Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.
Oh, great, that was really bright of me. I decided not to hand this in, so of course Mrs. Dunphrey had to ask me to stay after class on Monday. She started doing this whole concerned-teacher routine, about how she realized I could be a little, uh, erratic with my work at times, but I’d always been faithful handing in my journal—was there something wrong? Was there anything I wanted to talk about?
I gave her this big story about how, silly me, I’d just forgotten to hand the notebook in on Friday, and I didn’t remember until Saturday, when I saw it still in my stack of schoolbooks on my desk at home. I gave her the notebook and flipped through the pages for her—real quick, so she couldn’t read anything—and she said, wow, you really did write a lot. Six entries! And almost all of them extremely long!
I must say, I was a great liar, I acted so worried that I’d forgotten to hand it in when I had done all the work. Mrs. Dunphrey ended up telling me she’d give me partial credit, because I had written so much, but she had to take off something for it being late. Then she gave me this little lecture about how she was sure I was capable of much better work than I was actually doing in her class…
Geez, Mrs. Dunphrey, chill. How can you care so much about something as stupid as this journal? Or my grades? I mean, you’re lucky I even bother to show up for class. School ranks about 1,001 on my list of concerns.
I’ve been thinking lately, maybe the answer to all Matt’s and my money problems is for me to drop out of school. What am I getting out of school, anyhow? All this time I’m sitting in worthless classes, I could be earning money. I sure don’t love my job at the Burger Boy, but if I went to full-time there, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about the bills. It seems like every single one of them is due next week. What happens if they don’t get paid? Would the electric company shut off our heat? It’s been really cold lately. I mean, Matt and I could freeze.