“All of you, listen. You know I despise demerits and the entire negative reinforcement system, but I will pass them around like licorice if we do not stay on task today, because this show is in one month. ONE MONTH. And we don’t have a moment to lose. Sooooo,” Mrs. Nicky drags out, “why do you think I played this song today?”

“Because you want us to be depressed?” Mary Katherine says.

“Because we forgot our lines again and you’re punishing us?” Evan adds, and moves an inch closer to Mary Katherine so they are basically overlapping.

“No! No, people. I played this song because this is what the opening of act 2 is all about. The Baker’s finally got himself a son.”

Well takes a little bow here.

“And Jack is rich and Cinderella’s married her prince,” Mrs. Nicky continues.

“But…,” Geneva says from her spot by the mirrors, because she loves getting Mrs. Nicky on a roll.

“But all is not perfect in fairy-tale land. The Baker and his wife bicker. Jack misses the beanstalk world. Cinderella’s Prince is less than charming. And so we watch and we wait”—she starts pacing the room now like a jungle cat in spangly bracelets—“for our heroes to learn their lesson. Which is?”

Everybody finds a spot on the wall or the floor. Something to stare at so they don’t have to speak.

Mrs. Nicky grabs the demerit slips. I can’t believe I’m doing it, but I raise my hand.

“Yes, Lou?”

“The story doesn’t end when we get what we want.”

“Speak up, dear. Be a tigress, not a mouse!”

“The story’s not over when we get what we want!” I yell, and Geneva applauds and I only flinch a little.

“Yes!” Mrs. Nicky cheers, throwing the pack of demerit slips like a Frisbee so they go sailing under the piano bench. “Listen to your assistant director, people. We cannot stop growing. Learn from your mistakes and move, move, move onward!”

As Mary Katherine rolls her eyes, Well leans over and whispers in my ear, “I think that was her roundabout way of telling the eighth graders they better learn their lines or else.”

Dan’s classroom is exactly how you would picture an English room at a fancy private school. Three walls are covered floor to ceiling in bookshelves, with gaps like big white teeth for the dry-erase and Smart boards. The last wall isn’t a wall. It’s one big window overlooking the faculty parking lot and the hills beyond. There are four photographs of the very same hills hung above the window, one taken in each season of the year. This way, he says, when you’re dead stuck in the middle of winter, you can look up and see spring just around the corner.