so ima write up the first chapter of the a great book and i recomend it to people of all skill levels / ages
Vampire High by Douglas Rees
chapter 1:
stuck in new sodom
This all began on the day I came home with strait Fs. F in english, F in math, F in social studies, F in science. I'd even managed to get Fs in gym and homeroom. I was proud of that.
My parents, however, weren't.
"What is this?" my father raged when i showed him my grades.
"A report card," I said. "They put these letters down on it, see, and it tells you what grade you got."
"I see the letters," he said. "And the comments with them. 'Cody has turned in no homework at all for nine weeks.' 'Cody has been absent or tardy every day this quarter.' Oh, this one's a classic. 'Cody has spent every day in class trying to prove that Sir Isaac Newton was mistaken about the law of gravity. These expriments have consisted of repeatedly jumping off my desk and flapping his arms. his is distracting to the other students. He has done no other work.' And the homeroom. There is no comment from your homeroom teacher, so I suppose I'll have to ask-how on god's green earth did you manage to flunk homeroom?"
"Easy. I never went," I said.
"And what's this?" said Dad. "A special note from the principal? Yes. 'Your son has shown the intellectual development of an illiterate hurdy-gurdy grinder and the attention span of his monkey. It is impossible to evaluate his work as he has not done any. He is lazy, sly, and generally useless. I confidently predict he will be spending the rest of his life in nineth grade. I only hope it will be at some other school. Go back to California."
That last part sounded like a good advise to me. But I doubted that Dad would take it.
We glared at each other in that way we'd developed ever since he'd moved us from home to this dump of a town, New Sodom, Massachusettes. He wouldn't drop his eyes and I wouldnt drop mine.
This was Mom's cue to stop making terrified little gasps and whimpers and start making excuses for me. I liked this part.
"It's not his fault, Jack," she said.
Right.
"It's this place."
Right again.
"He's been miserable ever since we moved here."
Three rights. Dad's out.
But Dad didn't know he was out.
"Beth, he's cutting off his nose to spite his face," he said. "I can't accept that."
Yeah. And you can't do anything about it, either.
Dad threw back his head like he was about to explain to a jury why only an idiot wouldn't see things his way and give his client what he wanted.
"Now, look here, young man," he siad. "this move is the best thing that's ever happened to us. I was going nowhere at Billings, Billings, and Billings. Jack Elliot was good enough to handle their really tough cases, but not good enough to promote. No, my name wasn't good Billings, so that was that. When this opportunity opened up at Leach, Swindol and Twist, I knew it was the best chance I'd ever get to have the career I wanted. So here we are. And here we stay. And you'd better get used to it."
Fine. And I will go right on flunking. And you can get used to that.
I didn't say it. I only thought it. But i meant it.
Dad looked at my report card again.
"Homeroom," he said softly. "My son flunked homeroom."
Mom came over and put her arms around me.
"It won't do any good to get mad, Jack," she said. "these grades are a cry for help. Cody needs somethign in his life to connect to. He needs something to love."
Good idea, Mom. I would love to go home.
"Extracurricular activities, perhaps," Dad said. "Wrking on a road gang after school. Freelance garbage collection. He needs to acquire a skill with which he can support himself, since collage will obviously be out of the question."
"That's nto fair," Mom said. "You dragged us three thousand miles from home to further your career and expect us both to accept it as though nothing has happened. Well, that's not realistic."
Now it was "us." This was sounding pretty good. Better than usual. Maybe enough "us" would get me back to California. I thought about doing the stare again but dropped my head instead.
"And another thing," Dad said. "That hat is an obscenity."
He must have thought Mom had a good point. He was changing the subject.
"That hat goes," he said. "At least don't wear it in the house."
This was my Black Death cap, which I always wore backwards because Dad hates baseball caps worn backwards.
"Don't change the subject," Mom said. "You're not in teh court now. Cody needs something in his life to care about."
"All right, all right," Dad sighed. "Tell us, Cody, can you think of anything you want that would make you happier?"
"Tattoos."
