Free The Shells Of Chanticleer by Maura Patrick

back in her chair, tilting it away from her desk.
    Wait—I spent the day alone and had no dinner and no one bothered to check my work? My double-checked, perfectly in order work?
    “Then why did I do it?” I whined. “I had no dinner. I had to walk home by myself in the dark.”
    Miss Clarice leaned forward, comfortably resting her elbows on the desk. “It really wasn’t about the books, my dear. It was about conquering indecision. You made your own choices and carried them out to completion on your own. Well done.”
    I asked, “Is that all?” I expected something else.
    “It was an enormous job; it takes a long time. As you mature, it is good to know that some things in life take time, a long time. It’s important to keep going and not to give up. You kept going. Although you did show some evidence of helplessness, you eventually rallied and got yourself out of the library before midnight. I’ve seen some young people spend a couple of days in the library figuring out what they wanted to do.”
    Okay, that was good advice but she could have told me that earlier in the day, or at least before dinner.
    “But it was awful. No one came to give me any dinner or tell me it was okay to leave. I had to walk home all alone. I never even saw the Prime Minister.”
    She was unfazed. “Well, people are busy. Your instructions were to alphabetize. No one told you not to leave before you were finished or to skip dinner, to not ask for food if you were hungry. No one told you not to leave the library if you were too tired or not to call Bing if you wanted company to walk home.”
    “But I was afraid I’d get in trouble if I left.”
    “Hmm,” Clarice nodded. “And did you?”
    “I don’t know. Am I in trouble?”
    Clarice tilted her head and looked at me. “No, Macy, you are not in trouble. But do you see the problem here?”
    I didn’t. I shook my head. No.
    “Your default assumption was to assume you were. It was your own idea to work so late, to skip dinner, to wait to be dismissed. Bing told you our hours were nine to five and that we did not approve of missing meals, didn’t he? He was supposed to.”
    I considered blaming the way I acted last night on Bing, but even though I felt bad about it I wasn’t a liar. “Yes, he did,” I admitted. “But I didn’t feel free to leave.”
    “Why?”
    “I wanted someone to tell me it was okay,” I said.
    Miss Clarice countered, “So you lack initiative to take care of your own needs, instead assuming we wanted you to work for ten hours without a break or nourishment?”
    “So I shouldn’t have done that?”
    “No.”
    “But the Prime Minister scared me. He screamed at me. I wanted to please him.”
    Clarice laughed him off. “Oh, him. He’s an old grouchy man who has been here a long time. He’s a good test. You are much stronger and nimbler than him. Why, he wishes he were your age again. He could never climb up and down that ladder today. Don’t get in the habit of waiting for permission. Don’t let your fears be in charge of you. Don’t let them hold you captive as they did in the library for all that time.”
    The memory of timidly sitting there by myself in that quiet library for hours, waiting for someone to come get me but being too afraid to do anything about it upset me. Maybe what she said was true, but I didn’t like her pointing it out. What did it matter if I was hesitant and unsure? What exactly was so wrong with staying just the way I was? They were forcing me to criticize my ways. They didn’t really know me. I had only been there for two days. I felt trapped and hopeless. Remembering my promise to myself in the library, I exclaimed, “I want to go home. This place is weird. I miss my home and I’m missing my spring break. Can I please just forget all of this and go back home?”
    Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t hold them back. They seemed to swell up from inside my chest and I couldn’t keep them in anymore. I was