The Beginning of Everything Read Online Free Page A

noted,” I muttered.
    Mr. Anthony continued with roll. I wasn’t really listening, but when he got to one name that I didn’t quite catch, there was a perceptible shift in the room. A new student. She sat way on the other side, near the bookshelves. All I could see was a sleeve of green sweater and a cascade of red hair.
    The syllabus was nothing surprising, although Mr. Anthony apparently believed otherwise. He talked about what it meant to be in an Advanced Placement history course, as though we all hadn’t taken AP US History with Ms. Welsh as juniors. A lot of the guys on tennis didn’t care for Coach Anthony, because they thought he was a hard-ass. I was used to strict coaches, but I was quickly realizing that without any other athletes in the class, Mr. Anthony was just plain strict.
    â€œYou should have done the summer reading,” Mr. Anthony said, as though it was an accusation, rather than a fact. “ Medieval Europe: From the Fall of Rome to the Renaissance . If you felt such an assignment was beneath you, then you’ll be rearranging your plans for the weekend. You might even consider your weekend plans to be, ah, history .”
    No one laughed.
    The Roman Empire: 200 B.C. —474 A.D. , he scrawled on the board, and then raised an eyebrow, as though enjoying a private joke. There was this horrible stretch of silence as we tried to figure out why he wasn’t saying anything, and then, finally, Xiao Lin raised his hand.
    â€œI am sorry, but I think 476 A.D. is correct?” he mumbled.
    â€œThank you, Mr.—ah—Lin, for displaying the barest level of competency in reading comprehension,” Mr. Anthony snapped, correcting the date on the board. “And now, I wonder if anyone here can tell us why the phrase ‘Holy Roman Empire’ is a misnomer . . . Mr. Faulkner, perhaps?”
    If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that was a sneer on Coach A’s lip. All right, let’s call it a sneer. I got that he was disappointed I couldn’t play anymore, but I’d sort of hoped he wouldn’t be a jerk about it.
    â€œIt only applies after Charlemagne?” I offered, inking over the letters on my syllabus.
    â€œThat’s a community college answer,” Coach announced. “Would you care to rephrase it and try for a UC school?”
    I don’t know why I said it, except maybe that I didn’t want to take crap from Coach A for the rest of the year, but before I could really think it through, I’d leaned back in my chair and replied, “Yeah, okay. Two reasons: One, the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ was originally called the Frankish Kingdom, until the Pope crowned Charlemagne the ‘Emperor of the Romans.’ And two, it wasn’t holy, or Roman, or even an empire. It was really just, like, this casual alliance of Germanic tribal states.”
    I’d never really shot my mouth off in class before, and I instantly regretted it. I usually had the right answer when I was called on, and my grades were good enough, but I wasn’t what anyone would consider brainy. I’d just done a lot of reading and thinking over the summer, because there hadn’t been much else to do.
    â€œEnjoy your weekend, Mr. Faulkner,” Coach sneered, and I realized that, instead of getting him off my back, I’d made him want to get back at me.
    Â 
    I’D NEARLY FORGOTTEN we were on Pep Rally Schedule until I was halfway out the classroom door, thinking it was break, and someone tapped me on the shoulder.
    It was the new girl. She clutched a crumpled class schedule and stared up at me, as though I’d somehow given her the impression that I was the right person to talk to on her first day. I wasn’t expecting her eyes—deep and disquieting and dark blue—the sort of eyes that made you wonder if the skies opened up when she got angry.
    â€œUm, sorry,” she said, glancing back down at her schedule.