Laugh Till You Cry Read Online Free PDF Page A

tried to connect with their friends.
    Cody watched for a moment, then reached across the aisle and tapped a redheaded girl named Jennifer. He didn’t like feeling left out, and Jennifer seemed to do well in class. He wouldn’t mind doing a project with her.
    She whirled toward him, waiting to see what he wanted.
    “Do you want to work with me?” Cody asked.
    “I’m sorry. I can’t,” Jennifer said, trying to look sorry but failing. “I already promised Emily.”
    Cody shrugged. “Okay,” he said. As Jennifer turned her back on him again, Cody slumped in his seat. He wished the doctors would find the right medicine for Grandma so she’d get better soon. He missed his real school in Santa Olivia. He missed his friends. He wanted to go back home.
    Ms. Jackson’s voice broke into his thoughts. “This is Tuesday. Your project won’t be due until Friday, so you’ll have three evenings to work on it. Any questions?”
    Emily Estrada waved her hand high in the air, and when Ms. Jackson looked in her direction, she said, “There’s a football game on Friday after school, and the cheerleaders have to practice.”
    “You’ll have time to do both. The project won’t take that much time.”
    Jennifer raised her hand. “How much is the grade on the project going to count toward our final grade?” she asked.
    Ms. Jackson’s gaze took in the entire class. “It will be important for your final grade.”
    “Ten percent? Twenty?”
    Ms. Jackson walked to her desk and picked up her copy of
Hamlet
, opening it to the last scene. “I have a creative idea,” she said. “Why don’t you work on the project as if it were going to be worth one hundred percent? Now, let’s open our books to page 133, Act Five, Scene Two. Hamlet and Horatio are talking. Who’d like to read Hamlet’s dialogue, beginning with ‘Sir, in my heart’? Brad?”
    Brad slid down in his seat, mumbling, “I didn’t have time to do my homework.”
    “See me after class,” Ms. Jackson said quietly. “Emily?”
    Cody silently read along with Emily, glad that his grandmother had explained that “mutines in the bilboes” meant “mutineers in fetters in prison” and “plots do pall” meant “plans fail.” Otherwise, he might as well have been reading in another language. Emily finished, giving a flip of her long, dark ponytail, and Ms. Jackson said, “Thank you. Now let’s see who can tell us what Hamlet was saying.”
    Cody bent over, shrinking as small as he could.
    He let out such a loud sigh of relief when Hayden was called on that Jennifer turned and stared at him, and Ms. Jackson looked at him with surprise.
    “Hayden, can you tell us what Hamlet was describing when he said the following?
    Methought I lay
    Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.”
    For a moment Hayden was silent. Cody slid up straight and raised his head. He actually knew the answer! He and his grandma had discussed it.
    But Hayden answered, “Bilboes were metal cuffs that were put around prisoners’ wrists and ankles and fastened them to the chains in the wall in dungeons. And mutines were mutineers, so they were lying in prison wearing these bilboes. And Hamlet said he was even worse off than they were, which was really bad.”
    “Excellent answer, Hayden,” Ms. Jackson said. “I can see you made good use of the footnotes in the last pages of the book.”
    Cody started. There were footnotes? If Ms. Jackson had told the class about them, then he must have been thinking about something else. He’d only read the pages that were assigned and had seen no reason to look in the back of the book.
    As Hayden smirked at Cody, he got that weird feeling in the pit of his stomach again. He supposed he was jealous of Hayden, and he tried to push the feeling away.
    But Ms. Jackson walked to the window side of the room and smiled at him. “All right, Cody. You’re eager to answer. Suppose you take the next lines:
    Rashly
    (And praised be rashness for it) let us know, Our