Free Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

a tree in front of my house just like it. I can feel the wind blow and hear the mock- ingbird whistling on the way back to her nest. But when I try to carve it, it looks like a dead tree, toothpicks, a child's drawing. I can't bring it to life. I'd love to give it up. Quit. But I can't think of anything else to do, so I keep chipping away at it. Principal Principal stormed in yesterday, smelling pleasure. His mustache moved up and down, a radar sweep for all things unruly. An unseen hand turned off the radio as he crossed the threshold, and bags of potato chips vanished, leav- ing the faint scent of salt to mix with vermilion oil paint and wet clay. He scanned the room for merriment. Found only bowed heads, graceful pencils, dipping brushes. Mr. Freeman touched up the dark roots on the head of a lady school board member and asked if Principal Principal needed help. Principal Princi- pal stalked out of the room in the direction of the Human Waste's smoking haven. Maybe I'll be an artist if I grow up. 78 POSTER CHILD Heather left a note in my locker, begging me to go to her house after school. She's in trouble. She is not meeting Martha standards. She sobs out the story in her room. I listen and pick lint balls off my sweater. The Marthas held a craft meeting to make Valentine's pillows for little kids who are in the hospital. Meg 'n' Emily sewed three sides of the pillows, while the others stuffed, stitched, and glued on hearts and teddy bears. Heather was in charge of hearts. She was all flustered because a few Marthas didn't like her outfit. They yelled at her for gluing hearts crooked. Then the top of her glue bottle came off and completely ruined a pillow. At this point in the story, she throws a doll across her room. I move the nail polish out of her reach. Meg demoted Heather to pillow stuffing. Once the pillow pro- duction line was again rolling smoothly, the meeting began. Topic: the Canned Food Drive. The Senior Marthas are in charge of delivering the food to the needy (with a newspaper photographer present) and meeting with the principal to coor- dinate whatever needs coordinating. I zone out. She talks about who's in charge of classroom cap- tains and who's in charge of publicity and I don't know what 79 all. 1 don't come back to earth until Heather says, "I knew you wouldn't mind, Mel." Me: "What?" Heather: "I knew you wouldn't mind helping. I think Emily did it on purpose. She doesn't like me. I was going to ask you to help, then say I did it by myself, but that would have been lying, and besides they would have stuck me with all the poster work for the rest of the year. So I said 1 have a friend who is really artistic and community-oriented and could she help with the posters?" Me: "Who?" Heather: [laughing now, but I still hold on to the nail polish] "You, silly. You draw better than me and you have plenty of time. Please say you'll do it! Maybe they'll ask you to join too, once they see how talented you are! Please, please, whipped cream, chopped nuts and cherry on top please! If I screw this up, I know they'll blacklist me and then I'll never be part of any of the good groups." How could I say no? DEAD FROGS Our biology class has graduated from fruit to frogs. We were scheduled to do the frog unit in April, but the frog company 80 delivered our victims on January 14. Pickled frogs have a way of disappearing from the storage closet, so today Ms. Keen armed us with knives and told us not to gag. David Petrakis My Lab Partner is thrilled — anatomy at last. There are lists to memorize. The hopping bone's connected to the jumping bone, the ribbet bone's connected to the fly- catching bone. He seriously talks about wearing one of those doctor masks over his face while we "operate." He thinks it would be good practice. The room does not smell like apple. It smells like frog juice, a cross between a nursing home and potato salad. The Back Row pays attention. Cutting dead frogs is cool. Our frog lies on her back.