The Queen of Everything Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bartlett, who I swear was always
looking at our butts.
    "It's meant to be for children," Melissa told
Ms. Cassaday, before reading the story she'd written. It was called "Freddy Fir
Visits the Lumberyard." I'm not kidding.
    "This is a children's story?" Ms. Cassaday
boomed after Melissa finished. Melissa had the little fir getting plucked from
the forest, sent to the factory, and made into wood chips. Melissa was my
friend, but even I could see that sometimes she was one taco shy of a
combination plate. When someone disagreed with her, her best argument was
usually, "Yeah huh!"
    Ms. Cassaday clutched her heart. "Somebody call
the paramedics. My God!" I don't think she was supposed to say God in school. Ms. Cassaday said things she probably wasn't supposed to all the
time.
    "It's got an environmental message," Melissa
said defensively.
    "All right, all right," Ms. Cassaday
said.
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    "Does anyone have a comment on
this?"
    "I liked it," Chantay West said, which was no
surprise.
    Chantay was always ready to pucker when it came
to Melissa's ass. We always made fun of her name behind her back. Chantay, a
drugstore perfume. One of those girl groups from the fifties--the
Chantays.
    "You liked it. Would a child? Think of
your audience. This could give a kid nightmares. This could give me nightmares." Ms. Cassaday paced, as if her feet and her brain were having an
argument about the exact place she should be. "My God, I can see it now!" She
slapped her palm against her forehead. With her batik skirts and jiggly arms and
numerous half-drunk cups of coffee on her desk, she was a bit like my old
teachers at the alternative school, but I found her strange and fascinating. I
could watch her all day, the way you can watch and watch someone you could never
imagine being. The way you sometimes can't turn the channel when it's those TV
preachers with big hair on Sunday mornings.
    "Think of this," Ms. Cassaday thundered. "Pop
is reading Junior his bedtime story. Here's little Freddy Fir with his nice
little family in the forest, then wham! You've got saws buzzing and sparks
flying and Freddy in the back of a truck. Freddy is about to be annihilated!
Freddy is
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    heading to a death camp! Okay, Junior,
take your drink of water and go to sleep now."
    The class snickered. Melissa looked as though
she wanted to send Ms. Cassaday through the chipper next. A lot of people hated
Ms. Cassaday. I wouldn't admit it out loud, but I thought she was great. With
Ms. Cassaday I felt that secret glee you get when you're with someone who goes
around being honest all the time, saying all the things you wished you
could.
    "This was supposed to be about preserving our
forests then?" Ms. Cassaday asked.
    "It was my mom's idea," Melissa said. I
believed it. Diane always did things like pack Melissa's lunch in that plastic
Barnes & Noble bag with Langston Hughes on one side and Tennessee Williams
on the other. Larry Beene got it on a trip to Seattle once and bought the canvas
version for himself. I think they liked it so much because not only did it show
that the Beene family was okay with gays and minorities, but that they recycled,
too. I doubted Mr. or Mrs. Beene had had a thought of their own since the
seventies, when thinking was safer.
    "Well, there's the trouble. Your ideas
are what we're after here, not your mother's. You did a great story last time
about the girl who didn't want to go to college. Here, though, you start with a
moral. You lost sight of all the fine points. Didn't see the forest for the
trees, we
    35
    could say." Ms. Cassaday raised her eyebrows up
and down.
    More snickers. "Okay. Moving along." Her eyes
roamed around the room then settled. "Mr. Kramer." Kale Kramer cleared his
throat. Kale was one of the guys at school that you were supposed to drool over
with desperate wanting. Most girls did; good looks, I guess, have a way of
making some people overlook little things like stupidity and