Read Me & Emma for Free Online

cadet. The other kids laugh because to them that’s what it looks like, I suppose. What’s really happening is that I’m thinking of things I have to remember to tell Emma after school lets out and the next thing I know I’m saying them out loud. I don’t set out to talk out loud, it just ends up that

    way.

    “And that’s why we use long division,” Mr. Stanley is saying, “so we can figure out how many little numbers make up whatever big number is under the line here. Who can tell me how many times nine goes into eighteen ?”
    Outside, the buds on the tree branches look like tiny knobs on a television. I wonder what kind of show a tree would want to watch. Nothing involving a saw, I bet.
    “Miss Parker?” Mr. Stanley’s voice reaches out to my head and turns it toward the front of the room but I’m still thinking about Tree
    TV. “Can you tell us?”
    “What, Daddy?”
    Oh, my dear Lord—what did I just say? What did I just say.’? Maybe I thought it but didn’t say it out loud.
    “Class, quiet down,” Mr. Stanley is saying to all the kids around me who’ve laughing and pointing at me like I’ve just climbed offof a spaceship. “Class, please,” he’s saying, but no one’s quieting down one bit.
    This ringing in my” ears makes it sound like the classroom is one big glass iar—the voices echoing from side to side in my brain.

    40

    ME & EMMA

    Mary Sellers snorts her little snorty laugh that always sounds like it’s going to turn into hiccups. My face is on fire.
    “All right, class, that’s enough,” Mr. Stanley finally says, but I cain’t see his face because I’m just looking down at my desktop, tracing the carved “EMB was here” that’s in the corner. Who was EMB? I wonder about this every single day. EMB could have been a boy, but I like to think she was a girl, brave enough to dig lines in her desk when no one was looking. EMB. Maybe she died and this is the only evidence that she lived, but her parents don’t know it and every night they cry themselves to sleep wishing they had just one thing with her initials on it and here it is, right under my fingernail, which, I now notice, is packed with dirt so it looks brown. iF i knew who EMB was I could let them know it’s here, this last piece of her. Then they could sleep at night.
    “Caroline, please see me after class,” Mr. Stanley sighs. “Tommy, what is eighteen divided by nine?” And the class is back to normal for everyone else but me. By recess, I’ll once again be the laughingstock of the school.
    Emma is the only one who understands me talking out of turn since she does it, too, sometimes, but when she does it no one picks on her because they know she’ll beat them up after school if they do. Plus she’s pretty, and pretty girls never get into trouble with the other kids. The boys all like them and the girls want to be their friend. So Emma’s got it made. Me, on the other, well I guess I’ll be getting a whole new life out in western North Carolina.
    “Would you like to tell me what’s goin’ on, young lady?” Mr. Stanley says to me after everyone’s filed out of the room.
    “I’m sorry, sir,” I say. My face still feels hot and I can’t look him in the eye even though Momma’s drilled it into us since we were weensy.

    41

    E I, 1 Z A B E T H F L 0 C K

    “Now, Caroline,” he says in a voice that sounds like warm doughnuts, “you’ve got a lot of potential. You’re a smart young lady. But you’ve got to apply yourself…”
    Apply myself. Apply myself. If one more teacher tells me that, I’ll scream.
    “…and then you can write your own ticket…” He’s saying something about college. Apparently he thinks that’s the key to the universe.

    “…so you can go now, but remember what we talked about, you hear?”
    “Yes, sir,” I say to him over my shoulder, bolting out of the room to my locker so I won’t be late for the next period and I won’t have to have another teacher lecture