Average Jane |Lesbian Story|

Chapter 14

Monday, February 10. The bulletin board outside the gym had two enormous pictures of Caroline Waleski on it from Friday's basketball game. In gym class, Coach Jim picked six girls to go to a special weekend basketball camp. Jane was not one of them.

Monday, February 10. Whoever invented alphabetical order? Every single time every single teacher starts with the last names and ends with Z ones. Is it just a coincidence that the vice president and president of Loser Club both have last names from the end of the alphabet?

Jane was sitting in Ms. Reeds' English class, waiting for the stragglers to come in from study hall and scribbling a couple of quick entries in the Unfair Life. Jane had been so busy lately bouncing and reading Dickens that she had gotten behind in her record keeping.

These days fewer unfair things seemed to be happening in her immediate vicinity. Or maybe she was just too preoccupied with the rest of her life to notice them.

It was book-report day, and Jane knew that Ms.Reeds would start with Lucy, as all teachers always started with Lucy, and she'd get to Jane and Emily if there was time, which there probably wouldn't be, since there were twenty-four people in the class, and Lucy could easily fill half a class period all by herself. Jane looked down again at the page she had written on A Tale of Two Cities. If she had to wait till tomorrow to get her report over with, she didn't think she could stand it. Especially this time, when her report was practically guaranteed to astonish everybody, most of all Ms. Reeds.

The bell rang. Ms. Reeds looked up from her cluttered desk. She was a small, gray-haired woman who smiled so much that her face had frozen into a perpetually smiling expression.

"Let's get started right away, class," she said. "I want to make sure we hear as many books reports as possible today. Lucy, what do you have to share with us?"

Lucy came to the front of the room. Most kids read their reports from a sheet of paper; some just mumbled something they thought of on the spot. Lucy's book reports were always memorized. She clasped her hands behind her back, fixed her eyes somewhere on the ceiling, and let loose her usual torrent of words.

"I read a wonderful book called, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë. It was written in 1847, but the characters in the book are so real that you feel as if they're living today. When I read this book, I felt as if I were Jane Eyre, a lonely, friendless orphan girl sent away to a cold, cruel boarding school where all the other girls despise her."

As Jane had predicted, Lucy's report was long. Many sad and terrible things had happened to Jane Eyre, and Lucy apparently felt she had to describe each one in detail. Lucy always loved the books in her book reports, but she seemed to love this one extra much. Maybe it was because she and Jane Eyre were a lot alike? Nobody liked either of them.

Finally, Lucy finished.

"David Brown," Ms. Reeds called, still smiling. B, C, E, F, G...why did the alphabet have to have so many letters in it?

David Brown started reluctantly toward the front of the room. To her own surprise, Jane put up her hand.

"Yes, Jane?"

"I was just wondering —do we always have to go in alphabetical order? Every time?"

Ms. Reeds kept on smiling her same smile. "Why, no. Not at all. Would you like to proceed in a different way today?"

It wasn't as if Jane was exactly eager for her turn, she was just so tired of being last. Though maybe she was looking forward to her report today.

"I guess so," she said.

"Well, suppose today we go in reverse alphabetical order. Yes, I think that would be quite a refreshing change. Emily, why don't you go next?"