Fighting Gravity Read Online Free PDF

answered with much more basic information than I’d asked for. They had formed their opinions of me and my level of knowledge and didn’t choose to see past that.
    Dr. Frozt, the literature teacher, got fed up that first day and I got three licks of the cane from her. I kept more of my questions to myself after that, but not all of them. My craving for knowledge was far too potent to be squelched by a mere three stripes.
    That night, in my room, sitting at my desk, which made my stomach flutter with happiness every time I looked at it, I gorged myself on answers to all the questions I’d come up with that day and then some. I was nodding off when I realized I hadn’t completed my homework, having gone off point far too many times. I struggled through the rest of it and fell into an exhausted, blissful sleep.
    I was bleary eyed in the morning, but no less eager. The second day went better than the first. I managed to better channel and focus my thoughts, and to save most of my tangents to research later.
    In spite of my efforts, the teachers saw what they wanted to see. I went over the desk three times in the first five days. It was frustrating, infuriating, and of course painful. But there was nothing to be done about it except endure.
    It took little effort on my part to carry out my resolve to be an exemplary student, simply because there couldn’t have been a student more eager and appreciative than I was. Still they managed to see and punish every mistake I made and many I didn’t.
    I bit my tongue, took my stripes in silence, and moved on.
    Kirti was more affected by my undeserved infamy than I was. She cried every time I was punished. I did my best to reassure her that it wasn’t as bad as she thought, but it was quite some time before she was able to bear my punishments in white-faced silence.
    In truth, the prejudice, my anger and resentment, were just minor annoyances. The experience of such schooling was like nothing I’d ever known. The only thing I had to compare it to was the stolen hours in a library booth, wallowing in text after text, chasing facts and ideas like butterflies in a field of wildflowers.
    This was entirely different, though. Directed, focused, and challenging, with stimulating raw knowledge laid out before me, and answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask.
    My bottom became very intimate with the cane. But I wouldn’t have given it up for all the universe.
    -
    If Kirti suffered for me in silence, Chuck seemed to take pride in the way I endured it. But what he accepted as unavoidable from the adults, he wouldn’t stand for among us. It was this attitude that led to the first of our many fights with Sasha.
    I suppose the first fight was inevitable. In light of the director’s public opinion of me, Sasha set about goading me at every opportunity. He was easy to ignore at first; I was so absorbed in my experience of the place and my new education that I barely noticed him. But after a couple of weeks it came to a head.
    Kirti and I were walking together to our next class when Sasha stepped in front of me and stopped me with a hand on my chest.
    “You don’t belong here,” he said. “Why don’t you leave?”
    I tried to step around him, seething but highly motivated to avoid trouble. He stepped with me. “Are you deaf too, freak? Besides being stupid?”
    “Drop it, Sasha,” Chuck said from behind me. “Leave him alone. If you hate him so much, just avoid him. He didn’t do anything to you.”
    Sasha laughed. “Freak’s got a champion.” He towered over Chuck.
    Chuck’s punch was too unexpected to be avoided. Sasha staggered back a step but then came barreling toward Chuck, his fist flying. Chuck dodged it but took the next punch in the gut, doubling over. As Sasha went to swing at Chuck again, I crashed my fist into his face. Dr. Laan came rushing out into the hallway and hauled us apart. He dragged Sasha and me to the director’s office by the scruff of our necks,