Free Sophomores and Other Oxymorons by David Lubar

her.
    Her eyes widened somewhat. “How precocious of you.”
    â€œBaby brother,” I said.
    She smirked. “I guess your parents could use a refresher in biology.”
    I could have shot back with something, but I knew there was nothing to be gained from waging war against authority. I’d seen kids try to win a battle of words with a teacher. Even if they won, they lost. I kept my mouth shut and took my seat. One of the oldest and truest clichés out there is
You can’t fightCity Hall.
Though I guess it’s actually only as old as City Hall itself. I’m sure there’s a prehistoric version along the lines of
You can’t fight Gronk’s cave.
    â€œLooks like you made a friend,” Lee said.
    I nodded, but remained silent, just in case Ms. Denton was listening.
    â€œTeacher’s pet,” Lee said. “Hudson charm is irresistible.”
    I didn’t know about that. But Hudson hunger was definitely hard to ignore. I made it through biology, where hunger would never be a driving force, and Life Skills, but started to feel the pangs of emptiness in Spanish class. It didn’t help that we were reading a story about Luis and his mother making tamales. I was starving in study hall. By the time I got to art, I was ready to eat some paste, just to have something in my stomach.
    Then I got to English and forgot all about hunger. There it lay, in all its red glory, waiting for me on my desk, as if Mrs. Gilroy wanted to make sure I had every possible second of ninth period to wallow in regret. A sixty-seven. That was about a D+. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d put a sticker in the upper right corner of the paper, next to the grade. It wasn’t a gold star, of course. It looked like Mr. Yuk—the guy who sticks his tongue out to warn toddlers that the sweet tasty syrup in the bottle is really bad for them.
    Lee got a ninety-two. A happy yellow duck gave her a wink and a big thumbs-up. Or a wings-up. Stickers are stupid. I stuffed the test in my backpack. I had to do something aboutthis. I was too dismayed by the grade to participate much in the book discussion.
    At the end of class, Mrs. Gilroy said, “I’d like to thank those of you who cared enough to participate in our discussion.” She looked right at me as she said that.
    I really had to do something about the hole I was digging for myself before the top of my head slipped below ground level.
    â€œGo ahead,” I told Lee when the bell rang. “I’ll catch up with you.”
    â€œGood luck, Lenny,” she said.
    â€œEnough with the Steinbeck references,” I said.
    Lee flashed me an evil grin. “Okeydokey.”
    â€œThanks a lot.” I knew that Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath
was about people from Oklahoma—Okies. And Lee knew that I knew.
    I waited until the room was clear, and then walked up to Mrs. Gilroy’s desk. “Can I talk to you about my test grade?” I asked.
    â€œYou can talk to me about whatever you wish,” she said. “I’d prefer that my students talk
with
me.”
    Good grief. If she was going to give me that much of a hard time over a stupid preposition, maybe it was pointless to talk to her. Or with her. Or at her. But I had to give it a shot. I was not a D student. Not in English. I pulled the test from my backpack. “I don’t want you to think I didn’t read the book,” I said.
    She glanced at the test. “I think you didn’t read the book carefully,” she said. “That’s a fairly obvious inference.”
    â€œI love that book,” I said. “I’ve read it twice. I swear.”
    â€œWhen?” she asked.
    I told her.
    She shook her head. “It was your summer-reading assignment.
This
summer. Not two summers ago, or however far back you crossed paths with it. You can’t participate in a class discussion of a book that’s at best a vague memory.”
    I