I was nervous. Everybody was. We all stood around, nervously, and played with stuff, nervously, and ripped stuff up, nervously, leaving little piles of paper snow arouns the school. Some of us talked, nervously, and, all in all, there wasa real air of nervousness around the school.

I wasn't.

I just, wasn't.

While others opened the envelopes, and exclaimed over the contents, laughing, crying and hugging each other, I slipped, unnoticed, to the door, and fled.

I didn't live far from the school, only a five-minute walk. I carried the envelope in my hand, feeling the piece of paper inside move slightly as I walked. I remember everything, the slight breeze crisp, almost cool on my sun-spotted face. It had been boiling all summer, so hot I could practically feel my hair bleaching.

I let myself in, walked into the living room. Mom was home from the lab, just like she'd promised she'd be, and we sat down on the sofa. I put the envelope between us, and we stared at it.

Seconds ticked by.

'Where's Dad?' I asked. I knew it was stupid, but I didn't care. He said he'd be here too, and he wasn't. It wasn't fair. He was never there for me..

Mom's voice cut smoothly through my angry reverie. She was using her 'I care, but don't try to fuck with me' voice.

'He's working, like he always is. You know that. I know that. I know he's never here for anything, so we've surely got used to his absence by now, yes?'

She paused. The second hand ticked.

'Well,' she said, making an almost involuntary gesture to the envelope. 'Aren't you going to open it?'

I reach out my hand to take it, but am suddenly frightened, and so push it over to her instead. 'You do it.'

She takes the envelope carefully, gingerly, as though it is made of some delicate membrane that will flake and crumble if she's too rough with it. She looks at it a moment, before slitting along the top with her finger and producing a flimsy piece of white paper. She stares at it for a moment, before holding it out to me.

I hesitate, just a minute, and then I take it.

There area few, brief words of formailty at the top, and then the grades.

The subjects are lined up in a neat column on the left, the grades on a nean column on the right. I stare, thinking I have been mistaken. And then it hits me.

There are the names of all the fourteen subjects I took, in alphabetical order. And next to every one, the grade A*.

So long and goodnight.