Breaking Up Is Really, Really Hard to Do by Natalie Standiford Page B

never seen any Latvian films, so I don't know much about it other than what you wrote me, but it sounds fascinating. I had no idea that
Gilmore Girls
was based on Latvian folktales.
    Today was one of those days where I wanted to walk out and quit teaching forever. One of my tenth-graders did an extra credit report (his midterm project was so hopeless I had to give him the chance to make it up with extra credit or he'd fail, god forbid) on a book he apparently found on his mother's night table called
Erotic Fantasies for Women.
I stopped him before he'd read too much out loud but it seems that every boy in the class has already memorized the whole book. They kept asking me leading questions about what they should do if a cute, shirtless handyman wants to comein and wash up or the pool guy wants to take a dip. It was a nightmare. I wonder if I should talk to the kid's parents but I'd have to go through “Rod” first, and I don't think I can take another half-hour lecture on the paradigms for empowering students to leverage their developmentally-appropriate higher-order thinking.
    Sorry for going on and on about school—you must find it boring, but it feels good to have someone to vent the day's frustrations to. Write back and tell me all about your day. I love to hear about your world—it takes me away from my own dreary reality. I know you have your difficulties but you handle them so gracefully.
    —Beau
    Lina was hooked on Dan's e-mails like a hyperactive kid on sugar. They wrote at least once a day now. When Holly and Mads asked her about it, she told them the e-mails were petering out. She just couldn't share it with them anymore—not if Holly and Mads were going to make fun of them. And Lina knew they would. She couldn't bear that. The e-mails meant too much to her.
    She could tell he was hooked on them, too, and that made her pulse race. She always knew he'd like her if he let himself get to know her—and she was right. She had proof. He clearly liked and admired her, or “Larissa,” anyway, and Lina thought she sensed a romance budding between the lines. He wanted to ask Larissa out, she knew he did. If Larissa gave him the tiniest crumb of encouragement, he'd snatch it up. But without her encouragement he was shy. Maybe she had made Larissa a little too glamorous. She had the feeling he was intimidated by her.
    But that glamour was Lina's disguise, and she wasn't ready to drop it yet. Besides, she loved being Larissa, going to gallery openings and movie screenings and bistro dinners with visiting filmmakers. No wonder Dan had stars in his eyes. Lina did, too.
    Meanwhile, back in “dreary reality,” Lina had been in the class Dan described, where Karl Levine tried to read from his mother's book. She'd seen the discomfort on Dan's face and felt terrible for him, but the boys just wouldn't let up. It was as if some bug had gotten inside them, all at once, and nothing would calm them down. But it felt so strange to come home and read about it in Dan's e-mail. He played it cool in class, but the problems that came up bothered him more than she'd realized.
    Hello Beau,
    I'm so sorry you had a bad day. Don't let your students get to you. I'm sure they like and respect you. But sometimes one boy starts trouble and it snowballs, and even the greatest teacher in the world wouldn't be able to stop it. It happened lots of times when I was in high school.
    I had a frustrating day today, too. I really wanted to take a seminar called “Freddy Prinze, Jr.: From Shaggy to Shakespeare,” but the class was full before I had a chance to sign up. And Professor Stockhauser said he hasn't had a chance to read my Latvian animation paper yet. And a friend of mine is having a big party, but I have too much reading to do and can't go.
    I hope you have a better day tomorrow. Maybe you should watch a movie tonight. I know that always takes my mind off my troubles, at least for a little while. Why do you think I'm going to film