Always, Abigail (3 page)

1.
She's horrible. You just have to know her; no explanation needed.

2.
She's got to be at
least
one hundred years old by now. (My mom had her when
she
was in sixth grade.)

3.
She sees EVERYTHING that goes on—that's why she's called the Hawk. She doesn't just have eyes in the back of her head. She's got eyes in the hallway, in the bathroom (boys
and
girls), and on the playground. No one knows how she does it.

1.
She's the strictest teacher in the whole school.

2.
She's the toughest teacher in the whole school.

3.
Someday you'll appreciate her for that.

Are you kidding me?

You'll see.

Old Hawk is my homeroom teacher AND my language arts teacher.

(There're 181 days left of school. I'm sure there'll be more reasons.)

1.
She's so last century with her old lady glasses hanging on a chain around her neck. And her clothes—you should see them. Plaid, polyester skirts, frilly blouses, and neck scarves. She must be in the witness protection program using our school as a hideout from the fashion police. She's a makeover waiting to happen. And you should see her hair. It looks like it's older than she is. Actually, it looks like an old man's beard piled on top of her head.

I'm surprised she doesn't ride to school in a covered wagon.

2.
She doesn't like computers. Doesn't think we should use them for our writing assignments. She says, “Young people today have lost the art of language the way it was intended to be written and spoken.”

I think
she's
the one who's losing it because no one even knows what she's talking about half the time.

The first day of school she passed out penmanship paper. You know, the kind kindergarten teachers use. Then she hung up one of those alphabet strips across the top of the chalkboard. She actually made us practice printing our full names in perfect penmanship.

The other kids were going nuts—complaining, whining, and whispering to each other, “Doesn't she know this is sixth grade?” “She's crazier than everyone says she is.”

I joined the crowd by doing a few eye rolls and a couple huge sighs, but secretly, I was loving it as I watched my perfect letters fill up the big wide spaces between the lines. My paper looked awesome! Even better than Old Hawk's example on the board.

I wondered if the principal knew she was doing stuff like this. Maybe I should report her. I could write an anonymous letter:

Dear Mr. Buckley,

Do you know that one of your sixth-grade teachers is a kindergarten teacher disguised as a middle school teacher? You must act now. She's teaching penmanship instead of punctuation. Save the sixth-graders in 6H from this cruel and unusual punishment. Remove her from her classroom before it's too late.

Yours truly,

Anonymous

3.
The biggest reason I hate having Old Hawk for language arts—THE FRIENDLY LETTER assignment!

She gave a twenty-minute speech about how she has an “ax to grind” with the “youth of America.” (She's famous for her speeches. Even my mom talks about them.) This one was about how she is “sick as a horse” to see young people using letters and numbers for words when they type e-mails and text messages.

She wrote
“BF4EVAH”
on the board. “
This
is not writing, my friends.”

(She always calls us “her friends” when she's making one of her speeches.)

Her solution to this horrific writing crime against humanity: THE FRIENDLY LETTER ASSIGNMENT.

“As a way to practice writing the English language as it was intended, each of you will be assigned a partner.”

(The key word here:
assigned
.)

“You will write letters to your partner once a week. You will WRITE these letters. Not type them. Not text message them. Not telepathically transmit them. You will use your best handwriting. You will spell words correctly. You will use proper grammar
and
punctuation. Am I clear?”

No one said anything, but I knew everyone wished they could write Old Hawk a friendly letter asking…

“My friends, do you realize that the United States government protects our mail? It is actually a federal offense for anyone to tamper with the U.S. mail. Which means it is an offense punishable by the law; and in our classroom, our friendly letters will be treated with the same utmost respect. No one, except the recipient, may read the friendly letters you write. No one, except you, may read the friendly letters you receive, and even I, the postmaster general of this classroom, am not above this law. So you should rest assured that I will not be reading your letters.

“To summarize,” Old Hawk said while writing on the board, “the friendly letters written in this classroom are private property between you and your friendly letter partner,” and she underlined
private
property
three times.

“That said, I am certain that no one, not a single one of you, my friends, will abuse this privilege of privacy and/or misuse it to write anything that would not be mature and respectful in nature.”

Gabby Marco is my friendly letter partner. She's the biggest LOSER in the WHOLE school. Something like this could ruin a person's life.

1.
The first time anyone even noticed Gabby was fourth grade. That's when Brent Undervale raised his hand when we were thinking up rhyming words for our poetry unit. Mrs. Nagle called on him, and nobody could believe it, but he actually said, “
Flabby
and
Gabby
.” (He got sent to Mr. Buckley's office, and his mom had to come and get him.)

Gabby
is
a little on the chubby side, but she's not really
fat
. The thing is, at Crestdale Heights, once someone says something like that about you, whether it's true or not, it sticks to you and follows you around like toilet paper on your shoe.

2.
The second reason isn't even Gabby's fault, really. It's because of what happened last year on the bus with Jackson Dawber.

Everyone knew that Gabby had lived with her aunt until the beginning of fifth grade. That's when she moved in with her older brother. Everyone thought that was a little strange since her brother was only in high school. No one knew why she didn't live with her parents, and no one cared enough to find out.

Anyway, after Christmas break, our bus route changed, and Gabby's new stop was right in front of her house. When everyone saw where Gabby lived, they stared out the window at her house like it was a burning building. The house was really more like a dented-up trailer attached to a “dilapidated” (to use one of Old Hawk's vocab words) barn that was falling down. It looked like if you slammed the front door too hard, the whole thing would collapse.

That's when Jackson (whose dream is to become a stand-up comic) started yakking like he always does.

Using the highlighter he carries around all the time as a microphone, he yelled out, “If that house were a boat, it would sink. If it were a plane, it would fall out of the sky. If it were a car, there's no way it would run…”

Jackson's jokes are so lame-o. Everyone knows he'll
never
make it as a comedian. Even so, kids laugh.

Gabby was off the bus when Jackson started blathering, but I'm pretty sure she heard what Jackson said. She
had
to have at least heard all the laughing.

Once the bus was back on its way, I remember wondering what Gabby's house looked like on the inside; and for the first time, I wondered what had happened to her parents.

3.
The biggest reason Gabby Marco is the number one outcast at Crestdale Heights: she laughs sometimes for no reason at all. Usually it's when she has her head buried in one of the old paperback books she always carries around, but that's not the only time she laughs like that. It's
really
weird. The classroom can be perfectly quiet, and she'll start giggling. And then start laughing.

Some kids say she's crazy or possessed or something. Why else would someone laugh for no reason at all?

4. and 5. I thought there were more reasons no one liked her, but I guess that's it.