Read Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus for Free Online

was supposed to be good for keeping blood sugar levels stable.
    I nodded. Then I opened up my social studies book. I didn’t read the chapter first. I skipped to the end of it and read the questions to see what I was expected to learn. My mother handed me a mozzarella stick.
    “What’s your chapter about?” she asked.
    “Laws,” I said.
    My mother wrinkled her forehead.
    “For social studies? Last we talked you were making a map of the Oregon Trail,” she said.
    “That was October,” I said. “I don’t even have that map anymore. It got recycled.”
    “Wow,” my mom said, wrinkling her forehead even more. “I’ve been so buried in learning my aerobics routines that I haven’t kept up with your curriculum.”
    I had never heard my mother use the word curriculum before, but I agreed that she’d been buried in aerobics.
    “What are you learning about laws?” she asked.
    “I’m supposed to explain their benefits,” I said.
    “Really?” my mother asked. “In fourth grade? That sounds advanced.”
    And for one second, I got very excited, because I thought maybe I could convince my mother to let me learn at the kitchen table after all.
    “Yes,” I said. “Mr. Hawk is very advanced. He used to teach sixth grade. It’s all he knows. This is his first year teaching fourth grade. Last month, for social studies, we studied the Vikings, and I had to know about their activities and personalities. Plus, I also had to learn about the Viking warriors, and that meant reading about their armor, weapons, and battle strategies.”
    My mother’s eyes were very big.
    “Are all your subjects this advanced?” she asked.
    I nodded with a lot of enthusiasm.
    “I should have done a better job staying on top of this,” she said.
    “The other day, in math, Mr. Hawk said that we were going to study bar graphs and charts. And for science, we have to identify ‘local environmental issues’ and possibly conduct scientific tests. Possibly,” I said.
    “I don’t believe it,” my mother said. “That doesn’t sound fair.”
    “It’s not! It’s not! And science is where Mr. Hawk is the most advanced,” I said. “Sometimes he uses words like nucleus and organism and metric.”
    “Camille, what you’re telling me is very serious. I think I’m going to need to talk to your teacher about it.”
    She sat down next to me and rubbed my arm. Hearing that my mother wanted to talk to Mr. Hawk made me a little nervous. Because I felt we could have made the decision for me to drop out of fourth grade and learn everything in the kitchen without him.
    “Is reading too advanced too?” my mother asked, squeezing my hand.
    I shook my head.
    “Mr. Hawk doesn’t teach reading. I leave the class and have reading with Ms. Golden. Because I’m in gifted reading, remember?” I asked.
    It made me sad to think that my mother had forgotten that I was in gifted reading with Ms. Golden. Because I was very proud of that fact. Because I was in there with all the smart kids.
    “But you like Ms. Golden, right?” my mother asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “But I only see her three times a week.”
    Talking about school made me realize how Sally-less and awful it was, and I started sniffling.
    “Is there something else?” my mother asked.
    I nodded.
    “What?”
    “PE,” I said.
    “What about it?” my mother asked. “You’ve never said anything about not liking PE before.”
    I sniffled really hard.
    “Well, lately, we’ve been playing dodgeball. Except some of the kids call it slaughterball, and sometimes they try to hit certain people in the head.”
    My mother gasped.
    “So Mr. Hawk doesn’t teach you any reading at all and he makes you learn sixth-grade math and science?” my mother asked. “And for PE he lets the other children throw balls at your head?”
    I almost nodded, but I wasn’t sure if what my mother was saying was the exact truth. It sounded pretty severe.
    “I don’t know if everything we learn is sixth grade.