Free Defiant Heart by Marty Steere Page B

eleventh, they would once again be sharing the same classrooms.
    Taking in the group, Mary smiled brightly and added, “This is definitely going to be a special year.”
    #
    The first thing Agnes Tremaine did after entering her classroom was check the contents of the two boxes that had been left on the floor by her desk. Satisfied that the boxes contained the correct number of books, she took a seat at the desk, opened her leather folio and extracted a stack of papers. On top was a master roll. In addition to her normal task of teaching English for each of the six grades at Jackson High, she would be serving this year as the home room teacher for the combined eleventh and twelfth graders.
    She scanned the list of students and noted a couple she did not expect to see in her classroom, if at all, until later in the semester. They were boys who lived on farms well outside of town and would almost certainly not appear until after the corn harvest was in.
    The names on the list she knew well. This was Agnes’ eighth year teaching at Jackson, a job she’d taken shortly after her graduation from Bryn Mawr. She had taught each of these students from the seventh grade on. There was only one unfamiliar name: Jonathon Meyer, the transfer from New York. She had been given a copy of his transcript, and he appeared to be a very good student. He was one of the two subjects occupying her thoughts this first morning of school.
    The other was Mary Dahlgren. What was she going to do with Mary this year?
    That Mary was a superb student was beyond question. The problem, or, better yet, the challenge, Agnes reflected, was going to be finding a way to keep Mary engaged. The year before, Mary had devoured not only the readings for the eleventh graders, but she’d taken it upon herself to read each of the works on the twelfth grade reading list. When she had sat for her final exam the previous spring, she’d done something unprecedented, taking both the eleventh and twelfth grade exams at the same time. Moreover‌—‌and, frankly, this had come as no surprise to Agnes‌—‌Mary had posted the highest scores on each exam. And it wasn’t even close.
    Over the summer, Agnes had corresponded with Julius Crittendon, the former superintendent of the school district. Dr. Crittendon had taken a keen interest in Mary’s progress, and, even though he’d moved on to a new position in California, he had expressed a desire to remain engaged in her advancement.
    From her stack of papers, Agnes withdrew the reading list that Dr. Crittendon had compiled. His suggestion to Agnes had been to put Mary on a course of independent study, utilizing the works on the list. It was quite an impressive collection of books. Some of them even Agnes had not read, and she was looking forward to the challenge.
    She scanned the list again. Among them, Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Austen, Wilde, Tolstoy, Wharton, Brontë. The last name made Agnes chuckle. Not because it didn’t belong on the list. Of course it did. But Dr. Crittendon, who should have known better, had listed Emily Brontë as the author of Jane Eyre . That classic novel, however, had been written by Emily’s sister, Charlotte Brontë.
    Activity at the door caught her attention, and she looked up as her students began to make their way into the classroom. She spotted Mary and called out to her. Mary said something briefly to Sam Parker, then turned and walked over to Agnes’ desk.
    “Good morning, Miss Tremaine.”
    “Good morning, Mary. Did you have a nice summer?”
    “I did, thank you,”
    Agnes was once again struck by just how poised and mature Mary acted. She actually seemed older than the other girls, though Agnes knew she was one of the youngest in the class.
    “Mary, I’ve given some thought to your course of study this semester, and I’d like to show you a reading list I’ve compiled.”
    She plucked the sheet from the top of the stack on her desk and held it out. With a curious smile, Mary