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

question.
    â€œI’m more interested in the words than the punctuation, but if you want to use quotation marks, that’s fine,” Arthur said.
    â€œDoes spelling count?” Kevin asked.
    Arthur shook his head.
    â€œCan one of the two people talking be yourself?” someone else asked.
    He nodded. “As long as you don’t tell us who’s talking,” he said. “And don’t put your names on your papers either. These are going to be anonymous dialogues.”
    Miss Miller came and stood right behind me. I knew why she was there. She wanted to make sure I wrote something down this time. It made me so nervous, her standing that close to me, I couldn’t think about anything other than the fact that she was there. All around me pencils scratched away, but my mind was a total blank.
    Someone knocked at the door, probably a message from the office or a stack of forms to be handed out at the end of the day. Miss Miller went toanswer it, but before she did, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Don’t you dare put me to shame again. Do you hear me? Don’t you dare.”
    A few minutes later Arthur clapped his hands and asked us all to pass forward our papers. I opened the clip at the top of my board and passed the top sheet to the front along with the others.
    â€œI’m going to read these dialogues aloud now,” Arthur told us, “and then we’re going to see if we can tell what kind of person is speaking, based only on the words.”
    It was harder than it sounded. The first dialogue went like this:
    Â 
    May I have something to drink, please?
    What would you like to drink?
    I would like some orange juice, please.
    Â 
    â€œWhat can you tell about the two people who are having this dialogue?” Arthur asked.
    â€œOne of them is thirsty,” said Larry.
    Everyone laughed, and Larry looked pleased with himself.
    â€œOkay. But who is thirsty? Is it a little boy? Is it an old woman? A talking rabbit?”
    â€œIt’s me,” Mary Lynne called out, “and my mom. This morning at breakfast.”
    â€œOkay. So much for being anonymous.” Arthur laughed. “But here’s the point. If you hadn’t just told us it was you and your mother having this dialogue, there’s no way we would have known it just from listening to the words, would we?”
    â€œThose are the exact words we said,” Mary Lynne said defensively. “I remember perfectly. It’s not my fault you wouldn’t let us say who was talking.”
    â€œLet’s read a few more,” Arthur said, quickly moving on.
    He read several more dialogues, all of which had the exact same problem. The words sounded as if anybody could have said them. When Arthur picked up the next paper in the pile, his eyebrows went up, and he smiled.
    â€œAh. Here we go. How about this one?” he said. “Don’t you dare put me to shame again. Do you hear me? Don’t you dare.”
    â€œThat’s somebody old and mean talking,” a redheaded girl named Emily said.
    â€œHow do you know?” Arthur asked.
    â€œBecause a kid wouldn’t say it that way. A kidwouldn’t say, ‘Don’t you dare.’”
    â€œIf it was me, I’d say, ‘Knock it off or I’ll cream you.’” Larry agreed.
    â€œExactly,” said Arthur. “The message says, ‘Knock it off or I’ll cream you,’ but these particular words tell you the person who’s talking is old and mean.”
    I was afraid to look at Miss Miller. I knew she must be furious. I hadn’t meant for this to happen. I just wrote down the only thing I could think of.
    Mary Lynne’s hand was up again. “That’s not a dialogue,” she said. “There’s only one person talking. You said a dialogue is two people talking.”
    â€œThe point is that by using these particular words, this writer was able to tell