I Am Charlotte Simmons Read Online Free

row, two seats beyond the boys, sat Miss Pennington, wearing a dress with a big print that was absolutely the wrong choice for a sixty-some-year-old woman of her ungainly bulk, but that was Miss Pennington, true to form—dear Miss Pennington! —and in that moment Charlotte could see and feel that day when Miss Pennington detained her after a freshman English class and told her, in her deep, gruff voice, that she had to start looking beyond Alleghany County and beyond North Carolina, toward the great universities and a world without limits because you are destined to do great things, Charlotte . Miss Pennington was applauding so hard that the flesh of her prodigious bosom was shaking, and then, realizing that Charlotte was looking at her, she made a fist, a curiously tiny fist, brought it almost up to her chin, and pumped it ever so slightly in a covert gesture of triumph, but Charlotte didn’t dare respond with even so much as a smile—
    â€”for fear that cool Channing Reeves and the others might think she was enjoying all the applause and might resent her even more.
    Now the applause receded, and the moment had come.
    â€œMr. Thoms, members of the faculty, alumni and friends of the school”—her voice was okay, it was steady—“parents, fellow students, fellow classmates …”
    She hesitated. Her first sentence was going to sound awful! She had been determined to make her speech different, not merely a string of the usual farewell sentiments. But what she was about to say —only now did she realize how it would sound—and now it was too late!
    â€œJohn, Viscount Morley of Blackburn”— why had she started off with such a snobby name ! —“ once said, ‘Success depends on three things: who says it, what she says, and how she says it. And of these three things, what she says is the least important.’”
    She paused, just the way she had planned it, to let the audience respond to what was supposed to be the witty introduction to the speech, paused with a sinking heart, because her words had all but shrieked that she was an intellectual snob—
    â€”but to her amazement they picked up the cue, they laughed appropriately, even enthusiastically—
    â€œSo I can’t guarantee this is going to be a success.”
    She paused again. More laughter, right on cue. And then she realized it
was the adults. They were the ones. In the green rectangle of her classmates, a few were laughing, a few were smiling. Many—including Brian—looked bemused, and Channing Reeves turned to Matt Woodson, sitting next to him, and they exchanged cool, cynical smirks that as much as said, “Vie count wha’? Oh gimme a break. ”
    So she averted her eyes from her classmates and looked beyond to the adults and soldiered on:
    â€œNevertheless, I will try to examine some of the lessons we seniors have learned over the past four years, lessons that lie beyond the boundaries of the academic curriculum—”
    Why had she said lie beyond the boundaries of the academic curriculum , which she had thought was so grand when she wrote it down—and now sounded so stilted and pompous as it fell clanking from her lips—
    â€”but the look on the faces of the adults was rapt and adoring! They looked up in awe, thirsty for whatever she cared to give them! It began to dawn on her … they saw her as a wonder child, a prodigy miraculously arisen from the rocky soil of Sparta. They were in a mood to be impressed by whatever she cared to say.
    A bit more confident now, she continued. “We have learned to appreciate many things that we once took for granted. We have learned to look at the special environment in which we live, as if it were the first time we had ever seen it. There is an old Apache chant that goes, ‘Big Blue Mountain Spirit, the home made of blue clouds, I am grateful for that mode of goodness there.’ We seniors,