A Year in the Life of a Complete and Total Genius (6 page)

Yours truly,

Arthur Bean

• • •

From: Kennedy Laurel ([email protected])

To: Arthur Bean ([email protected])

Sent: December 31, 11:55

Happy New Year Arthur!

Sorry that I haven't been in touch! My family went skiing for Christmas! It was good, except my older brother is in college and thinks he's cool, so at the last minute he decided to stay at home by himself. I was so mad, and he totally got into this yelling match with my dad. Then my mom cried about it every day we were away. I don't know why he had to be so inconsiderate. It was CHRISTMAS. My dad and him are STILL not talking even though we're back now. It's so tense here! I ALMOST look forward to school again LOL!

Anyway, the skiing was good, and it was cool to be out of the city, and then I didn't have to think about my boyfriend. :( Sandy and I had a long talk just before Christmas, and I don't want to THINK about him OR talk about him anymore! I gave him his Christmas present and he was SO weird about it!!! I don't know what HIS problem is, but I'm moving on. At least for now.

I've been trying to work on putting some of my sadness into my story for the contest! Speaking of the contest, did you get LOTS of writing done over the break?? I can't believe we go back to school in THREE days!! I feel like we were just there LOL!! Are you changing options in the winter?? I am switching from band to drama! I'm just not cut out to be a flute player!! Maybe I would do better as a tuba player LOL!!! But I LOVED the Shakespeare unit we did in English class, and I think the drama club is doing a Shakespeare play!

ANYWAY, if you want to send me your story, I would love to read the beginning! I still haven't seen anything you've written! Are you avoiding sending it to me LOL?!

What are you doing tonight for the New Year? I'm going to a party that my friend Kayla is having! Hopefully there are cute boys there LOL!!!

Kennedy :)

From: Arthur Bean ([email protected])

To: Kennedy Laurel ([email protected])

Sent: December 31, 14:13

Happy New Year to you too, Kennedy! Skiing sounds fun! I have never been skiing. I think I am more of a snowboard kind of guy.

Tonight I am hanging out with my cousins. My cousin Luke and his brother George are visiting us. It's pretty awesome. My cousin George is in tenth grade so I think we'll go with him to a high school party. That's probably what we'll do, but I don't know for sure. I bet my dad will let him use the car to get us there too.

I think I'm also going to switch to drama this semester, so we'll be in the same class! It's too bad that we only get to change our options. I would like very much to get rid of science and math. :) I'm very excited for drama class. Maybe we can be partners!

I have been writing also, but so far it's pretty vague. I like to start my writing at the end with the climax, and then work backward. I find that it gives my stories a clear plot direction. So if I send it to you now, it will ruin the end! Or I would have to kill you for knowing the end…ha-ha-ha…

See you in a few days! Or, as Shakespeare would say, “See thou anon.”

Yours truly,

Arthur Bean

January 1st

Dear RJ,

It's probably best to write down my resolutions for this year now so that I don't break any of them before noon HA-HA-HA. Anyway, here are my resolutions:

1. I will win the writing competition. This is number one!!!

2. I will not leave my dishes in the sink for longer than three days.

3. I will tell Kennedy I love her and make her love me back.

4. I will like Shakespeare's plays and not just pretend to like them.

5. I will knit a sweater for my dad.

6. I will read the newspaper more often to know what is going on in the world.

7. I will read
War and Peace
.

8. I will try not to get annoyed with Robbie Zack during tutoring sessions so that I don't “accidentally” punch him in the head.

9. I will stop eating spicy food at school, since it gives me really bad hiccups and then kids make fun of me.

I think this is enough to strive for this year. I don't want to set my expectations too high.

Happy New Year, RJ!

Yours truly,

Arthur Bean

• • •

From: Kennedy Laurel ([email protected])

To: Arthur Bean ([email protected])

Sent: January 1, 13:00

Hi, Arthur!!!

How was your NYE party?? Mine was pretty fun! There was a karaoke machine LOL!!! I can't believe your cousin's name is George! That's so funny! I thought only old people were called George LOL!

