Read Online Jumping the Scratch by Sarah Weeks - Free Book Online Page A

for laughs that you could tell he hadn’t really written down on the page. Miss Miller read her description too. She wrote about the classroom’s being her favorite place and how she felt that the kids were like beautiful flowers growing in her garden. Arthur said he thought that was “a very nice image.” I wondered what kind of flower Miss Miller imagined I was.
    When everybody else had read, Arthur looked at me.
    â€œWhat about it, James?” he said.
    I was surprised when he called me by name. Then I realized he must have remembered Miss Miller had called me James when she yelled at meearlier. I shook my head no, and Arthur nodded as if to say it was okay with him if I didn’t want to read, but Miss Miller stepped in.
    â€œMr. Stone has asked you to read,” she said.
    I could have done what Larry did, made up things that I hadn’t actually written down. I could have told about the crickets and the curtains and the way it felt to lie there in the dark with Mister in my old room, but instead I shook my head again.
    â€œI don’t have anything,” I said.
    Miss Miller pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “Give me your paper, James,” she said, holding out her hand. I noticed for the first time that the polish on her sharp nails was the same blood red as her lips.
    I pressed the heel of my hand down on the clip at the top of my board, pulled out the blank sheet of paper, and handed it to her. She looked at it, front and back.
    â€œI do apologize, Mr. Stone,” she said.
    â€œNo apology necessary,” Arthur told her. “A blank page is often a sign of something promising to come.”
    Miss Miller laughed sharply. “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” she said as she crumpled my paper into a tight ball and threw it into the trash basket beside her desk.

12
    WE SPENT THAT WHOLE MORNING WORKING WITH Arthur. After doing the descriptions, he talked to us a little about keeping a writer’s notebook.
    â€œI take mine with me everywhere I go,” he said.
    â€œPerhaps you could give the children an idea of the kinds of things you write down in your notebook,” Miss Miller said. “Ideas for new books?”
    â€œSure, if one happens to come to me. But mostly it’s random things I hear or see. I keep a couple of running lists, too.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small black notebook. He opened it and began to flip through the pages. “Here’s a list of good words to describe how people walk: stride, shuffle, limp, swagger—” He stopped and flipped through more pages. “I’ve got pages of beauty parlor puns, names people call their pets, strange restaurant behavior.”
    â€œFascinating,” said Miss Miller.
    â€œI don’t know about that,” he said, closing the notebook and slipping it back into his pocket, “but I do think keeping a notebook handy is a good idea.”
    With the remaining time we had together that morning, Arthur decided to work with us on dialogue.
    â€œDo you all know what dialogue is?” he asked.
    Mary Lynne raised her hand, of course, but Arthur called on someone else, a boy named Kevin Kaminsky, who had a red birthmark on his forehead and rode the same bus I did.
    â€œA dialogue is when two people are talking to each other,” Kevin said.
    Arthur nodded and went on. “I’d like you all to write down a few lines of dialogue from a conversation you can remember hearing in the past day or so. I want you to write down all the words, exactly the way you remember them, but I don’t want you to tell us who’s speaking,” he explained.
    â€œCan it have cusses in it?” Larry Baywood asked.
    â€œAbsolutely not.” Miss Miller chimed in beforeArthur could answer the question himself.
    â€œShould we use quotation marks?” Mary Lynne asked, shooting a quick look over at Miss Miller to see if she was pleased with the