The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp Read Online Free

But Maisie was nowhere in sight, and she’s hard to miss. When I explained that I’d been sent down on her behalf, Miss Fuller recounted how Maisie had lost her lunch on the way here but had recovered enough to be sent home.
    “She has a weak stomach,” I remarked. “She stuffs her face with candy the livelong day—licorice and suchlike.”
    “A very unhealthy habit,” Miss Fuller noted.
    “And nasty,” I added.
    As I had no place to be, I lingered at Miss Fuller’s desk, noticing that she was extra wan-looking today. Behind the horn-rimmed reading spectacles, her magnified eyes were more soulful than usual. Though she’d seemed intent upon her paper work, her mind was drifting. This is the sort of thing I can often tell about people, don’t ask me how.
    I expected to be sent on my way, but Miss Fuller’s thoughts were off gathering wool. I thought of taking a peek at her gradebook, but who cares about a gym grade? Then my eyes fell upon a fatal document.
    It was a note on the desk. There was a page of writing that ended with numerous
X
’s, representing kisses. I knew that handwriting even upside down.My eyes popped, but I kept a poker face. It was a letter from Mr. Lacy.
    Miss Fuller seemed to notice me again. “What class did Maisie get sick in?” When I told her, she only said, “Ah.” But her hand fluttered up to the back of her neck. “Ambrose—Mr. Lacy is quite a good teacher, I believe?”
    So-so,
I nearly said, but I was on my guard now. “He is right good,” I remarked, “and many of the girls are sweet on him.”
    “Indeed?” she said.
    Naming no names, I quoted to her the poem Letty Shambaugh had written to Mr. Lacy on her notebook cover. I hoped to share a good laugh with Miss Fuller, but I was in for another surprise.
    “‘No knife can cut our love in two,’” she echoed. “That is a real beautiful sentiment.”
    It was about the worst corn-fed sentiment I’d ever run up against. But something was dawning on me fast. Love had come to Miss Fuller. She had it bad for Mr. Lacy, and being a gym teacher, she didn’t know a good poem from drivel.
    She sighed and returned to her work, but she was watching me on the sly. Since I often do the same, I can tell when it’s being done to me. Miss Fuller’s hand skated over the papers on her desk, concealing Mr. Lacy’s note and picking up another page.
    She stroked the artistic knot of hair that rode high above her bandeau. “Speaking of poetry,” she remarked, “how does this strike you?”
    She read aloud in a mournful voice like the coo of a mating dove:
    “Thoughts are bluebirds high above,
    Winging toward you with my love;
    Soaring over oak and pine,
    They bring the news that I am thine.”
    I like to have gagged. This poem was more sickening than Letty’s. Miss Fuller had no doubt cribbed it off a two-cent valentine.
    “What do you think?” she asked, and waited for a reply.
    My head whirled. Not only was Miss Fuller stuck on Mr. Lacy, but she was writing slop to him like a young girl. It shook my faith in grown-ups.
    “I have heard worse,” I said cautiously, though I never had.
    Miss Fuller sighed again and plucked at the tails of her bandeau. “Don’t be kind,” she sighed. “My poor words are unworthy. For me, Artistic Expression is limited to the dance. With poetry, I seem to strike out.”
    She’d get no argument from me on that score.
    “I don’t suppose you know any . . . suitable poetry, Blossom?”
    I could see the woman was desperate, so I racked my brain. Then suitable poetry came to me. It was Miss Blankenship’s daily words from
Hamlet,
which had seeped into my head.
    “How about this?” I said.
    “Doubt thou the stars are fire;
    Doubt that the sun doth move;
    Doubt truth to be a liar;
    But never doubt I love.”
    Miss Fuller blinked at me from behind her horn-rims. Her hand stole up to her long cheek. “That has a nice ring to it,” she said. “Did you write it?”
    “No, but Shakespeare