![]() WORDS WITH SCRAWL CRACKEDWhat else is in the room? There's a cracked brown flowerpot with a dead stick in it. Isn't there a special school they can go to? I think it's weird we have those blind inclusion kids. They probably tick! so the blind kids can share the equal opportunity of knowing how long the class is going to drag out, like the way elevators beep for every floor they pass. The clocks have huge numbers so the blind kids can read them. I'm actually grateful that they wasted money last year on these cheap loud clocks instead of better ones or air-conditioning.Įach minute, another tick! interrupts the teacher and comforts me-I'm one tick closer to the end of the class, the end of the day, the end of school forever. I can hear the huge prison clock buzzing and clicking every sixty seconds when the minute hand shifts. How come we have to carry a year's worth of math when we're only working on three pages a week? Can't they come up with smaller textbooks they could give us every month so We The People Who Do The Homework don't have to lug eleven trees back and forth every day? Especially the kids who'd rather sell their monthly welfare bus pass than use it. ![]() There's a small cage under the chair that's not big enough to hold half of the huge textbooks they make us carry. They look about as bored and uninterested as the rest of us. You know, if you put a lefty desk and a righty desk next to each other the right way, the desks really seem like they're saying "I don't care." Did you know that if you're strong enough, you can twist the desk part up and around until it looks like an arm shrugging? Somebody has been doing that all over school. It's nothing but a slab of plastic connected to my chair by a flimsy metal rod. When I looked up and asked you, "What do you want me to write about?" you said, "About anything."Ībout anything? Okay. My white pad of paper looks a little green, too. The floor is the same sad green as my pants, but my pants are a lot cleaner. I'm a prisoner caught in the fluorescent searchlights, looking pale green while I smudge blue ink in a black-and-white marble composition book. The story begins with me, your humble narrator, alone and stranded after school in a Study Hall the exact same color as puke. I'm doing it so I don't have to pick up trash in the school courtyard like certain deviant so-called friends of mine who also got caught. Not for history and not for scientific research and definitely not to let out my inner demons. This is my first book, and I'm writing it for one reason only. That's the first line from Moby Dick, all right? I always wanted to start a book like that. I guess we'll always call them glasses anyway. WORDS WITH SCRAWL CRACKBut I think it would be mean to crack the lenses. They're not even really glass, you know, almost never. W., is trembly a word or should I have used trembling?) Just before I sauntered down the empty hall to class, I pressed the parts straight into his trembly palm. I kept that smile going while I fogged up both halves of his glasses with my breath and wiped away my thick thumbprints. I reached down with my hand thoughtfully, and I smiled, and I pulled Ricardo onto his fat stupid feet. Usually they aren't so quick to narc if you do something nice, something unexpected just before you walk away. Reaching down and helping Ricardo up would be a good idea. That's when I noticed the orange peel next to the bright blue can for the first time, close by Ricardo's tangled hair, but I really had to go. Mostly they looked at Ricardo facedown on the sick green dusty floor next to the overflowing trash can. ![]() Kids were starting to walk around us and look, but they steered plenty clear of me. Ricardo was pathetic sprawled on the hall floor, not crying this time but blinking a lot and not talking either, like he was in bed that morning and he didn't want to get up and go to school for some reason. I got up off Ricardo's chubby back, peeled myself off that authentic, autographed blue hockey sweatshirt he wears every day with the stupid hole in it, and I wiped off my big old carpenter pants. The bell rang for English class and I'd promised Mr. That's how it went for fat Ricardo Manzana. ![]() Grab the two lenses between your big hands and twist your wrist-just snap the part over the nose-now you can't see anything for the rest of the day. Change that curve a hair, just a tiny, minuscule difference, and you can see near. ![]() Grind the glass this way, put in a slight curve, and you can see far. But definitely they mean you can't see without them. Little pieces of glass stuck on your face that mean everything. They're just glass and metal, or glass and plastic. You see them every day but you really don't think about them, I bet. Think about a pair of glasses for a second. ![]()
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