After I sent you that email, I remembered that it was your first Christmas without your mom! I'm SO sorry! I should have remembered that and not talked about MY Christmas! I'm glad your cousins were there! I hope it wasn't TOO sad! I'm sending you a HUGE email hug!

I'm so excited that you will be in drama with me! Robbie is going to be in the class too!! It took some convincing at the party last night, but he finally admitted that he loves Shakespeare too, so the three of us can be the witches in Macbeth LOL!!! Double double toil and trouble LOL!!!

Your last email was HILARIOUS! I'm glad that you haven't lost your sense of humor even though your Christmas must have been SO sad!!

Anyway, I don't want you to KILL me for knowing how your story ends before it begins LOL!!! Can't wait to see you in THE THEATER LOL!!!

Kennedy :)

From: Arthur Bean ([email protected])

To: Kennedy Laurel ([email protected])

Sent: January 1, 13:05

Hi, Kennedy,

I didn't end up going to the party. George got food poisoning or something, so Luke and I watched movies until 3 a.m. It was fun anyway. They are leaving today, which is too bad because if they lived here you could meet my cousin Luke. Anyway, glad you had a nice NYE party. See you in a few days. Thanks for the email hug too. Christmas was fine, and it wasn't too sad. Luke got a new video game so we played that and it was awesome. Well, it was awesome once we returned it and got the game that worked with his PlayStation instead of the Nintendo version.

Yours truly,

Arthur Bean

• • •

January 2nd

Dear RJ,

All right, RJ. It's time to get serious. No more thinking about other stuff. I have a story competition to win. It's going to be hard, especially since Kennedy is about to fall in love with me. I wonder how famous couples deal with it when one person is more famous than the other. Luckily, most girls at school are always reading magazines that give them love advice and information on famous people, so I'm going to let Kennedy do the research on that. Ha!

But no more jokes about love advice, RJ. I'm going to just think about writing and work on being famous, and then I can stop thinking about my mom and worrying about my dad (all his unwrapped presents are still sitting under the tree—he hasn't even put them away! Pickles has clawed through one of the scarves I made for Dad already. I put the other one away for him). From here, it's all about me, RJ!

Yours truly,

Arthur Bean

• • •

Assignment: Character Sketch

Our next unit is creative writing, and it's my favorite unit to teach! I hope that our assignments over the next few weeks inspire you to find new ways to tell stories. For those of you participating in the short story contest, you might find some of these exercises strengthen your story. For others, I hope that this unit inspires you to continue writing outside of the classroom.

Write a few short paragraphs about a person who means a lot to you. This assignment will be a jumping-off point for developing a character for a short story you will be writing later in this unit. What does this person wear? What do they eat for breakfast? How do they interact with other people? Focus on creating a full character sketch, looking at their positive and negative characteristics, as well as their physical traits and personality.

Due: January 7

• • •

Peer Tutoring Program—Progress Report

Session: January 4th

Worked On: Character Sketches

Ms. W: I dont feel right about shareing my work with Arthur Bean. He may steel it and use it for his own work

—Robbie

Robbie is overreacting to something he knows nothing about. Perhaps his parents shouldn't have taken him out of school early to go to Hawaii for Christmas. I believe all the sun has gone to his head. I tried to explain to him (the same way I explained to you) that my work might seem similar on first glance, but that it is much deeper when you look at it. The symbolism is clear to very smart people. However, my explanation fell on deaf ears, and Robbie just spent the hour spitting on my paper. This is a waste of time.

—Arthur Bean

• • •

A Character Sketch of Margaret Bean

By Arthur Bean

Her name was Margaret Mary Bean, but she always went by Marg. She hated being called Margaret. Marg Bean loved the ocean. She grew up on the Prairies, but she always wanted to live beside the ocean. She always wore blue and green, and she read lots of books with blue covers or pictures of boats on the covers. She said that she found it soothing to have a blue-covered book, even if it was actually a book about pirates or something.

Marg's pants were always too short because her legs were really long. She tried to wear really big shirts to make it seem like her pants were long enough, but it actually just made her pants look even shorter.

