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“No,” she replied. Actually she did think algebra was funny, but not the way Mrs. Hardlick taught it. Mrs. Hardlick killed all of the humor in it.
“It is all memorization,” she heard Mrs. Hardlick say. “You have to memorize every answer for every equation.”
When the bell rang for recess, she walked up to Mrs. Hardlick’s desk to tell her that she had to resign. She hoped she wouldn’t cry. She took a deep breath to steady herself but before she could speak, Mrs. Hardlick said, “Just where do you think you’re going? You can’t go anywhere until you’ve picked up all the garbage. I plan to give the room a very thorough inspection after recess.” Then she walked out before Angeline could say what she had to say.
Angeline looked around the empty room, unsure of what to do. She didn’t want to get in trouble but she didn’t want to disobey her father. She started to cry.
She saw the piece of chalk, which Mrs. Hardlick had used to kill algebra, lying on the floor. She bent down, picked it up, and examined it through her tears. “Garbage,” she said aloud, and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.
Mrs. Hardlick’s algebra book lay open on her desk. She could tell it was the teacher’s edition because it had all the answers written in it. She thought that Mrs. Hardlick probably couldn’t figure out the answers herself. “Garbage,” she declared, and she dropped the book in the trash.
She tore the poster off the wall. “Garbage!” she said. She crumpled it up and tossed it in the direction of the garbage pail.
Judy Martin’s “A” composition was tacked on the bulletin board
. She ripped it down. “Garbage!”
She ran back to Mrs. Hardlick’s desk as tears fell from her face. She grabbed the blotter with both hands and threw it off the desk, knocking all of Mrs. Hardlick’s books, paper, pens, pencils, paper clips, and gold stars on the floor. She broke a glass vase with a plastic rose in it. “Garbage!” she laughed. “Garbage!” she cried.
She tore wildly through the room, pushing paper, pencils, pens, and books onto the floor. “Garbage, garbage,” she repeated. She pushed all of the books off the back bookshelf. “Garbage!” She knocked over somebody’s desk—she didn’t know whose—then ran out of the room.
She took several deep breaths. She stopped crying but felt very light-headed. She wiped her eyes, took a long breath, and slowly exhaled.
Then, off she went to look at Mr. Bone’s fish.
Ten
Fish
The rainbow fish gently swam about, easily and unconcerned. The angelfish glided past it. Watching them eased Angeline’s mind at once. She didn’t look at either Gary or Miss Turbone. She didn’t think about what had just happened in Mrs. Hardlick’s room, or even worse, what was going to happen. The angelfish drifted to a stop and faced Angeline head-on while it methodically breathed through its gills.
“It’s watching you, too,” said Gary, “just like you’re watching it.”
Angeline breathed with her lungs as she stared at the fish.
“I don’t think it can see her,” said Miss Turbone. “I think it just sees itself reflected in the glass.”
Gary and Miss Turbone watched Angeline watch the fish. They knew something was wrong. When she came in, she went right to the fish tanks without even saying hello.
“Tell her about the aquarium, Mr. Bone,” said Gary.
“Yes,” Miss Turbone began, “well, they have—”
Gary interrupted her. “It’s this gigantic building with nothing but fish tanks, full of fish from all over the world. Some of the tanks are as big as houses with sharks and dolphins and whales.”
“No whales,” said Miss Turbone.
“No whales,” said Gary, “but sharks and dolphins, right Mr. Bone?”
Miss Turbone nodded.
“Mr. Bone says that some people think that dolphins are smarter than people,” Gary added.
“They are,” said Angeline, with her eyes still fixed on the fish.
Miss Turbone laughed, not because she thought what Angeline had said was funny, but because she was startled by the matter-of-fact way she had said it.
It was one of the things Angeline knew before she was born. Not all dolphins are smarter than all people, but some are smarter than some people—people like Mrs. Hardlick. “A duck is smarter than Mrs. Hardlick,” thought Angeline.
