Georgia's Greatness Read Online Free PDF Page A

that we've all introduced one another," Mandy said, "should we start math?" She looked back at the clock again. "Or I suppose maybe English, since that always comes after math and the time for math has passed?"
    "No," Ms. Harkness said simply.
    "But the time for math has passed," Mandy insisted.
    "That may be," Ms. Harkness said. "But what would be the fun of doing things the way you always do them on our first day together?"
    Fun? First she wanted to do things different and now she wanted to have fun?
    It was like finding ourselves smack in the middle of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only no one was getting hurt!
    "But the schedulek' Mandy persisted, pointing to the schedule that the McG always kept taped to the upper-right-hand corner of the blackboard, the blackboard that was really green.
    That's when Ms. Harkness turned on her heel—we saw now that she wore high heels, very high; they were leopard-print but somehow managed not to clash with her turquoise dress—and she strode slowly to the blackboard.
    We noted that she had a nice stride, like a model's. We knew a lot about how models walked, since our father was one.
    Once at the blackboard, Ms. Harkness reached up and peeled off the schedule the McG had taped up there back in September. All that was left on the board were four diagonal marks where the pieces of tape had been. Then Ms. Harkness wadded up the schedule into a ball of paper only slightly bigger than Georgia's infamous spitball and tossed it high in the air. It hung against the fluorescent lights for a full second, like the greatest basketball shot of all time, then dunked into the McG's empty wastebasket.
    When the schedule disappeared from view, we did worry, briefly, that Mandy Stenko might faint away and then die. Not that that would have necessarily been such a bad turn of events, but it would have disturbed all the fun we were having. Still, briefly worrying about Mandy did not stop us from shouting, " Swish! " right along with Will, and the nine of us pumped our fists in the air.
    Ms. Harkness brushed off her hands, one against the other. "There," she said. "Now that that's taken care of, who here is up for recess?"

CHAPTER FOUR

    "Recess?" Mandy echoed. "But we never have recess until after lunch! And we haven't done any work yet!"
    "Besides," Marcia observed—she hated to point it out, but it was the plain truth—"it's raining too hard outside for recess."
    "So you'll have it indoors today," Ms. Harkness said brightly.
    We sighed. We knew all about indoor recess. It meant staying in the same classroom where we spent the rest of our school day—this room—trying to convince ourselves it was fun and different , when really the markers and everything else we used were the same things we used during regular classes.
    We were so disappointed, we put our elbows onto our desks and sunk our heads down into our open palms.
    It was then, in that dark moment, that we heard the most musical of all voices say, "Ready?"

    We looked up to see Ms. Harkness standing there holding Petal's little pink umbrella up over her head. The umbrella was open, even though we were... inside!
    This woman was insane! The next thing you knew, she'd be running with scissors ... and she was supposed to be the adult!
    In that moment, we loved Serena Harkness even more.
    "I think we can all run between the drops to the gymnasium, can't we?" Ms. Harkness suggested.
    So that's what we did, running between the drops behind our new teacher, zigzagging all over the Whistle Stop campus toward the door of the gymnasium. As we ran, Ms. Harkness sang a song, some crazy song involving kittens and whiskers and schnitzel with noodles. The song may have been crazy, but it was enough to distract Petal from worrying that we'd be struck by the lightning that was flashing all about. Petal never fretted even once about the roaring thunder!
    We arrived at the door of the gymnasium, wet and breathless but curiously happy.
    Once inside, we