I asked her not to go on the six-week camping trip with her boyfriend, but she said I would be fine. I wasn’t
Four of us sat at a round table in the junior high school library – an algebra retake class in the heat of a New Orleans summer. A 100% humidity 100% of the time summer. Our forearms stuck to the textbooks, the round table, the mimeographed worksheets. We each brought a washcloth from home to wipe away our sweat.
Mr Martin was one of the nicest teachers around. During the school year he taught civics and history, but the principal had him teach algebra all summer long. Mr Martin made a dot on the green board and labelled it A. Then he erased the dot and the A and told us it was still there.
