The Cat Ate My Gymsuit Read Online Free PDF Page A

a mule. That’s metaphor.”
    Thomas Shaw yelled, “No, that’s a simile.”
    Ms. Finney said, “Who’s right? Joel, do you know?”
    “It’s a simile,” Joel answered. “A comparison of two dissimilar things using
like
or
as.
”
    “Very good. Now, Robert. Try to find a metaphor.”
    “O.K. . . .How about ‘The room is a pigsty’?”
    “Very good,” said Ms. Finney.
    We were real careful to do our best. We didn’t answer more questions than we would have, but we didn’t laugh as much, and it just wasn’t as much fun. But we all knew that things like that are important to principals. I think that at Principals’ School they are taught to look for things like raising hands, checkinghall passes, making sure that the window shades are at a certain level, and making announcements over the loudspeaker that begin “This is your principal speaking. I must have your attention please.” Anyway, Mr. Stone must have gotten A’s in all these areas.
    So we tried hard that day. When Ms. Finney asked Robert Alexander to use “philosophy” in a sentence, he said, “The derivation of that philosophy obviously was influenced by a group of loquacious siblings.” It made no sense, but it sounded erudite (another word that Ms. Finney had us look up).
    When Mr. Stone left, Ms. Finney laughed and said, “Look, don’t try so hard. Just be yourself.”
    Robert said, “I thought Mr. Stone would be impressed. That’s how he sounds at school assemblies.”
    “But your sentence didn’t make much sense.”
    “That’s why he’d like it.”
    Then Ms. Finney picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a quote from Shakespeare, something about sound and fury signifying nothing. Sometimes she got into stuff that’s hard to understand, but maybe someday I’ll put it all together.
    Two weeks later, we came into class and found a substitute.

CHAPTER 8
    W e figured that Ms. Finney must be sick or taking a mental-health day to recuperate from teaching us.
    The substitute made us diagram sentences on the blackboard. Halfway through the period, Mr. Stone walked into the class, stood in front of us, cleared his throat, and said, “Miss Finney will probably not be returning to this school. Mrs. Richards will be here until we find a new full-time English teacher. Now get back to work.”
    Get back to work, he said. How could we do that?
    Alice Carson raised her hand and asked, “Mr. Stone. Is Ms. Finney all right? Is she sick . . .or in an accident . . .What happened?”
    Mr. Stone looked at us. “Miss Finney will no longer be a teacher in my school. I want all of you to forget everything she taught you.”
    The room was very still for a minute. Then Joel stood up and said, “Ms. Finney taught me the proper methods of punctuation. Should I forget that?”
    Mr. Stone got even madder. Turning to Joel and glaring, he said, “Joel Anderson, you’re a trouble-maker. Detention for the rest of the month.”
    Before I even realized what I was doing, I stood up and said, “Ms. Finney is the best teacher in the whole dumb school, and I want her back again.”
    Mr. Stone looked shocked. “Marcy Lewis! This isn’t at all like you. Now sit down and keep quiet.”
    I was sick of hearing that. First my father and now Mr. Stone. So I kept standing there, and said, “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” That was a quotation that Ms. Finney had had us write about.
    The whole class applauded.
    Mr. Stone said, “You all have detention, and Marcy, this is not like you. Your mother is president of the PTA. She will be very upset when she hears about this.”
    The bell rang. He told us to go to our next class. We didn’t move.
    “I said, go to your next class. You will be very sorry. I will put this on your school records.”
    He stormed out of the room, and we heard him screaming at some kid who was at his locker at an unassigned time.
    We still hadn’t moved. Some of the kids started to cry. I did. My whole world