Mary Bloom feels confident that with regular visits to Mr. Swift for "extra assistance", a good grade in English is assured.
History, too, seems well in hand. Roderick is a whiz in History; since he took the same class with Mr. Clio two years ago, he needs very little time to do the assignments while Mary gazes at him adoringly. Mary simply adds some spelling and grammatical errors to Roderick's work to make it appear to be authentically hers.
Mr. Liebnitz, her Math teacher, is a problem, as he is immune to seduction, at least by a pretty fourteen-year old blonde wearing a "schoolgirl" outfit. There are rumors concerning his "alternative" tastes, but Mary pays these no heed except when she's bored and wants to whisper and giggle about something with her girlfriends.
Mary discovered a partial solution to her Math problem by accident after dinner on Monday, when she found Margaret sitting on the living room floor reading the ninth-grade Math book. It turns out that Margaret has already read completely through her seventh-grade Math book and hungers for greater challenge. Wishing to be supportive to her younger sister, Mary negotiated a deal: Margaret gives Mary all of her allowance, and in return Mary lets Margaret do the Math homework.
There remains the question of Math quizzes and tests. Mary figures that if she claims "special needs" status, she can claim the right to work on these at home. A quick private visit with Dr. Baudelaire leading to diagnosis of "severe test anxiety", and she will be good to go. Calling Dr. Margaret! There's a Math quiz for you on the dining room table!
Mr. Horace, her Latin teacher, is an easy mark, no seduction required. Since students in the class learn in small groups, and Mary is assigned to work with three rather geeky classicist boys, she feels assured that a quid pro quo can be worked out, the only question being the exact nature of the quid to be offered for the quo.
Which leaves Miss Agassiz's Freshman Science class. This is a real puzzler. From all appearances, Miss Agassiz seems to be angling for the Most Popular Teacher award. The girls love her fashonista style, her Hermes scarves and blouses, designer glasses and easygoing classroom persona. The boys -- well, they just melt in her presence, and pray she will lean over to expose her ample cleavage, or turn her back to the classroom and vigorously erase the blackboard.
Her philosophy is to make learning fun and interactive, so the Freshman Science classroom is lively and boisterous. Students are encouraged to interrupt, to shout out, to get up and walk around, because education shouldn't stifle the youthful passion to learn. Science is creative! Students make and throw paper airplanes, make balls from crumpled paper and try to hit the wastebasket, and produce all manner of funny and disruptive pranks!
Except for Mary, of course, who sits quietly by herself, reads her Science book and works on the problem sheets.
Mary has Study Hall with Miss Agassiz at eleven each morning, and Freshman Science at one. Yesterday, after the little matter of the sneeze, Mary sat gingerly in a corner of the Science room, reading the text and working on the daily problem sheet. She tried her hardest, reading and re-reading the text, and checking her work to make sure it was right. At the end of the class, with some trepidation, she placed it in the bin on Miss Agassiz's desk.
Today, at the beginning of class, Miss Agassiz returned the worksheets from yesterday. She gushed over the work of some students. "Wonderful job, Jackie!"; "Nice work, Maddy!"; "Carol, really nice job!!". She worked her way through the room, handing out papers, and as she handed them out, her praise became less warm. Suddenly, Mary realized that Miss Agassiz had sorted the papers in descending order and, well, her paper was not at the top of the pile.
With each paper, Miss Agassiz's comments grew crisper. "Spend a little more time on your work, Jason"; "Timothy, you need to check your work more carefully"; "Betty Sue, you can do better than this".
Mary wanted to crawl under her desk. Miss Agassiz's demeanor darkened until, at last, she held a single paper in her hand. In a slow, ominous gait, she walked over to Mary and delivered the paper as if it were some horribly odoriferous turd.
"See me after school", Miss Agassiz snapped, and flounced to the front of the classroom.
Mary looked at her paper and saw a sea of red ink.
At four that afternoon, after Mr. Horace's Latin class, Mary knocked softly on Miss Agassiz's door.
"Come in!" came the response.
Mary stepped nervously inside. Miss Agassiz stood next to her desk, talking to an older boy she recognized from a recent encounter in a back seat by the Mill Pond. She couldn't remember his name; actually she never knew his name. Miss Agassiz and the boy seemed to be flirting with one another; they were standing very close, and she was stroking his biceps, and said something about needing a big strong fellow like him to come over to her house some time and help her with some things.
The boy whispered something in her ear -- Mary couldn't quite hear what he said, but it sounded like something he wanted to do to Miss Agassiz, who laughed and smiled and gave him a cutesy flirty look. The two of them went on like that for what seemed like ages while Mary stood in the doorway, watching, until finally the boy said he had to go home for supper, and Miss Agassiz gave him a very friendly hug and breathlessly said "Ciao!"
The boy left. Silently, Miss Agassiz followed him to the door, which she closed and latched, then turned and looked Mary up and down, like a tiger stalking a wounded gazelle.
We shall, once again, spare the sensitive reader from details of the punishment that followed. Suffice to say that the punishment was measured out precisely, in an amount that equalled the number of red marks on Mary's paper, and that once again Mary found sitting at the dinner table to be a bit uncomfortable.
And yet she smiled, not from some sort of masochistic pleasure in punishment, but in what she saw while bent over Miss Agassiz's desk: it was an open grading book, with students' names listed down the left hand side, in crisp block letters. Next to her name, she could clearly see the letter "A".
