Read The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne for Free Online

with teachers and attitude? My writing is good. Great! What has attitude got to do with the price of fish if the end product is good? I can just see some Elizabethan schoolteacher wagging his finger at Shakespeare. “Sure, matey, I concede that
Hamlet
is the greatest piece of literature ever written. But it's your attitude that worries me!” I kept silent, though. When it comes to teachers and the subject of attitude, they're like a train with brake failure on a long slope. There's nothing you can do until they stop rolling.
    “And that attitude is not helped by the company you keep. Now, I don't want to tell you what friends you should have,” she said, in exactly the manner of someone who is telling you what friends you should have, “but I have had some dealings with Mr. Kiffing's family and I know what I am talking about. It would be in your best interests to find… more
suitable
companions. Friends who challenge you intellectually and who are not so—how can one put it?—antisocial in their personal lives.”
    I bristled. What with the squirming and the bristling, it was quite an energetic end to my detention.
    “Thank you, Miss. I'll keep that in mind.”
    “I hope you do, Calma. I really hope you do.”
    “Oh, trust me. I won't forget. I can promise you that.”
    I got to the door and was halfway through it before she spoke again.
    “By the way, Calma,” she said. “Loved the simile exercise.”
    Huh! I felt like smacking her in the face. Might have improved it.
    Kiffo was waiting for me when I came out.
    “What did fart-face want, then?” he said.
    “Oh, nothing. Normal stuff—wasting talent, bad attitude, blah de blah.”
    We walked together for a while, two jailbirds bonded by a common experience. I glanced occasionally at his face, which was even darker and more brooding than normal. I thought there was a danger in asking the question I had been dying to ask him, but I went ahead just the same.
    “Kiffo?” I said. “How come you turned up to that dumb detention? I thought your dad would never sign one of those permission slips.”
    He stopped dead and turned toward me.
    “Don't talk to me about that bastard! He signed it. Said Miss Payne had had a chat with him about my education and all that crap. Told me he wanted me to try harder at school-work! Yeah, right! First time he's ever shown any interest in anything you can't drink or smoke or punch.”
    “So what would have happened if you hadn't turned up? I mean, it's not the first time you would've disobeyed your dad.”
    Kiffo's hands pulled his tangled mop of red hair into crazier spikes. Boy, was he angry.
    “He'd have beaten the crap out of me, all right? There's still a few years to go before he can't do that no more.”
    “So what are we going to do, Kiffo? I mean, we can't carry on like this.”
    “I know what I'm going to do,” he said quietly. “I'm going to trash her house. I'm going to destroy everything that bitch owns.”
    It was my turn to stop dead in my tracks. At this rate, we'd never make it home.
    “Are you crazy, Kiffo? What good would it do? It wouldn't get rid of her. It would only make her more twisted and nasty. She'd probably figure out that it was a student—I don't think she's making too many friends here—and what do you reckon then? That she's going to be nicer to us? I don't think so. I think she'll be even worse.”
    “I don't care. This isn't about getting rid of her. This is about revenge. This is personal, Calma.”
    “You
are
out of your mind, Kiffo!” I said. “What the hell are you talking about, ‘personal’?” It was hardly the first time a teacher had tried to put the screws on Kiffo. Most times he welcomed it. Gave him a challenge—you know, like a sporting event, two bruisers slugging it out for glory. But not personal. Never personal. Even the humiliation of a detention wasn't enough to make sense of what he was planning to do. Then I had a sudden thought, a connection.
    “Kiffo?” I