She spread out her homework and books across the comforter on her bed. She read the flyer from Ms. Jameson with details about the math club and Saturday’s competition. Then she flicked the blue piece of paper describing the math event like a Frisbee. It flew the length of her bed and then floated down to land upon her pillow near the end of her bed just as Pi entered the room. Pi surveyed the available space on the bed and leapt up. He pranced around, stepping on all the papers and books on Missy’s bed, then nudged away the flyer with his nose and settled himself on Missy’s pillow. Missy eased herself onto the bed and used her phone to snap candid shots of Pi. Pi cleaned his fur and ignored Missy completely.

Friday evaporated in a haze. As Missy donned her final mathfashion #OOTD—a mash-up of a blue t-shirt emblazoned with gold-sequined math symbols, the denim skirt she created from jeans pockets, paired with leggings and her favorite black trainers, she tried to recall where she had spent her time on Friday. Between cramming for the competition and scrimmaging with the math team, all she could remember was the excitement building up and then just waking up today and feeling slightly out of sorts.