One Step to You (The Rome Novels #1)(27)

A thrill of joy ran through the line of desks. She was one of the class grinds, and she never let anyone copy.

“Come on!” Pallina whispered to her as the poor thing trudged past her.

Signora Giacci handed Carli her paper. She seemed sincerely chagrined. “What happened to you? Maybe you weren’t feeling well? Or has this class full of illiterates finally managed to infect you too?”

The young woman forced a smile. And with a faint “I wasn’t at my best” went back to her desk. One thing was certain. Now she really did feel bad. Carli, who could rattle off the most challenging translations, with a big fat C. She opened her assignment. She scanned it rapidly and immediately spotted her tragic error. She slammed her fist down on her desk. How had she managed to get that wrong? She put her hands in her hair, clearly distraught.

The class’s glee and happiness reached incredible peaks.

“Benucci, C plus. Salvetti, B minus.” And that was that. The students who hadn’t yet picked up their classwork heaved a sigh. By now, they had definitely received a passing grade. Signora Giacci always handed back the assignments in order of grades, from worst to best. First the failures and then, in a slowly rising crescendo, up to passing grades and then the various A minuses and As. Although an A was something of an event.

“Marini, B plus, Ricci, A minus.” A few of the girls were waiting calmly to receive their grades, accustomed as they were to occupying the high end of the rankings. But for Pallina, this was a genuine, full-fledged miracle. She couldn’t believe her ears. Ricci, A minus? Then that meant she must have received at least that grade, if not higher. She dreamed of being able to go home to her mother for lunch and tell her, “Mamma, I got an A minus in Greek.” Her mother would flat-out faint.

“Gervasi, A minus.”

Pallina smiled happily for her friend. “Go, Babi.”

Babi turned to look at her and waved a greeting. For once, she wasn’t going to have to feel bad about having gotten a better grade than Pallina.

“Lombardi.” Pallina leaped out of her desk and headed straight toward the teacher’s desk. She was euphoric. By now she must have at least an A minus.

“Lombardi, D.” Pallina stood speechless. “Your paper must somehow have wound up in this stack by mistake,” Signora Giacci apologized with a smile.

Pallina took her assignment and trudged back to her desk, devastated. For a fleeting instant, she’d believed it. How great it would have been to get an A minus. She sat down.

Signora Giacci glanced at her, still smiling, and then went on to read the grades on the last few papers. She’d done it on purpose, the old bitch. Pallina felt certain of it. Her surging rage caused her eyes to fill with tears. Damn it, how could she have fallen for it? An A minus on a Greek translation: impossible. She should have realized immediately that something wasn’t right.

She heard a whisper on her right. She turned around. It was Babi. Pallina tried to smile but without much success. Then she sat up, running the back of her hand under her nose. Babi showed her a handkerchief. Pallina nodded. Babi knotted it and tossed it to her. Pallina caught it in midair.

Signora Giacci glanced at her with a look of annoyance. Pallina raised her hand apologetically and then blew her nose. Taking advantage of the handkerchief in front of her face, she made a face as well as a rude noise. A few of the girls around her noticed and laughed in amusement.

Signora Giacci slammed her fist down on her desk. “Silence!”

She handed back the last few papers and then opened her ledger, ready to test some students. “Salvetti and Ricci.”

The two girls went up to the teacher’s desk, handed in their notebooks, and waited by the wall, ready for the ensuing firing squad of questions.

Signora Giacci looked down at her ledger again. “Servanti.”

Francesca Servanti stood up from her desk, stunned. That day it really wasn’t her turn. Giacci was supposed to be testing Salvetti, Ricci, and Festa. Everyone knew it.

She walked in silence to the teacher’s desk and handed over her notebook, doing her best to conceal her outright desperation. Actually, though, it was plain to see. She was entirely unprepared.

Signora Giacci gathered the notebooks and laid them one atop the other, squaring them up with both hands. “All right, with you three, I’m done with this round of testing, and then I hope to set aside Greek for a while. We’ll be able to focus on Latin. Well, I’m going to tell you right now. Almost certainly, that’ll be one of the subjects that’s going to be on the final exam…”

Well, tell me something I don’t know, most of the class thought inwardly. One young woman had another thought on her mind. That was Silvia Festa. She was afflicted by quite another order of worries, far more personal to her own situation. Why hadn’t Signora Giacci called her? Why wasn’t she being tested, instead of Servanti, as she ought to have been? Could Signora Giacci have something else in mind for her?

And yet her situation was far from ideal. She already had two Cs on the books, and she really couldn’t afford to do any worse.

That said, the teacher could hardly have made a mistake. Signora Giacci never made mistakes. That was one of the golden rules there at Falconieri High School.

Everyone knew Signora Giacci. She lived on in the memories of the school’s graduates for the rest of their lives, for better or worse. Especially for worse, given that no one had ever told or heard a single story or anecdote that featured Signora Giacci helping out a student in dire straits.