Free Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Page B

and calculating how many guppies you could breed if you wanted to go into the guppie business. Once the guppies turn into x's and y's, my contacts fog. Class ends in a debate between the animal-rights activists, who say it is im- moral to own fish, and the red-blooded capitalists, who know lots of better ways to make money than investing in fish that eat their young. I watch the snow falling outside. WORD WORK Hairwoman is torturing us with essays. Do English teachers spend their vacations dreaming up these things? The first essay this semester was a dud: "Why America Is Great" in five hundred words. She gave us three weeks. Only Tiffany Wilson turned it in on time. But the assignment was not a complete failure — Hairwoman runs the drama club and she recruited several new members based on their perfor- mances as to why they needed an extension. She has a warped sense of humor as well as a demented beau- tician. The next essay was supposed to be fictional: "The Best 84 Lost Homework Excuse Ever" in five hundred words. We had one night. No one was late. But now Hairwoman is on a roll. "How I Would Change High School," "Lower the Driving Age to 14," "The Perfect Job." Her topics are fun, but she keeps cranking them out, one after the next. First she broke our spirits by overwhelming us with work we couldn't really complain about because the topics are the kind of things we talk about all the time. Re- cently she's started sneaking grammar (shudder) into the class- room. One day we worked on verb tenses: "I surf the Net, I surfed the Net, I was surfing the Net." Then, lively adjectives. Does it sound better to say "Nicole's old lacrosse stick hit me on the head" or "Nicole's barf-yellow, gnarled, bloodstained lacrosse stick hit me on the head"? She even tried to teach us the difference between active voice — "I snarfed the Oreos" — and passive voice — "The Oreos got snarfed." Words are hard work. I hope they send Hairwoman to a con- ference or something. I'm ready to help pay for a sub. NAMING THE MONSTER I work on Heather's posters for two weeks. I try to draw them in the art room, but too many people watch me. It is quiet in my closet, and the markers smell good. I could stay here for- ever, BRING A CAN, SAVE A LIFE. Heather told me to be direct. It is the only way to get what we want. I draw posters of bas- ketball players shooting cans through a hoop. They demon- strate very good form. 85 Heather has another modeling job. Tennis clothes, I think. She asks me to hang the posters for her. I actually don't mind. It's nice having kids see me do something good. Might help my reputation. I'm hanging a poster outside the metal-shop room when IT creeps up. Little flecks of metal slice through my veins. IT whispers to me. "Freshmeat." That's what IT whispers. IT found me again. I thought I could ignore IT. There are four hundred other freshmen in here, two hundred female. Plus all the other grades. But he whispers to me. I can smell him over the noise of the metal shop and I drop my poster and the masking tape and I want to throw up and I can smell him and I run and he remembers and he knows. He whispers in my ear. I lie to Heather about the masking tape and say I put it back in the supply box. RENT ROUND 3 My guidance counselor calls Mom at the store to pave the way for my report card. Must remember to send her a thank- you note. By the time we eat dinner, the Battle is roaring at full pitch. Grades, blah, blah, blah, Attitude, blah, blah, blah, Help around the house, blah, blah, blah, Not a kid anymore, blah, blah, blah. 86 I watch the Eruptions. Mount Dad, long dormant, now con- sidered armed and dangerous. Mount Saint Mom, oozing lava, spitting flame. Warn the villagers to run into the sea. Be- hind my eyes I conjugate irregular Spanish verbs. A minor blizzard blows outside. The weather lady says it's a lake-effect storm — the wind from Canada sucks up water from Lake Ontario, runs it through the freeze machine, and dumps