Sprout

resisted the urge to scratch my head again. “Um, yeah. Right. Well, look, Mrs. Miller, I gotta catch my bus. So if I’m not getting detention … ?”
    Mrs. Miller’s detentions were famous: thousand-word essays on the history of wheat; dramatic monologues on the Homestead Act of 1846; or just copying the complete definition of the verb to be from the dictionary—by hand, in crayon, using a different color for each letter.
    Mrs. Miller turned the paper towards me. She held it by the corners, using just her fingertips, as though it were a slightly offensive photograph still wet from its chemical bath.
    “Did you write this?”
    By now you can tell Mrs. Miller liked the superfluous gesture ( just as I’m kind of fond of anachronisms, what with the paper dictionary and non-digital photography and words like “fond”). It was pretty clear I’d written the paper—um, duh, she’d looked down and seen my name on it—but I’d written it for Mrs. Lentman’s sophomore English class, which made me wonder how Mrs. Miller, who as far as I knew only taught seniors, got a hold of it. The paper was called
    Quit Whining!
or,
Holden Caulfield Could Learn a Few Things from Huck Finn
    and I suddenly remembered: the red stain was strawberry compote, which, when spread liberally on toaster waffles, ranks seventh on my dad’s list of favorite hangover cures. Fortunately I like it too, so it works out all around.
    The sound of Mrs. Miller’s tapping foot brought me back. We were standing on carpet, so she must’ve been wearing really hard-soled shoes. I looked up at her.
    “Did it suck so much the teachers are passing it around?”
    “On the contrary,” she said (except she pronounced it au contraire ). “Unlike most people your age, your irreverence has a considered, mature quality to it.” Matoor , she said, in that pseudo-classy soap-opera-y kind of way. But at the same time she leaned in close to me, and a gap opened between two buttons of her blouse. The lace on her bra matched her collar, except it was pale purple. Lavender, I guess you’d say, although that makes it sound a little, um, sexy? Just thinking that made my face turn about the same purple as her bra, and, what with my spiky green hair, I must’ve looked like an over-cooked stem of asparagus (which, btw: gross ).
    When Mrs. Miller gave me the paper back, I saw that Mrs. Lentman had given me a B+. She took off a half step for the strawberry compote, and another half step for a couple of green fingerprints on page three, but the last deduction was for “unconventional interpretation.”
    “Lesson one, Sprout,” Mrs. Miller said to me with a twinkle in her gray eyes, “know your audience. The Catcher in the Rye is Sharon’s favorite book. You bash it, she bashes you. Strictly between us,” she added in a stage-whisper (except it came out entre nous ), “I always thought Holden Caulfield was a simp myself.”
    Because Mrs. Lentman had been “criminally tardy” in bringing my “linguistic prowess” to her attention, Mrs. Miller suggested the two of us meet during the summer to get a head start—the contest was only seven months away, after all. First I was like: state essay contest? and then, when she explained what it was, I was like, state essay contest? Because the truth is I’d never thought about writing as anything besides something you did for school. It wasn’t like my secret dream, I mean. I didn’t have any dreams beyond getting the hell out of Dodge, which makes me about as unique as a playlist on the average cheerleader’s ipod. And I didn’t actually need the scholarship because my dad had set aside some of the money from the sale of our house on Long Island for my college tuition. And then, well, the idea of meeting once a week over the summer with an English teacher who wore sexy underwear beneath prim blouses didn’t exactly thrill me. I mean, I’d just turned sixteen. I’d graduated from my learner’s to an unrestricted license, and had worked out a deal with my dad to have the car on Saturdays. (“Dad, I won’t get a tattoo of a teardrop on my cheek if you let me have the car on Saturdays.” “Sounds like a deal, son.”) I was thinking pool parties, ultimate frisbee, the new video arcade in the mall. But the truth is I didn’t have anyone to invite me to pool parties or ultimate frisbee (which is for losers anyway) and, being jobless, I didn’t have any money for the arcade. But there’d been that wink. And,