Read The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman for Free Online Page A

poring over. The big national ones like
Spin
and
Rolling Stone
didn’t have much on the Red Herrings, but then Bethesda had found a publication called
Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll,
whichhad led her to a little Chicago punk-rock magazine called
The Fabulist,
which had been the gold mine.
    Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings were an all-girl punk band formed by four friends in the early 1990s in a small town outside St. Louis called Webster Groves. They moved to Chicago and recorded a bunch of singles; they got pretty popular in clubs around the city but never hit it big; they broke up by the end of the decade.
    Bethesda quoted for the class an article from
The Fabulist,
written in 1998 by someone named Rob Armstrong. “Ask anyone in their small but rabid fan base,” it said. “The Herrings’ recent unexpected breakup leaves a hole in the alternative scene that will be hard to fill.”
    “Excellent use of primary sources,” Mr. Melville said approvingly. “Thanks.”
    “Now, what’s the point?”
    Bethesda swallowed nervously, and thought,
Don’t let Melville throw you. This project rules. You are not a motorboat.
Still, she decided to skip ahead to the fun part. “Okay, so before I reveal the mystery I solved, why don’t I play you a song?” Bethesda gave a nod to SuzieSchwartz, her audio assistant, who dropped the needle on the record.
    As soon as the record started to play, Tenny looked up.
    Most kids, if they had found out there was a major project due today that they had totally spaced on, would be sitting at their desks in a state of stomach-churning, leg-twitching panic, trying to figure out something easy but impressive they could pull off by tomorrow. Not Tenny Boyer. Starting as soon as Mr. Melville finished scolding him, and right up until the moment Bethesda Fielding started playing that record, he sat with his eyes half closed, absentmindedly drawing the cover of
Led Zeppelin IV
on the bottom of his shoe.
    It wasn’t true, as Mr. Melville had mockingly suggested, that Tenny Boyer didn’t know anything. Tenny knew, for example, the guitar solo from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song “Gimme Three Steps” note for note, from beginning to end. He knew all the lyrics to every Nirvana song, including unreleased tracks and B sides. He could tell you when Bob Dylan went electric, when David Lee Roth left Van Halen, and when the Beatles first came to America. He could tell you the names of all the members of the Go-Go’s, who played which instrument, and whowrote which songs. He could tell you Elvis Costello’s real name and why he changed it.
    Unfortunately, all of this information didn’t leave a lot of brain space for, say, Social Studies. And all the many hours Tenny spent after school, alone in his basement, playing guitar, didn’t leave a lot of time for homework. And so Tenny’s always-terrible grades were getting worse with every passing semester; his father had lately begun grumbling that next year, when his fellow Mary Todd Lincolnites advanced to eighth grade, Tenny would be sent to the St. Francis Xavier Young Men’s Education and Socialization Academy.
    So Tenny tried to force himself to make an effort, to do the work, to stop making so many careless errors—at least to pay attention every once in a while. But it was no use. Tenny’s mind always drifted back to rock and roll. By the time Mr. Melville had let him off the hook and moved on to the next kid, Tenny was already drawing on his shoe, trying to remember the third verse of “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”
    But then the music started.
    That girl with the glasses, Bethesda or whatever her name was, was playing a record on a beat-up turntable. Tenny dropped his marker and sat up straight, eyes wideopen, trying to figure out what song it was. What band, even. It was punk, definitely early nineties punk, but who was it?
    Whatever it was, it was
awesome.
The song was built on a thundering four-four beat, straight up and down,