wishing I could go all Audrey Hepburn and place the scarf over my head, then don a pair of massive brown sunglasses. No one would recognize me. No one could stare at me.
“Yeah,” I say. “But they’re all like that. It’s like a battle to give the most bizarre, complicated, unusual, cutting-edge assignment.”
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I bet they have contests.”
“They probably place bets on who has the best students. They think we’re perfect in every possible way.”
“Perfect grades, perfect attendance, perfect performance,” he says. “Hey, I gotta run. I have Spanish now.”
My face feels hot for a second. He’s probably in the same Spanish class with Carter. I look away; even hearing the name of the class Carter might be in embarrasses me.
“See ya,” I say, and then scoot off to Taft-Hay Hall. I have an open period so I might as well do a little researchon
The Tempest
. I sprint up the three flights of stairs to my room and slam the door behind me. I peel off my gloves, coat, and scarf, sit down at my desk, flip open my computer, and fire up a browser window. I’m a good student. I don’t procrastinate and I do my homework on time, but for some reason I feel insanely compelled to look up
The Tempest
this very second.
I find its Wikipedia entry.
A sorcerer who’s a duke, sent to an island with his daughter, banished there by his own brother…
Okay, I can do that…. A modern-day hipster magician who wears pencil-thin skinny jeans gets duped by his brother, some kind of power monger–type who wants to be the sole heir to the family’s skateboarding business….
I read more.
A storm, a ship run aground
…
Instead of a storm, our hero shuts down Internet access for a day, the brother’s business grinds to a halt…. Yes, that works.
I read more of the play’s synopsis until I see something on Wikipedia that I can’t not see.
Following Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda…
I read that line again. There must be a mistake; I’m seeing things, inventing things. Wikipedia could be wrong, so I Google other
Tempest
synopses. I look up Shakespeare scholars and the backstory is still the same: Attempted rape, attempted rape, attempted rape.
I don’t really believe in signs, but I do kind of believe inkarma and the universe and stuff like that. Is this the universe telling me something? Like there’s a reason Ms. Peck gave me this play? Like this play was
meant
to be assigned to me?
I look down at the floor, contemplating. It’s then that I see a red sheet of paper on the carpet. I pick it up. It’s that bird again. The same flyer I saw before.
Join the Mockingbirds! Stand up, sing out! We’re scouting new singers, so run, run, run on your way to our New Nine, where you can learn a simple trick….
There’s a note on this one from T.S. In her curlicue writing—she still uses a heart on top of each little
i
—it reads:
Think about it.
I fold it into quarters and put it in my back pocket.
Think about it, she says. She’s not telling me to think about trying out for the Mockingbirds’ New Nine. She’s telling me to think about
going
to the Mockingbirds. Asking for their help.
I think about the words—
learn a simple trick
—and where they come from.
“First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks.”
They’re from
To Kill a Mockingbird,
naturally, since that’s where the Mockingbirds get their name. We read it in freshman English. Our teacher gave us this crazy assignment where we had to take the first half of the book and compare the characters and their challenges back in the1930s to modern day. It was supposed to make the book more relevant, but it still seemed kind of dated to me. The only part I liked was the trial.
The trial
.
It’s like a train just slammed into me. Because the trial was about a rape. Only in
To Kill a Mockingbird
he didn’t do it. Tom Robinson was unjustly
“Yeah,” I say. “But they’re all like that. It’s like a battle to give the most bizarre, complicated, unusual, cutting-edge assignment.”
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I bet they have contests.”
“They probably place bets on who has the best students. They think we’re perfect in every possible way.”
“Perfect grades, perfect attendance, perfect performance,” he says. “Hey, I gotta run. I have Spanish now.”
My face feels hot for a second. He’s probably in the same Spanish class with Carter. I look away; even hearing the name of the class Carter might be in embarrasses me.
“See ya,” I say, and then scoot off to Taft-Hay Hall. I have an open period so I might as well do a little researchon
The Tempest
. I sprint up the three flights of stairs to my room and slam the door behind me. I peel off my gloves, coat, and scarf, sit down at my desk, flip open my computer, and fire up a browser window. I’m a good student. I don’t procrastinate and I do my homework on time, but for some reason I feel insanely compelled to look up
The Tempest
this very second.
I find its Wikipedia entry.
A sorcerer who’s a duke, sent to an island with his daughter, banished there by his own brother…
Okay, I can do that…. A modern-day hipster magician who wears pencil-thin skinny jeans gets duped by his brother, some kind of power monger–type who wants to be the sole heir to the family’s skateboarding business….
I read more.
A storm, a ship run aground
…
Instead of a storm, our hero shuts down Internet access for a day, the brother’s business grinds to a halt…. Yes, that works.
I read more of the play’s synopsis until I see something on Wikipedia that I can’t not see.
Following Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda…
I read that line again. There must be a mistake; I’m seeing things, inventing things. Wikipedia could be wrong, so I Google other
Tempest
synopses. I look up Shakespeare scholars and the backstory is still the same: Attempted rape, attempted rape, attempted rape.
I don’t really believe in signs, but I do kind of believe inkarma and the universe and stuff like that. Is this the universe telling me something? Like there’s a reason Ms. Peck gave me this play? Like this play was
meant
to be assigned to me?
I look down at the floor, contemplating. It’s then that I see a red sheet of paper on the carpet. I pick it up. It’s that bird again. The same flyer I saw before.
Join the Mockingbirds! Stand up, sing out! We’re scouting new singers, so run, run, run on your way to our New Nine, where you can learn a simple trick….
There’s a note on this one from T.S. In her curlicue writing—she still uses a heart on top of each little
i
—it reads:
Think about it.
I fold it into quarters and put it in my back pocket.
Think about it, she says. She’s not telling me to think about trying out for the Mockingbirds’ New Nine. She’s telling me to think about
going
to the Mockingbirds. Asking for their help.
I think about the words—
learn a simple trick
—and where they come from.
“First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks.”
They’re from
To Kill a Mockingbird,
naturally, since that’s where the Mockingbirds get their name. We read it in freshman English. Our teacher gave us this crazy assignment where we had to take the first half of the book and compare the characters and their challenges back in the1930s to modern day. It was supposed to make the book more relevant, but it still seemed kind of dated to me. The only part I liked was the trial.
The trial
.
It’s like a train just slammed into me. Because the trial was about a rape. Only in
To Kill a Mockingbird
he didn’t do it. Tom Robinson was unjustly
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