Free The Trouble with Polly Brown by Tricia Bennett

making its way down the lapel of her already badly stained school jacket.
    A small and stifled, “Oh, yuck,” was all she could manage to mutter under her breath. Polly, horrified, stood glued to the spot, fighting off the strongest urge to race to the washroom as her whole body yearned to hurriedly strip of her blazer in order to rinse it under running water until all visible evidence had been washed down the sink. She could only take a deep gulp, for wisdom told her that to even momentarily take her eyes off Mrs. McGillicuddy at this point in the proceedings would indeed have grave consequences.
    Meanwhile, her fellow pupils broke out into spontaneous laughter as they rocked backward on their chairs mouthing the word Fester to each other. Mrs. McGillicuddy remained oblivious as to why she had provoked such raucous laughter, but to be perfectly honest, she was far too deep into her personal tirade to really care.
    â€œYes, young lady, I have yet to understand your sloppy approach to biology, as well as every other subject in the school curriculum, and so you will face the consequences of your shameful disobedience by going over to stand by the wall for the duration of this lesson. Do I make myself abundantly clear? Or shall we argue this one further?”
    Billy Blunkett, who was sitting across from her desk, discreetly pried open the lid of his desk and take out his long ruler. With the aid of a thick rubber band securely placed around the head of the ruler, he took aim. “Hey, Fester. Gotcha!” he shouted loudly as the elastic band flew at lightning speed through the air and hit her smack on the cheek before falling to the ground. All the class began to titter, as their absent-minded teacher had inadvertently and incorrectly called her Fester instead of Esther, and this mishap had now given them a nice, new name to mischievously plague her with.
    Polly hung her head in shame as she rubbed her marked and stinging cheek before standing up to abandon her desk and make her way toward the back of the classroom. She sadly knew with the deepest assurance that long before the dinner bell rang, her cruel, new name would have made its way down the lengthy, gossip-filled corridors of the school and would by dinnertime be on the tongue of every crass boy in the school, who, while stuffing humongous amounts of slimy green cabbage down their throats, would only stop chewing to have a good laugh at her expense. Worse still, by midafternoon her new name would have gone far beyond the school gates, as it continued to travel on overfilled school buses and trains. By teatime, heaven forbid, it would surely be on the lips of every child back at the castle. “Psst… Polly Esther…Polly Fester. Ha ha.”
    Polly’s already deeply depressed heart sunk further still as she went on to picture Gailey Gobbstopper chanting it over and over in the late hours of the night as she lay in the next bed, only an arm’s distance away from Polly. “I might as well face the firing squad now, for my life is well and truly over,” she mumbled as in complete misery she took up her routine position of standing and staring at the blank wall in front of her.
    As Polly stood mindlessly facing the wall, she broke into what was to be the first of many large yawns as she began doing the same thing as usual, to count every brick in the wall. She had done this same thing countless times, so it no longer held even the teeniest amount of fascination or excitement whatsoever. Hello, wall. Here we are again, happy as can be. So what’s new today? Shall we play “thick as a brick”? You make up the questions, and I’ll try and guess the answers .
    So as Polly stood for what seemed an eternity making up endless silly and downright mindless games to pass away the time, the rest of the class quietly got down to the serious task of cutting into corneas and sticking pins through irises as they dissected the hideously