The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman by Ben H. Winters Page B

home from the mother-daughter yoga class she and her mom attended on alternate Friday evenings, she removed the maracas disdainfully from her backpack, plucking them out one by one and holding them away from her body like they were dirty diapers. She dropped them on the floor of her room, where they rattled lamely.
    It was bad enough that Bethesda Fielding’s Special Project had been a triumph, while hers had been ahumiliating disaster.
    It was bad enough that traditional English folk ballads from the sixteenth century had been replaced by this rock-and-roll nonsense, depriving Pamela of the spotlight.
    But
maracas?
Her assigned instrument was the
maracas?
It wasn’t even a real instrument! It was something a preschooler made out of dried rice and an egg carton!
    Her friends kept telling her that it wasn’t a big deal—that doing rock would be “more funner” than folk ballads (as Natasha said), or that it would be “the sweetest sweetness of all time” (Todd). But the rock show somehow belonged to Bethesda, it was her thing, and that meant that Bethesda had become the most important person in the seventh grade. But that was
Pamela’s
rightful place, and she couldn’t just let that change for no reason.
    Wait.
Wait!
    “Aha! ” Pamela cried. “I’ve got it! ” There had to be a
reason!
    There had to be some reason that Ms. Finkleman—or Little Miss Mystery, whatever her stupid name was—had given up her rock-star existence. And there had to be a
reason
she kept it a secret all these years!
    There was something she didn’t want anyone to know! All Pamela had to do was figure out that secret something, and she could set the universe straight once more!
    “I am a genius! ” yelled Pamela Preston, running out of her room to find the phone. On the way she kicked the stupid maracas under her bed.
    Meanwhile, Bethesda Fielding closed the front door behind Tenny Boyer, watched him bike down the street, and settled down wearily on the big living-room sofa. Project SWT was not going well at all. Bethesda was trying to maintain a positive attitude, but after one week, she was already pretty sick of hearing Tenny Boyer say “Um” and “Oh” and “Huh?” and occasionally “What?” What was wrong with this kid? He always showed up late, he never studied—he didn’t even
try!
Even though
he
was the one who needed the help.
    Over and over again, they had these ridiculous conversations:
    “Tenny! Can you try to pay attention? ”
    “What?”
    “I need you to focus, Tenny. To try.”
    “I am. I’m totally … wait, what did you say? ”
    At the end of their first week of work, Tenny hadlearned basically nothing. Wait! Not quite true: He had, after much confusion, grasped the concept that “the 1700s” meant the same as “the eighteenth century.” But to earn Tenny a passing grade on the Floating Midterm, they were going to have to do better than that. A
lot
better.
    Bethesda had told Ms. Finkleman she was an amazing tutor. She had promised her this would be no problem.
    “I can do this,” she said, trying to talk herself into optimism. “There’s still plenty of time. I can
do
this.”
    As she trudged up the stairs to her room, Bethesda looked longingly back toward the kitchen. Her father was whistling as he fixed himself an elaborate sundae, pouring a thick stream of chocolate syrup into a bowl overloaded with ice cream. But Bethesda kept walking. She had lyrics to memorize.
    Bethesda closed the door to her room and clicked through her iPod to find the song the Careless Errors were doing in the rock show: “Holiday” by a band called Weezer. Bethesda had wasted an entire night trying to get Tenny Boyer to understand that Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Franklin were two different people, and instead of diving into a giant bowl of walnut fudge, she had to memorize some song so she could prepare to humiliate herself in front of the entire school.
    How had this happened?
    Oh, right,
she thought glumly.
Me.