The Cat at the Wall Read Online Free PDF

a rolled-up poster off her desk and held it in front of us.
    “Your Statement of Agreement already lays out the consequences for infractions such as tardiness and the incompletion of assignments. Detention in my class is something different. Detention will be given out in response to acts of meanness — bullying, unkind behavior and actions that are disrespectful of others.”
    She asked two students up to the front to unroll the poster so everyone could see what was on it. It was a poem. A long one.
    “This poem is called ‘Desiderata.’ It was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann. Who would like to read it out for us?”
    Several of the Bright Eyes shot their hands in the air. One of them went to the front and started reading.
    “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence …”
    The poem went on and on.
    I hated it from the beginning.
    It sounded like something my grandmother would say. “Look for the good in people, Clare-bear,” she would say as we peeled potatoes together in the church soup kitchen. “If you look for it, I guarantee you will find it.”
    She was crazy.
    And the punishment poem was stupid.
    “Be yourself …” Bright Eyes read. “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world…. Strive to be happy.”
    It was probably the longest poem in the history of poems.
    “Copying out this poem will do two things for you,” Ms. Zero said. “The act of sitting still and copying will give you a chance to calm yourself and perhaps reflect on your own actions. And the words of the poem will challenge you to think about who you are and who you want to be. So this is what will happen. The first detention, you will copy the poem once. If you get a second detention, you will copy the poem twice. You see where I’m going with this?”
    She smiled and some of the class laughed. It didn’t concern me. I never got detention. All the teachers loved me.
    “You can do the work at recess or after school,” she continued. “Or, if you have several copies to do, you can do them at home. Handwritten copies only, all legible, all complete. It must be on my desk by the start of school the next day. If it isn’t, one more copy will be added to your detention for each day it is not completed.”
    Like I said, I never got detention. I was pretty and got good grades and was always careful to treat the teachers with respect, at least to their faces. I flew under the radar. The teachers all wrote nice things on my report cards, but my grades weren’t so spectacular that they singled me out as some sort of leader or something. The teachers were happy, my parents were happy, I was happy.
    Toward the end of the second week in Ms. Zero’s class, I got my first-ever detention.
    We were all in the gym for a guest speaker because the auditorium floors were being waxed. I hated having assembly in the gym. We had to sit on the floor like little kids, in straight rows, legs crossed, teachers sitting on chairs around the sides of the room like jail guards. Just like the soldiers who sit in the towers on top of the Big Wall, looking down on the people in the village. Just like me when I sit on the wall.
    The theme for the school year was “Reaching Beyond Our Borders.” A bunch of assemblies spread out through the year were supposed to inspire us to get involved in the world beyond our school, or something dumb like that.
    At the first assembly, this woman talked about poor kids around the world.
    Her voice was kind of halting. I didn’t know if she was nervous or if she didn’t know her topic well enough or what, but it drove me crazy and I just wanted it to be over.
    “I can make her freak out,” I whispered to Josie. My whole crew was sitting together, as far away as possible from the Untouchables.
    “Don’t be mean,” Josie said, but I knew she was daring me.
    It was all very simple. Mostly I just smiled. I looked right at this children’s rights