Chapter Two

Second period was English. Because I wanted to be a writer I should have loved English, but I didn’t. I couldn’t understand why schools say that they want kids to read more and then make us study books that are guaranteed to turn any kid off literature for good.

They make us study the plays of a guy who’s been dead for a few hundred years, written in a language that might as well be Klingon. If we rent the movie, it’s considered cheating, which is ridiculous because plays were written to be performed and watched, not read.

The other books we’re made to study don’t have anyone near our age in them and don’t take place in a time anywhere near our own. How can I relate to the 1930s when I’m still trying to figure out how to relate to the time I’m living in?

Replace Shakespeare with film study, poetry with lyrics, Steinbeck with Rowling— then maybe you might keep our interest. But we all know that’s not going to be happening anytime soon.

Sometimes you’ll get a teacher, one of those teachers like Ms. Surette, who finds a way to take the works of dead people and bring them back to life. Our English teacher was new to the school, and as Chill and I walked through the hall, nodding to the kids we hadn’t seen since last semester, I hoped the new teacher would be just such a teacher.

“Have you heard anything about the new English teacher?” I asked Chill, who was sketching while he walked.

“Uh-uh,” he mumbled.

“Maybe he’ll be a teacher with a passion for the written word and pop culture,” I dreamt out loud. “The mentor I’ve been looking for,” I added.

“Yeah, maybe,” Chill said as we turned into the class.

We’d discover—not soon enough—that he was not going to be my mentor, but Chill’s muse.