Free The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan Page B

trouble anyway?
    He didn’t have the nerve to walk over to her side of the dorm. Somehow a girl on the boys’ side didn’t seem quite as bad as a boy on the girls’ side. And, besides, how did she know which one was his room?
    He glanced at his watch. He couldn’t believe it but he ran the risk of being late, and he didn’t even have to go to the dining hall, thanks to Mr. Simon, who thought he was ready for class a long time ago. He would have no excuse.
    Part of him wanted to give up, just stay in his room and listen to the next installment of what he was now calling “The Sorrows of Young Tim.” He was dying to know how Mr. Bowersox treated Tim. He was usually so distant and uninvolved with the students. He was pleasant enough—he smiled and waved whenever he passed a student—but he never seemed to actually engage anyone. It seemed so out of character to offer to pick up a student at the airport. And of course Duncan knew that at some point Tim and Vanessa would run into each other. He wanted to know when and how. But he didn’t have the time. He knew Mr. Simon was going to start talking about the Tragedy Paper today—he always did on the first day, even though they didn’t have much actually due before second semester. And sometimes he would drop an important detail—the paper has to be exactly fifteen pages long; or I want you to number the pages on the bottom right; or if you highlight the title of your paper in neon green, I’ll give you ten extra points—the minute the bell rang, telling everyone who was there that if theyrevealed the secret to any latecomers, they would not benefit from it themselves. Sometimes he would even lock the door for a few minutes when the bell rang, briefly excluding everyone who wasn’t already there while he finished telling the students who were on time some important tidbit.
    Duncan grabbed his notebook and ran, all the time on the lookout for Daisy. He had no idea who would be in his class—this class that loomed so large throughout all of high school: senior English. His graduating class was made up of about forty-five people, so he guessed there would be three sections of the class, since there were never more than fifteen students in a class—one of the school’s claims to fame. But maybe he was wrong—he really didn’t know exactly how many people actually came back after the summer, so there could be more or less. What he did know was that there would be two sections at the very least, so Daisy might or might not be in his class. His odds were fifty-fifty or more likely a thirty-three percent chance. Wow, he liked numbers so much more than words. He wondered why there wasn’t as much fanfare around his math class—calculus for him, not senior math. Of course he knew the answer whether he liked it or not. Everyone was at a different level of math—but all seniors, no matter what, went through the same English class. This year that meant reading
Moby-Dick
and participating in “the”
Moby-Dick
project. They loved that because it was so much less rigid than the Tragedy Paper. You could do anything, really, as long as it had todo with a whale. In years past, people had made cakes, painted pictures, put on plays, written and performed rap songs. He had no idea what he was going to do. He dreaded it. After that came Shakespeare and the reading of various plays, ending with
Hamlet
and the all-embarrassing performance of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in front of the entire senior class. And then, of course, the Tragedy Paper.
    Duncan ran down the stairs, and then turned in the opposite direction from the dining hall, walking quickly through the long, narrow hall that housed teachers’ offices and the office of the guidance counselor, who would attempt, however lamely, to help Duncan decide where he would spend his next four years. He turned then to his left, past the Hall, where everyone came to write a weekly composition and spent many evenings doing