Nine Inches Read Online Free PDF

worse was that she realized she was making a mistake even as she clicked on the link, violating her long-standing policy to stay as far away from grademyteacher.com as possible. It was just too depressing, and she wasn’t even one of the truly unpopular teachers, the unfortunates whose names were fl agged with a big red thumbs-down icon — people like Fred Kane, the marble-mouthed biology instructor whose average score was 2.4 out of 10, or Martha Rigby (a mind-boggling 1.8), the ancient English teacher who regularly referred to the author of Great Expectations as Th omas Dickinson. Vicki herself was stuck in the middle of the pack (5.5, to be exact), with fewer than a dozen comments to her name, most of which contained a variant on the phrase “Boring but okay.” By contrast, Lily Frankel, the lively and hip young drama teacher, had received a whopping sixty-two reviews for an overall rating of 9.3, highest on the entire faculty, thereby earning herself a coveted smiley face with sunglasses and a crown.
    Vicki read the post over and over — the author was identi fi ed only as “Greensleeves,” a pseudonym that meant nothing to her — wondering what she could have done to provoke such a hateful and dishonest attack. You’d think that if someone despised you enough to call you an insane bitch, you’d have a pretty good idea of who it was, but Vicki’s mind was blank, unable to produce a suspect. It wasn’t until she gave up and went to bed that the answer came to her, almost as if it had been jarred loose by the impact of her head against the pillow.
    SHE’D BEEN circulating through her classroom during a quiz — this was back in February, either right before or right a ft er winter vacation — when she spotted Jessica Grasso munching on a Snickers bar. Some teachers allowed snacks in class, but Vicki wasn’t one of them, and she’d been teaching long enough to know that you had to stick to your guns on stu ff like that. Not wanting to embarrass the girl, who’d never given her any trouble, Vicki tapped her on the shoulder and spoke in a barely audible whisper as she held out her hand.
    “Please give me that.”
    Instead of surrendering the contraband, Jessica took another bite. She was a big girl with a pretty face — except for the ridiculous raccoon eyeliner — and sleek dark hair that swept down across her forehead, partially obscuring one eye. She chewed slowly, taking a languorous pleasure in the activity, staring straight at Vicki the whole time.
    “Did you hear me?” Vicki demanded, this time in a normal voice.
    Jessica’s expression remained blank, but Vicki detected a challenge in it nonetheless. She began to feel foolish, standing there with her hand out while the girl gazed right through her. It was possible — she wasn’t clear on this point in retrospect — that Vicki lowered her gaze, taking a moment or two to perform a less-than-charitable assessment of Jessica’s fi gure.
    “It’s not like you need it,” she said.
    Jessica blinked and shook her head, as if maybe she hadn’t heard right, and Vicki took advantage of her confusion to snatch the candy bar right out of her hand.
    “Hey!” Jessica cried out, loudly enough that several heads snapped in their direction.
    Now it was Vicki’s turn to do the ignoring. She marched back to her desk and dropped the stub of the Snickers into her empty wastebasket, where it landed with an unexpectedly resonant thud. By now, everyone in the room was looking at her.
    “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” she told them. “Food is not allowed in this room.”
    Th at was it, the whole ridiculous, deeply forgettable incident. Vicki was more than willing to admit that it wasn’t her fi nest hour as an educator, but she hadn’t called anyone a fat pig and didn’t think she had anything to apologize for. If anyone was at fault it was Jessica, who’d knowingly broken a rule and then treated a teacher with blatant disrespect. So it