Charm and Consequence Read Online Free Page B

sing at church that night,” Leigh says. I can hear the relief in her voice.
    “Well, Pam, that’s two fewer ball gowns we’ll have to purchase,” Dad says as he looks up from the draft of a conference paper he is reading as we finish eating. He sounds even more relieved than Leigh did.
    “So Tori and Georgia and I will go shopping then, just the three of us. Or just the two of you, if you prefer that.”
    “Who says I’m going to this thing in the first place?” I demand.
    “You have no reason not to go,” Mom points out.
    I groan.
    “It will be fun,” Tori reassures me. “And you’ll get to observe the cultural elite of the Longbourne Country Club firsthand.”
    But I think I’ve had about enough of Longbourne’s elite already.
    ***
    I get another taste of it in the form of Lord Michael of Endicott on our second AP English presentation day. Shondra talks about Lady Macbeth, so I guess Michael approves of her part of the presentation, at least. She explains that a woman of Macbeth's time could only have access to power and position through her husband, so that’s why she had to goad Macbeth into killing the real heir to the throne to grab it for himself. Shondra sounds confident, but when she sits down next to me, she exhales as if she had been underwater and just burst to the surface.
    “You were great,” I assure her.
    Michael goes next, showing no signs of ever having had a moment of panic in his life. He’s chosen Hamlet, of course, and cites all sorts of evidence from the play that Hamlet was a genius, a man of the people, an ethical person forced into a terrible position what with that whole having to kill his uncle thing, blah blah blah. It’s very smart and very impressive and based on Aristotle’s definition of the tragic hero and will no doubt earn our group an “A” again, but something about the way Michael makes his case bothers me. He’s not just self-possessed. He’s downright smug, and it makes me want to throw my copy of the book at him.
    “Hamlet’s more complicated than the average tragic hero,” Michael explains, “because his undoing is not just because of some tragic flaw, his hubris or something. But like Oedipus or other classic tragic heroes, Hamlet’s essentially a noble figure.”
    Unfortunately, the snort I make at this is audible to Ms. Ehrman. She twists on the edge of her desk toward me and says, “Georgiana, would you like to say something about that?”
    “I don’t see what’s so noble about Hamlet,” I say, albeit reluctantly. “I mean, he kills-what? three? four?- people. What’s so noble about murder?”
    “Those people were trying to kill him ,” Michael points out.
    “Not all of them! Not Polonius- Hamlet kills him just because he’s so creeped out by the idea of a guy in his mother’s bedroom.”
    Some of the class snickers and I feel my face get a bit warmer. I can’t tell if they think I’ve made a funny point proving that Hamlet is a bit of a wacko, or at least a mama’s boy, or that I have revealed myself to have a mind prone to finding weird sexual situations where they do not exist.
    I really need to stop getting myself into these situations. But I’m in one now and there’s no graceful way out. And no wrecking ball to come and knock me safely into the next classroom, so I continue, “He’s a guy out for revenge who destroys a lot of people-himself included. But that doesn’t make it ‘noble,’ just because he takes himself out, too. I know she’s not a hero, and not ‘tragic’ in Aristotle’s definition, but Ophelia is tragic in every other sense of the word.”
    Now Michael snorts a bit and his smile twists at this absurdity. He says, “She’s confused, and goes off the deep end– no pun intended.” Some of the guys laugh. “I’ll give you that.”
    “Oh, thank you.”
    Ms. Ehrman rubs her glasses on her sweater for a moment before prompting, “Okay, Georgiana, what is tragic about Ophelia?”
    I sigh but forge