At lunchtime, I went home, as I always did, because we lived so close to the school.  In the cafeteria, the teachers monitoring lunch tried their best to keep the guys apart, and, well aware of the status we had all acquired, keep the guys under close observation as much as possible.  The last thing the teachers wanted was a bunch of heroes, and they would do everything they could to dampen the enthusiasm.

The first class after lunch was French, and I was ill-prepared, in more ways than one.  All my older brothers and sisters had taken French, with varying degrees of success and appreciation, and some of them actually thought it was fun.  My second oldest sister, who was in tenth grade, tried to convince me that I would love it, and that it only got better when you got to High School.  It was a privilege to learn a second language, she told me, especially a language as beautiful as French, and she was sure I would pick it up right away, the same as she had.  Well, she may have been a natural linguist, but that didn’t mean that I was, and I certainly didn’t feel privileged about starting it.

I met Jackie in the hall as I walked into school after lunch, and we walked to class together.

“You’ve never met Mrs. Pratt, have you?” she asked me.

“No.  I saw her around the school last year, but that’s all.  What’s she like?”

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “I think it might be rough for you guys.  She doesn’t like troublemakers.” She gave me a funny look and burst out laughing.  “I never thought I’d be calling you a troublemaker, Denny.  The other guys, yeah, but not you.”

I had known Jackie since we started Sunday School at the First Congregational Church, at age four.  She was a shy, pretty blonde, with a sweet face and a ponytail.  She and Kate were best friends, and both from the Villa Drive neighborhood.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said with feigned innocence.

She laughed again.  “Well, anyway, Mrs. Pratt started off being really friendly, but I think it’s all fake.  She tells a lot of jokes and stories, which she thinks are funny, and she thinks that makes her the kids’ friend.  But the stories are all about her.  After the first week, nobody laughed anymore.

“She’s a lot harder on the boys than she is on the girls, and she’s really tough on the slower kids.  She’ll hold up somebody’s homework and ridicule it in front of the whole class.”

I shrugged.  “We’ve had other teachers who did that.”

“Yeah, but usually anonymously.  Mrs. Pratt tells everybody whose work it was and ridicules it.  She’s really mean that way.  It’s been pretty easy for me and Kate, because we get really good marks, but I feel sorry for the other kids.  I would have thought you would be okay, because you always get good marks, but she’s already said a lot of mean stuff about you and the others.”

“But she doesn’t even know us yet.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Like I said, she doesn’t like troublemakers.  All the time you guys were gone she was talking about making an example of you when you got back.  It’s hard for any kid in her class, unless they get good marks and never cause any trouble.  And it helps if you’re a girl.  Sorry, Denny, but I think you’re in for it.”

She couldn’t have been more right.  I was in for it, and I didn’t have to wait for it.  The three of us (Rollo was in a different class) were ordered into our pre-assigned seats and, as soon as we were seated, she started hammering us with questions, in French.  You know, what’s your name, what day is it, can I have a hotel room; all the stuff you learn in the first week.  We just sat there dumb-founded and silent.  How were we supposed to know what she was talking about?

Well, as she explained over the next few minutes, she just wanted to demonstrate, to us and to everyone, just how far behind we were.  As if we didn’t know.  She even said that we should have been studying the first chapter in our books over the weekend.  I tried to point out that we didn’t get our books until that morning, but she just ordered me to say it in French.

It was a nightmare.  She went through the planned assignments, which we understood none of, with the other kids, frequently throwing questions at me or Tom or Win, just to reinforce our ignorance.  Five minutes before the bell, she handed each of us a stack of papers.  It was six weeks’ worth of homework.  We were supposed to do all of this written work, plus read the first three chapters, by the end of next week.  She also handed us a schedule of quizzes we would be taking over the next two weeks.

“And don’t you think,” she told us, “that you can talk your way out of this.  The School Board handed you a break not making you take sixth grade over, but I can certainly make you take this course over if you don’t make up the work, and don’t you forget it!”

So, that was French.  It was going to be a long, long year.  I quickly learned the reality of everything Jackie had told me.  As it turned out, I was not a natural linguist like my sister, and I was in trouble from the start.  Not that the other guys didn’t suffer, as well, but, just as Brinker had settled on Tom as his personal whipping boy in sixth grade, Pratt focused her meanness on me.