Cheese
Mizithra was in shock. She had really failed hard this time. It must have been that last test - she knew her math grade was good before that. But it hadn't been that hard, she thought. Was it a series of stupid mistakes?
It would be a miracle if her parents didn't outright disown her when she got home and presented her report card to them. In desperation, her mind raced for possibilities.
She could try being nonchalant and not say anything at home. No, her mother had all the report card days circled in red on her calendar. She would be interrogated as soon as she stepped in the door.
She could say the report card printers broke, and we didn't get them today. No, dammit, they would just call up her best friend Jennifer's parents and find out she was lying immediately.
She could very carefully change the grade on the paper. How hard could it be? But, she dismissed this almost immediately. All of her efforts in life went towards academics, so subterfuge was not a strong point. Even when she tried to get a fake ID using school connections and fifty dollars, she somehow managed to get one which said she was a six foot tall 39 year old white man from Alaska. She had never bothered to try using it.
No, she would just have to suck it up. She sighed.
Mizithra's unique name came from a combination of factors. Her parents had just moved to San Francisco from Mysore about a year before she was born, and her mother, Lalitha, was still acclimatizing to American culture. While she was fluent in English, as most educated Indians were, Lalitha wanted to make sure that her daughter was absolutely not seen as fresh off the boat, so she decided to give her a very American name. Unfortunately, being that she WAS fresh off the boat, lived in North Beach, and was quite pregnant with insatiable Italian food cravings, Lalitha's determination for what constituted a good American name was quite skewed. It came to her as a sign when she went into labor during the middle of a meal of spaghetti with brown butter mizithra sauce at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Her father, Srinivas, who didn't argue with Lalitha at the best of times, knew better than to go against her hormone-addled pregnancy brain, and so Mizithra was born.
Of course, in the intervening 16 years, Lalitha had become much more versed in popular culture, so whenever Mizithra screwed up, which seemed like a weekly occurrence these days, Lalitha would resort to downgrading her on the cheese hierarchy. Often that was by calling her Cheddar, for all the money her parents were blowing on a seemingly hopeless child, but once when had really screwed up by breaking her eyeglasses while playing the forbidden game of basketball with boys, she had been shuffled all the way to Feta. Mizithra didn't want to know what it would take to get her down to Velveeta.
"Ah, Mizithra, you're home. Give me your report card," Lalitha exclaimed.
Mizithra languorously fished through her backpack, trying to delay the inevitable, but there was only so much time she could waste, so she finally handed over the paper sealing her demise.
"English, A+, good. American History, A, fine. Chemistry, A+, good. OH MY GOD! WHAT IS THIS? Srinivas, get up here now!"
Her father, who was a software developer and often worked from home, ran up from his basement office.
"What is it?" he worriedly asked, glancing between Lalitha's horrified expression and Mizithra's resigned look.
"Look at your daughter's Math grade. AYOOOOOO, where have we failed her? She will end up on the streets of Philadelphia."
The streets of Philadelphia were Lalitha's version of hell, having combined in her mind the Bruce Springsteen song with the fact that The Fresh Prince had fled that place at his mom's insistence.
Srinivas glanced at the paper, and in his gentle but disappointed voice addressed Mizithra by his pet name for her, which meant little one.
"Puti, your mother and I are very disappointed."
"Srinivas, how can you be so calm? Look at that grade? I thought we had nipped this in the bud last year when she got an A- and we made her quit her soccer team to concentrate on school. But now she comes home with a B+. B+, Srinivas!" Lalitha turned to Mizithra and said sternly, "I cannot look at you right now, acting like a spicy Pepper Jack with your nonchalant ways. Just go to your room while your father and I discuss what to do."
Mizithra grabbed her backpack and bolted to her room. She hadn't been immediately disowned after all, and her mother actually liked Pepper Jack. Perhaps things were looking up.