#96: Abby's Lucky Thirteen
Abby’s got a lot on her plate, okay? She’s an athlete, a member of the BSC (where you can’t slack or Kristy Thomas will literally murder you), she’s preparing for her Bat Mitzvah which means she has to learn a whole bunch of Hebrew, and she’s struggling in math. She’s also allergic to everything in the world.
After she regrettably sics her mother on her math teacher, she feels even more pressure to do well in math. She pays some shady kid a whole $3 for what she thinks is a study guide — it turns out to be her actual math exam, so she accidentally cheats. Unfortunately for Abby, four other kids in her class used the same “study guide” and they all get busted for getting the same question wrong. Their punishment? Suspension. Abby is mortified and is able to hide it from her mom at first by calling home from a pay phone and erasing the message from the school that was left on their home answering machine. (Did that sentence make sense to anyone born after 1995?)
Of course, Abby’s mom eventually realizes that Abby’s not in school and rips her a new one. But then she heads in to SMS to rip Abby’s math teacher a new one. (I’m a teacher, and Mrs. Stevenson’s appetite for teacher-fighting has me feeling a little queasy.) Abby’s grounded for a month, but she still has her Bat Mitzvah in a few days. Luckily for Ms. Frost the math teacher, before Abby’s mom comes in to chew her out, Abby sees Mary Anne buying a “study guide” from the same kid who’d sold Abby hers. Abby intercepts it and she and Mary Anne scamper off to expose everything to Ms. Frost.
Finally, Abby and Anna get to celebrate their Bat Mitzvah and it all goes swimmingly. It reminds me of my friend David’s Bar Mitzvah from, like, 1998, which was really fun. I made a video of photos set to Mariah Carey’s “Hero,” which is iconic, if I do say so myself. Abby remains undefeated.
