Читать книгу The Original Ginny Moon - Benjamin Ludwig, Benjamin Ouvrier Ludwig - Страница 23

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EXACTLY 9:10 IN THE MORNING, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20TH

We are in language arts writing poems about picking apples. Tomorrow we are going to the apple cider farm and the apple poems are helping us get ready. To help us write the poems we read one by Robert Frost. It has apple trees and a ladder in it. If I had a ladder right now I would climb out of this classroom. I have to escape from it so that I can go to the library and get on a computer.

Which means I have to find something new to glue Mrs. Wake to.

When you write a poem you have to talk about things that mean something else. The ladder in Robert Frost’s poem means heaven, Mrs. Carter said. So in my poem I put a ladder that means I am climbing out of my bedroom window to go with Gloria. We have to draw a picture to go with our poem so I draw the Green Car and the Blue House and me on the ladder climbing out of my room. Next I will draw a picture of my Baby Doll in the Green Car but Mrs. Carter is standing next to my desk looking down at what I’m drawing. She says it isn’t appropriate.

“No, I’m afraid it isn’t,” says Mrs. Wake when she sees the picture. “And I think we should probably show this to Mrs. Lomos.”

So Mrs. Wake brings me down to Mrs. Lomos’s office. We pass the water fountain and the bathroom and the janitor’s closet. I think about pushing her in there and locking the door. I run ahead and jiggle the door handle. It is locked.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Wake asks.

“Jiggling the door handle,” I say.

I think about locking her somewhere else but it would have to be somewhere really, really quiet. Otherwise someone might hear her banging to get out.

Mrs. Lomos says Mrs. Carter was right. It wasn’t appropriate to draw pictures of Gloria and the Green Car. Or me escaping. When I ask why not she says because Gloria isn’t safe and the picture means I want to go with her.

Which makes sense. So it isn’t appropriate for me to draw what I really want because people might find out about it. I am surprised that Mrs. Lomos told me that but I’m glad because now I can do a better job at keeping it secret.

“We’re going to keep you safe in spite of yourself, young lady,” Mrs. Wake says when we are in the hallway going back to class. I don’t know what that means so I ask her.

“It means we know what you’ve been up to,” she answers. “We’ve finally got your number.”

“I’m fourteen years old,” I say.

“That’s right,” says Mrs. Wake. “Your birthday was two days ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say.