The Report Card by Andrew Clements

Author:Andrew Clements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

thirteen

AN OBSERVATION

It was Wednesday, so the smell of almost-spaghetti filled the cafeteria. I sat with my friend Karen and five or six other girls. We ate at our regular table, right next to the one where Stephen and his friends usually sat.

I’m not proud of this, but I’ve always been an eavesdropper. I’ve never gone out of my way to eavesdrop—except maybe once or twice. But if I happen to be close enough, and if people happen to be talking loud enough, I always listen. If people want to keep secrets, they should learn how to whisper.

I probably wouldn’t have started listening to the boys sitting behind me, but I heard Merton Lake say, “Don’t be such an idiot—no one will ever travel to the sun. It’s a huge bunch of burning gas, stupid.” We had been learning about the solar system in science class, and I had been doing some research about the sun on my own. So when Merton said that, my ears perked up.

Then Stephen said, “Still, I bet someone could go there one day. Like maybe if the sun gets cooler.”

“Yeah,” said Merton. “Or ‘like maybe’ if they can find someone as dumb as you to volunteer!”

And then all the other guys at the table started laughing.

I wanted to turn around and tackle that Merton Lake, knock him right onto the floor. He was one of the smartest boys in fifth grade and also my least favorite. Merton had been in our fourth-grade class, too, and he had gotten one of the highest scores on the Mastery Tests. After he found out Stephen’s score, he teased him about it for a month, calling him names like “retard” and “brain-dead.”

This year Merton was in the gifted program, and he loved coming back from his special classes so he could show off about what he had learned. Plus, he had already announced to anybody who would listen that his big brother and his dad and his grandfather had all gone to Harvard University, and that he was going to go there too. One kid like Merton can almost ruin a whole school year.

But one of the great things about Stephen is that he keeps on trying. Even before the other boys had stopped laughing at him, he said, “But how about when all the gas is used up? The sun’ll have to go out someday and then I bet someone could go there.”

I didn’t have to turn around to see the nasty smirk on Merton’s face. I could hear it in his voice. “Nice try, moron. The sun’s never going to burn out.”

And the rest of the boys kept on laughing.

It was too much, hearing him treat Stephen that way. A new fact burst into my mind: The only way to stop a kid like Merton is to overpower him. And something inside me snapped.

I whipped around on my lunch stool and I jabbed my pointer finger toward Merton’s face and I said, “You are wrong, Merton! Wrong! The sun will go out.

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