There was already too much to remember.
He had to prepare for the fill-in-the-blank questions on the SAT Critical Reading section. He had to learn the Master List of 100 Most Common SAT Vocabulary Words: abstinence, abstract, aesthetic, alleviate, ambivalent, apathetic, auspicious, benevolent, candor, cogent, comprehensive. There were eighty-nine more Most Commons. Dave would Google them later. He wrote:
Remember to make flashcards and memorize and use them in a sentence!
Remember that on the actual test there could always be more.
Mr. Ellison said, “If you’re struggling on the SAT, just use the strategies!” At this Dave felt a tug of optimism, the string of a high-flying kite.
Mr. Ellison said, “The most important strategy is Process of Elimination.” Mr. Ellison was about to explain this (Dave’s mechanical pencil hovering over the page, his fingers vibrating with anticipation), but then he forgot because Abigail Cress was asking about the word hedonistic.
“So, would you call that a negative-tone word or a positive-tone word?” she asked, crossing and uncrossing her skinny legs. Mr. Ellison chuckled, although what Abigail said was plainly not funny.
Dave knew that he was missing something. He wrote:
To Google: is hedonistic good or bad?
Mr. Ellison said, “A second strategy is to follow the checklist for grammar questions.” He pounded the whiteboard with capital letters, blood-red:
1. SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT.
2. PRONOUN ERROR.
3. PARALLELISM.
4. ADJ—
From the hallway came a racket: the thunder of feet and laughter and the smack of something heavy hitting the floor. Dave stopped writing. Mr. Ellison went to the classroom door and opened it: there were Cally Broderick and Alessandra Ryding, crouched on the linoleum where a backpack’s contents had spilled.
Dave watched the back of Mr. Ellison’s head. The teacher was still for a moment, and when he spoke it was not in his classroom boom but a voice that was smaller, startled:
“Calista Broderick? What are you doing out here?”
Cally came slowly to her feet, pushed her overgrown hair behind her ears, and glared. She was nothing like the girl Dave remembered from middle school, the type who’d care about something practical and normal like the SAT. Dave was the exact same person he had been in eighth grade, seventh grade, fifth grade, third grade, just with larger polo shirts and sneakers. What had happened to her?
Cally said, “Nothing, Mr. Ellison. Sorry.” But she didn’t sound sorry at all.
Alessandra Ryding got up from the floor and sidled beside Cally, a woven backpack dangling from her shoulder. Alessandra was willowy and olive-skinned and president of the HIV Awareness Club. Dave couldn’t help but wonder how often she had sex—he guessed it was often—and with who. She was even flirting with their teacher: “Calista’s a bad, bad girl, Mr. Ellison,” she said. “Do you think she should be punished?”
Alessandra collapsed in laughter. Cally elbowed her ribs. Dave couldn’t see Mr. Ellison’s face, but the teacher shifted on his feet. This startled Dave. It made him remember with sudden, embarrassing vividness the Photoshopped picture of Mr. Ellison and Abigail Cress that Nick Brickston had posted on Instagram. In the picture, Mr. Ellison was naked and his eyes were closed and Abigail was in her track outfit, touching him right there. To this point, Dave had mostly ignored the rumors that Mr. Ellison and Abigail were doing it, thinking such things only happened in the movies. But now he wondered.
“Mr. Ellison?” Hannah Jones called out. “I have a question? About this modifier thing?”
Mr. Ellison cleared his throat. “Ladies, why don’t you move along? Your peers are trying to learn something here.”
Alessandra answered for them both—“Peace and love, Mr. E.”—and the girls carried on together down the hall.
Mr. Ellison sighed and shut the classroom door. With the interruption, he seemed to have forgotten about the rest of the grammar checklist. Instead he replied to Hannah, mentioning something called a “dangling modifier.” This relaxed him, and he began to chuckle. He said, “Dangling modifiers are the funniest parts of grammar. You’ll see.”
Dave wrote:
Mr. Ellison thinks that there are funny parts of grammar.
Google this. Google everything.
—
Dave sat at his mother’s wide glass dinner table and vocabulary swam in his brain. They weren’t words to him yet, only letters jumping in and out of line.