The air smelled slightly of wood smoke, and the leaves crunched under your feet. It was a crisp fall morning. I was heading to school with my backpack over my shoulders, but something felt off– I hadn’t done my homework.

Well, the truth is that I actually did do it. The night before I sat at my table struggling with all the math equations and history dates I have to remember for my class, but with all the struggle I did in fact manage to finish it in 2 hours. When I was done I put the homework on the floor next to my backpack. But then, disaster struck. 

There, in the middle of the living room, was Turbo, our crazy, Golden Retriever aggressively chewing on what looked like… my math homework. 

Turbo looked up at me, wagging his tail, with bits of my math homework stuck to his mouth. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, trying to gather the shreds of math homework that still remained. There was no point in saving it at that point, the whole packet, gone. 

My older brother, Josh, wandered in yawning. “What is wrong?”

“Turbo devoured my homework,” I said annoyed.

Josh chuckled. “That’s the funniest excuse ever!”

I glanced at him deeply. “My teacher is never going to believe this.”

Josh shrugged, “You're just going to have to tell him the truth.”

By the time I got to school, my mind was racing through many different ways I was going to tell my teacher about this, the only problem was that I couldn’t come up with a good way to tell him without it sounding unbelievable. As I walked into Mr. Shimeks room he was already at his desk, collecting homework. 

“Good morning, Ashley,” he said as I advanced towards the desk with his hand searching for my homework.

“Good morning, Mr. Shimek,” I replied nervously. “Um, about my homework…”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

I took a long deep breath. “My dog, Turbo, he, uh kind of ate it.”

Mr. Shimek looked at me for a long moment, and I braced myself for a lecture. Surprisingly it wasn’t a lecture.

“He ate it?” he repeated in a curious tone.

“Yeah,” I said, opening my backpack and showing him the chewed-up scraps. “Here’s what’s left of it.”

I was shocked when Mr. Shimek laughed. “This is the first time I’ve seen proof of that claim, even though I have heard it a lot of times.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said feeling a bit out of hope.”I’ll redo it and bring it in tomorrow.”

Mr. Shimek nodded. “Alright Ashley. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. Maybe keep your homework somewhere safe, like in your room away from your do.”

I nodded, “Thank you Mr. Shimek, I will.”