Dad crumpled up my report card.
"I partially agree with you, Beth," he said. "Our son does need something new in his life. He needs a tougher school. Tomorrow I'll start making inquiries."
The next day i was so worried that Cotton Mather High started to look almost good to me. The cracked ceilings, the wooden floors that creaked like they were in pain; even the boys' bathroom, which was as dark as a grave and smelled worse. The thought that i might never that again made them seem almost friendly. No, that wasn't true. It was just fear that, bad as this was, Dad was determined to find someplace worse.
When he came home that night, he had a thin smile on his face and a couple of big manila envelopes in his hand.
"Seek and ye shall find," he said. "I have learned that there are not one, but two really hard schoold in this excellent town. I've got all the information right here."
"You work fast," Mom said, crossing her arms.
"It turns out that there are other members of my law firm who have children in each one," Dad told us. "Clancy Kincaid has a son and daughter in Our Lady of Perpetual Homework. He speaks very well of it. And there's a public school that's just as good and even harder to get into-Vlad Dracul Magnet School. Hamilton Antonescue's daughter goes there."
Our Lady of Perpetual Homework?
"But-but we're not even Catholic," I squeaked.
"That isn't necessary," Dad said with satisfaction. "Many of their most difficult students come from other religious traditions. Sooner or later, everyone breaks. Or so Clancy Kincaid assures me."
I believed it. I'd been by the place once, when i was cutting class. They said you could hear the screams coming through the walls. I hadn't, but I'd never forgoten the words carved in the stone over the door:
ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE
- DANTE
"But-it's expensive, isn't it?" I said. "I mean, private school-"
"Easily affordable," Dad purred. "I'm making a great deal more money than I ever did at Billings, Billings and Billings. But I gather you would rather go to Vlad Dracul, if you can qualify."
I didn't know. I'd heard of Vlad Dracul, but only the name. The kids at Cotton Mather never said much except things like "The football team's against Vlad this Saturday. Pray for them."
When I'd heard that, I'd asked the kid who'd said it what the big deal was.
"Shut up," he'd explained.
"Come on, what is it? Is Vlad Dracul where thay send the kids who flunk out of Our Lady of Perpetual Homework?" I'd asked.
"Look, stupid," the kid said. "Never say those words. Never say the whole name. And no, it's not where they send kids who can't cut at OLPH. No real parent would ever send their kid to Vlad."
And that was as much as anybody had ever told me.
"What kind of name is Vlad Dracul for a school?" Mom said.
"What do you mean?" Dad asked.
"I mean," Mom said, "that Vlad Dracul was a vicious, cruel fifteenth-century Romanian monarch who impaled his prisoners alive on stakes. What was teh school board thinking of?"
"There appears to be a sizable contingent of Romanian Americans in this town," Dad said. "Antonescu tells me that among the Romanians, Vlad the Impaler is quite a hero. Obviously they named a school after him as a gesture to ethnic pride."
"Well, among the rest of us he's better known as Dracula," Mom said.
"So what?" Dad said. "The school has the highest GPA in the state. Not only that, but the kids who graduate from it go ton to top universities. Not just some of them. All of them. Every year."
"I don't want Cody going to that school," Mom said.
"Then it's Our Lady of Perpetual Homework," Dad said. "Either one is fine with me."
"Do I get anything to say about this?" I asked.
"I don't see why you should," Dad said. "Given that we're having this converstaion because of your demonstrated unwillinglness to meet the most minimal academic standards. But, that said, sure, go ahead. What do you want to say?"
What do I want to say? Don't do this to me? Take me home? Yeah, but that isn't going to happen. Not tonight, anyway.
"How about hiring a private tutor?" I said. "Maybe about twenty-five and good-looking."
"Thank you for your suggestion," Dad said. "We're going to visit a couple of schools tomorrow."
go out and read the rest! it gets better adn better every chapter.
its a quick read too, only like 200 pages or something like that xD
 MTbrainz XD · Fri Apr 17, 2009 @ 12:32am · 0 Comments |
