The Wednesday Wars

by Gary D. Schmidt

To ask your big sister to be your ally is like asking Nova Scotia to go into battle with you.

Love and hate in seventh grade are not far apart, let me tell you.

Let me tell you, when Presbyterians start to dance on the front stoop, you know that something big has happened.

Happy endings. That’s how it is in Shakespeare. But Shakespeare was wrong. Sometimes there isn’t a Prospero to make everything fine again. And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.

I almost cried. Almost. But I didn’t, because if you’re in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.

When gods die, they die hard. It’s not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you’re not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you’d ever want another god to fill their place. You don’t want fire to go out inside you twice.

Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.

“Shakespeare did not write for your ease of reading,” she said. No kidding, I thought. “He wrote to express something about what it means to be a human being in words more beautiful than had ever yet been written.”

Next thing you know, they’ll be paying Tom Seaver twenty-four thousand dollars too.

Baseball salaries aren't what they used to be.

“It’s Shakespeare,” I said. “It doesn’t have to make sense. They just have to be words more beautiful than have ever yet been written.”

It was early spring and we were her garden, and she was starting to see the bulbs and seeds that she had planted in us last fall coming up. She raked away our dead leaves, spaded new soil around us, and watered and fertilized. And we grew fast and green, let me tell you.

Describing a teacher and her students

“Shakespeare is all about the power of goodness and honesty and faithfulness,” she said. “It is about the abundance of love. It is about the weakness of armies and battles and guns and . . .” She stopped. Her mouth worked back and forth. “It is about the endurance of love,” she whispered. “Give me the book.”

“The Big M,” he said. “Motivation. You won’t run fast unless you really want to run fast, and really wanting to run fast is what gives you Motivation. The Big M.”

“The whole world is going crazy,” my father said, “and no place is crazier than college. You’ll stay at your job and be safe.” “Safe from what? Thinking?”

Mr. Hupfer was able to find me so easily. “I have a message for you,” he said, “from Danny. I’m not sure you’ll understand it.” “I’ll try,” I said. “He said, ‘Beat the pied ninnies.’ Do you know what he means?” I nodded. “Then here’s a message from me,” he said. He leaned closer. “Run them into the ground.”

“A comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after