The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt Read Free Book Online Page B

make you shiver, too.
    And then I look over at Mrs. Baker, who is the judge standing by, and she is smiling because she's wearing a yellow flower on her cheek. And then I look around the courtroom, and there's my father, and I'm thinking, Maybe he can bribe the judge, and he says, "Is everything all right with Mrs. Baker?" and I say, "Just swell" and he says, "Then what did you do?" And Mrs. Baker keeps smiling.
    Let me tell you, if Shakespeare had known about me and Meryl Lee and Doug Swieteck's brother and Mrs. Baker, he really would have had something to write about.

    We read
The Merchant of Venice
the next Wednesday, too, and finished it on the last Wednesday of October. After we closed our books, Mrs. Baker asked me to discuss the character of Shylock.
    "He isn't really a villain," I said, "is he?"
    "No," said Mrs. Baker, "he isn't."
    "He's more like someone who wants..."
    "Who wants what, Mr. Hoodhood?"
    "Someone who wants to become who he's supposed to be," I said.
    Mrs. Baker considered that. "And why couldn't he?" she asked.
    "Because they wouldn't let him. They decided he had to be a certain way, and he was trapped. He couldn't be anything except for what he was," I said.
    "And that is why the play is called a tragedy," said Mrs. Baker.

November
    November dripped onto Long Island, as it did every year. The days turned gray and damp, and a hovering mist licked everything. The perfect white cement sidewalk in front of the Perfect House was always wet. The azaleas lost the remnants of their white and pink blossoms, and then many of their leaves, and since they were half-naked and embarrassed, my father wrapped them in tight burlap—which also got wet. On the first Saturday, I cut the lawn for the last time, and then my father cut the lawn again to get it right, since it was going to look this way until spring, he said, and it had better look good. The next Saturday we climbed up to the roof and cleaned out the gutters, since they were overflowing now every time it rained and the dirty water was staining the corners of the Perfect House. Which made my father really mad.
    But not as mad as the stain on the ceiling of the Perfect Living Room made him. No one knew how long water had been dripping down onto it, because no one ever went in there. So by the time my mother discovered it while vacuuming, the stain was as wide as a garbage can lid, and dark with mold. That night, when my father reached up to feel it, a handful of plaster came down on his face. Some of the moldy stuff got into his mouth.
    It was a very quiet supper.
    But that's November. It's the kind of month where you're grateful for every single glimpse of the sun, or any sign of blue sky above the clouds, because you're not sure that they're there anymore. And if you can't have sun or blue sky, then you wish it would snow and cover all the gray world with a sparkling white so bright that your eye can't take it in.
    But it doesn't snow on Long Island in November. It rains. And rains and rains.
    Which is how, I think, Mrs. Baker got the idea of assigning me
The Tempest.
    But her nefarious plot to bore me to death failed again, because
The Tempest
was even better than
The Merchant of Venice.
In fact, it almost beat out
Treasure Island—which
is saying something.
    It was surprising how much good stuff there was. A storm, attempted murders, witches, wizards, invisible spirits, revolutions, characters drinking until they're dead drunk, an angry monster named Caliban—can you believe it? I was amazed that Mrs. Baker was letting me read this. It's got to be censored all over the place. I figured that she hadn't read it herself, otherwise she would never have let me at it.
    Caliban—the monster in the play, not the escaped rat—he knew cuss words. I mean, he really knew cuss words. What Mr. Vendleri said while standing on Danny Hupfer's desk didn't come close. Even Doug Swieteck's brother couldn't cuss like that—and he could cuss the yellow