Marly the Kid by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Author:Susan Beth Pfeffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497682696
Publisher: Open Road Media

SEVEN

March, Marly decided, was her least favorite month of the year. It promised spring, which promised summer, which promised freedom, but all it delivered was rain and snow and griminess. There were no holidays in March either: You had to wait until April for spring vacation. It was just work and boredom and usually one last cold to make things even worse.

There wasn’t much good to be said about school either. English was all right, but she didn’t like Julius Caesar. She felt she ought to, since it was by Shakespeare, but it bored her, except for an occasional passage. She liked the line, “There is no fellow in the firmament,” but she resented having to memorize so much of the play. In gym they had finished with basketball and had moved on to gymnastics and physical fitness tests. Marly didn’t like basketball, but she sure hated gymnastics. The tests didn’t bother her too much, since there was no way she was going to pass them so there was no point worrying. But in gymnastics she was supposed to do forward rolls and crouch on the bottom of pyramids and climb up ropes and do other tricks outside her abilities. Ever since Marly had cut gym, Mrs. Martin had regarded her as a little peculiar, and thanks to her teacher’s attitude, Marly got out of a lot of gymnastics the other girls had to do. If she just said, “I can’t do that,” Mrs. Martin let her get away with not trying. Obviously she’d given up her hopes of getting a sound mind and strong body into Marly, and Marly was just as happy about it. The rest of her classes were okay, but nowhere near great. Bio wasn’t too bad. At least they’d finished with one-cell animals. Marly couldn’t understand the amoeba’s appeal. French and math were all right, she guessed. History was just horrible.

She wasn’t sure when she started noticing how wretched a teacher Mr. Marshall was. Sometime before Christmas, she thought, but maybe even after. It didn’t take much noticing to realize it. And Colleen had warned her often enough. It wasn’t just that he was dull, Marly was used to dull teachers. But Mr. Marshall was more than dull. He was out and out offensive. Nobody was allowed to express an opinon, or give an answer he hadn’t programmed, without being subjected to his sarcasm. Thus far, Marly had managed to avoid being noticed by him, but she resented the fact that she had to stay so inconspicuous. She liked history ordinarily. The idea of teaching an entire world history in one year struck her as foolish, but she was used to that sort of foolishness from schools. Entirely too much time was spent with wars, and not enough with what people did, but that too was just the dumb way schools were taught. The subject still was interesting, and it bothered her that Mr. Marshall wouldn’t let the interesting parts show through. Instead it was all learning by rote.

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