I Wish by Elizabeth Langston Read Free Book Online

obsessive worry over getting the wish list right. Nor could Ms. Dewan, my favorite teacher ever, get me engaged with The Canterbury Tales .
    She did, however, capture my attention at the end of the class period.
    “Lacey and Eli, could you drop by my desk for a moment?” she called over the thunder of thirty pairs of shoes trying to cram through the same door.
    There was a slight hitch in Eli’s stride as he stepped out of the flow of students and headed for her desk. I joined him seconds later.
    Ms. Dewan rummaged in a huge purse while we waited.
    “Here we are.” Ms. Dewan slapped two brochures on her desk and pushed them across to us. “I want you both to enter an essay contest.”
    I picked mine up, flipped it open, and skimmed. The 38th Annual Persuasive Essay Competition. Sponsored by the Association of Writing Educators. AWE.
    The grand prize made me blink. A one-thousand-dollar scholarship to the college of my choice. Really impressive. Not that I needed it. My college fund was one of the few things in my life that was fine the way it was.
    “Thanks, Ms. Dewan,” Eli said, “but I don’t plan to major in English.”
    “It doesn’t matter what your major will be. I just want one of my students to win, and the two of you are the best.”
    Her best writers? Rare praise from Ms. Dewan. I breathed in those words and let myself savor them for a moment. “Thank you,” I said with a smile.
    “So you’ll do it?”
    Okay, back to the real world. “I’m not sure.” I was uncomfortable at having to dodge her question, especially in front of Eli, but there was no time in my week to add anything else. “I’m pretty busy right now.”
    The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “Each finalist wins a two-hundred-dollar grant for his or her teacher.”
    That almost made me want to win for her—although being a national finalist might be a stretch. “What’s the prompt?”
    She tapped my brochure. “It’s in the box at the bottom.”
    I read the prompt and sagged. Really? AWE couldn’t have picked something moderately intriguing?
    “Is there a problem?”
    “Yes.”
    “What is it?”
    “The topic is lame.”
    Eli nodded. “It’s not controversial. It’ll be hard to come up with unique arguments.”
    Ms. Dewan picked up the sheet and read aloud. “‘Should a credit in English Literature be required for high-school graduation?’”
    “Of course,” he said.
    I shifted to see him better. “Of course what?”
    “High school seniors should be required to take English Lit.”
    For the length of a breath, I debated whether to ignore his completely wrong-headed and unsupported position on the prompt. But I just couldn’t. “There’s no ‘of course’ to it.”
    His glare was arrogant. “Why not?”
    “High-school students wouldn’t take English Lit if they didn’t have to. It’s not useful.”
    “Not useful? Do you know how hard it is to go a single day without hearing a quotation from classic literature?”
    “Then teach us the important quotes and move on. Why make us listen to everything else?”
    “What about Shakespeare?”
    “What about him?” I loved Shakespeare, especially his sonnets, but not a semester’s worth.
    “I don’t think anyone should graduate from high school without studying Shakespeare.”
    “And I don’t see any long-term value in dissecting Macbeth .”
    “There is value in the process, even for people who are more used to farm reports than four-act plays.”
    Score. “Spoken like the son of an English professor.”
    “Which happens to be what I am.” He stared at me as if I were some kind of exotic insect. “What would you require in senior English instead?”
    “We could learn how to take apart a contract. Maybe there could be a unit on how to tell the difference between good content and bad content on the internet.” I was making this up as I went. Hopefully I would remember the good parts later for what could be a winning essay.
    When Ms. Dewan