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    My name is Sophie Fay, I’ve always been the only girl in my family and I don’t particularly like school or anything to do with it. Exactly one month ago I never knew that my life would end at a small table in room 187 at Mt. Mansfield Junior High.

    Mom’s eyes stared me down. I had nowhere to go. My worst fear had come true. A big red fat F and a sloppy blue signature reading "Mrs. Fay" lay on the table in front of me. It was just as clear to them as it was to me it wasn’t my mom’s signature. And it was a mystery to all of us how my teacher accepted it. All eyes were on me: moms, dads, and Mrs. Hackle. Time froze, and the world spun around me.

    "Gee that sucks" my brother Connor said at home. Mom and dad had come down on me hard, really hard. I was grounded for a month, I couldn’t snowboard until I got an A+ in Language Arts, and to top it all of I had to have a tutor! Can you believe it? I knew I’d go low, but I never thought I’d go this low.

    When I woke up on Monday a beautiful clean, fresh, crisp snow had covered our small town in Vermont and turned it into a winter wonderland. To go along with the fresh new snow was a fresh new feeling. One I had never experienced before. My dad said it was determination. Well whatever it was it lasted all that week and into the next. And sooner does a rain droop fall from the sky it was time to meet for the first time with my tutor.

    He walked in with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen, making his coarse mustache twitch upward. He sat down heaving all of his 250 pounds into the dinky plastic chairs of our school.

    "Look, I don’t want to be here anymore than you do. So lets just get it over with." I muttered under my breath.

    " Excuse me? Little missy if your going to get help from me you are going to respect me and things around you." Since I knew that this argument was over we cracked out my silent reading book. After two hours of glares from over my book my lesson was over and both he and I walked out to the lobby to meet my mom and give her the first review.

    He said there was nothing he could do for me and suggested that I go see a doctor at my local hospital. Of course at that time everybody thought he was crazy. But my mom and dad would do anything to change that F to an A+ in Language Arts. So when the next Sunday rolled around me and mom jumped in the car and drove to the Fletcher Allen Hospital. It took us forty-five minutes to drive the thirty miles it takes to get to the Fletcher Allen hospital. And once we got there we waited in the waiting room for three hours. Then after three hours of screaming, crying, menacing kids my name was called. "Sophie Fay?" The nurse called.

    "Here" My mom replied.

    "Are you going with me?" I asked my mom.

       "No" she answered. As the nurse dragged me through the dark and gloomy halls of the hospital she asked me stupid questions like, where do you go to school, how old are you and stuff like that. Finally after four hours of little tests I was brought back out into the cramped waiting room to wait again for another twenty minutes. Finally the doctor who had run all the little tests came back out into the waiting room and asked us to follow him to his office. This time my mom came. And an even smaller room this man who I only meet today ruined my life. Just like that. In four simple words.

    "Sophie Fay" he hesitated. " Your dyslexic." For the second time that month my world stopped. But it was quickly snapped back together by the sounds of mom’s voice.

    "Well that explains a lot," she whispered. The rest of the day pure shock lingered in the air

    From then on I was never grounded because of grades. And (not easily) I learned to live with my life. And I’m back to snowboarding and living my life like a normal kid. Some my say that my life was permanently ruined. I say it’s how you look at it.