Tell Read Free

up with that.
    His friend Will Cowher plopped into the seat beside him.  “Hey, man, did you do the summer reading?” Will asked him.
    Shane raised an eyebrow, and the two of them cracked up.  In all his years of high school, Shane had never done the summer reading, and it had never once come back to bite him in the ass.  They seemed to read the same books every year.  “What was even on the list?” he asked Will.
    “Um… The Great Gatsby, 1984, King Lear, Oedipus Rex, and Ethan Frome .”
    Shane nodded.  Yes, he had read all of those in the past.  For whatever reason, the teachers in the school did not seem to communicate their lesson plans to one another, because they seemed to learn the same things all the time.   “We didn’t have to do anything, did we?”
    “Not for today.  We’re supposed to have written papers on all of them by the end of the month, I think.  Oedipus Rex is due on Monday.”
    “Damn.”
    “Fortunately, I’m prepared,” Will said under his breath.  “I wouldn’t have taken this class if I didn’t know I could pass it.  I have all my brother’s old papers.”
    Shane snorted.  “Lucky you.”
    “Well, come on.  You either have to have people’s old homework or SparkNotes bookmarked on your browser to actually pass honors English.  Who has time to do all of that shit?”  He did not wait for an answer before changing the subject to something he considered to be much more interesting.  “Did you get laid a lot this summer?”
    Shane shrugged one shoulder.
    “Come on, that’s not an answer.”  Will raised his eyebrows suggestively.  “I saw Amanda this morning.  She looked pretty good.”
    Shane smirked.  “No comment on that,” he answered.  “How about you?”
    “Just Stacy.”
    “You’re still dating Stacy?” he asked in alarm.
    “Yeah.  What of it?”
    Shane shook his head.  “Nothing.”  Will had taken Stacy Monroe, a girl on the cheerleading squad, to their junior prom, and had started going out with her shortly afterwards.  Shane was surprised that the relationship was still going on; not only that, but that Will was not having sex with anyone else, which was very much unlike him.
    Mr. Johnson strode into the room then, and the chatter around them died away slowly as he began passing out syllabi printed on bright yellow paper.  “Someone used up all the regular paper in the copy room,” he said bluntly, as if answering a question.  “It’s the first day of school, the teachers get paid virtually nothing, and we can’t even get white paper when we want it.  I hate this place.”
    “Fair enough,” Shane muttered, accepting the stapled packet that Kristy Erickson passed back.  He scanned over the syllabus and his eyes zeroed in on the section labeled “Summer Reading Assignments.” 
    For each of the five assigned summer reading works, the syllabus read, students should submit a paper in which they discuss the main characters, identify the central themes and significant symbolism, and analyze select quotes.   The syllabus went on to list the parameters of the paper and the due dates for each one.  Will had been correct when he had said that Oedipus Rex was due the following Monday.
    Shane sat back in his seat, relieved.  The papers did not have to be too long and they did not seem to be terribly involved.  He was grateful that he had decided not to take AP English.  School was going to be a breeze this year, just like it always had been.  Except maybe calculus, but he could work extra hard in that class.  He had always liked math.  He was planning on taking the SATs this year, and he would probably do well on those, because he was a pretty good test-taker, too.  He could most likely get into whatever college he wanted.  Now he just had to figure out what the hell he wanted to do with his life.
     
    Melody sat right behind him, as she had since seventh grade, so it was no surprise that she had memorized everything about