Marg Bean was prettiest when she was watching television or reading a book. This was because her face would relax, and her mouth would be closed and her hands would stop moving. Any other time her face was always really tight, like she was sewing her eyebrows together in her mind. Marg Bean got tired walking almost anywhere, and then she would breathe through her mouth. It made her seem really old, and she kind of looked like she was embarrassed because her face would be beet red.

Her voice was always louder than someone would expect it to be, and she seemed to be yelling all the time, but she was actually just talking. She was the person in the public library that everyone looked at when she would ask for books at the counter. “DO YOU HAVE ISAAC ASIMOV BOOKS?” she would say, and the librarian would say in a voice even softer than the one he used with everyone else, “Why yes, they are just over in the corner over there.” “ARTHUR, I WILL BE IN THE CORNER. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR BOOKS.” And everyone would then look to see who she was talking to, and they would raise their eyebrows and judge me, like they didn't like anyone who knew her.

Marg Bean always had porridge and coffee for breakfast. Her favorite lunch was egg salad sandwiches, as long as there were no green onions in the egg salad. Curry made her go to the bathroom a lot, and she thought pepper was too spicy. She made perfect roast beef, and always made asparagus to go with it, which is the best vegetable to eat with roast beef. She also made really good spaghetti and meatballs, but she said they were too much work to make all the time, so she only made them a couple of times.

If Marg Bean were a character in my book, she would be a zombie mom who was the leader of the zombie pack. She has to be a zombie, because she isn't alive, and vampires are stupid. She would be super strong and have a zombie cat companion who would kill zombie mice. This is because Marg Bean loved cats—even Pickles, who is actually part cat, part demon. She hated mice, but not as much as she hated spiders.

Dear Arthur,

Your character sketch is an excellent beginning to our short story unit. You have captured the essence of your mother's personality through your choice of moments in this character sketch. However, you don't need to make your mother a zombie in your book if you don't want to. Many great stories are reflections of the person in their prime and don't need to be completely true to life.

Ms. Whitehead

• • •

January 8th

Dear RJ,

Drama class started this week, and Kennedy is in it too! It's nice to be in a class with her where we don't have to sit at desks, and we can sit wherever we want. I will always sit beside Kennedy and show her how charming I am in real life every day. It might even be okay that Robbie is in the class too, except that he's always talking to Kennedy. They have this thing from when they played baseball together. It's this weird high five thing they do all the time and it's really dumb. We also have to sing in class, which I think is stupid because it's a drama class, not a choir, but Mr. Tan said that a good actor is a “triple threat” if he can act, sing, and dance. I would like to triple threat Robbie out of the class, but not with acting, singing, and dancing. More like kickboxing, karate, and ninja moves.

I've been writing too. I started a dumb story in Ms. Whitehead's class about zombie cats, but it's definitely not going to be famous. I tried to base it on Pickles, but she's not a zombie; she's just kind of possessed. My story for the contest will make readers laugh and cry and realize how smart I am. I'm going to write something really deep. I think it needs to have lots of description. Ms. Whitehead is big on description.

The computer sat alone on the table, in a faded gray room. The chair was brown, cracked leather digging into anyone who sat on it. The sun shone yellow through the dirty windowpanes. There was nothing more to say…

Yours truly,

Arthur Bean

• • •

Assignment: Interview a Friend

As we heard in our author talk today, some authors sit down and think about interviewing their characters to help develop back stories and other quirks that can turn a flat character into a well-rounded one. To practice this technique, I would like you to interview someone in your life. Come up with five questions that you feel will provide you with an accurate portrait of this person's likes and dislikes, and provide some insight into their outlook on life. In your assignment, please provide both the questions you posed and the answers from your interviewee.

Due: January 14

• • •

Peer Tutoring Program—Progress Report

Session: January 11th

Worked On: Interviews

Artie was really rude today, and I even tried to be nice to the looser. He refused to help me fix my interveiw with Kennedy to make it a better assignment. I dont know how you think this tutoring is good for ether of us can we change now? Hes in my drama class now to and hes as annoying there as every where else.

—Robbie

Ms. Whitehead: I would like an extension on this assignment. I was going to interview Kennedy Laurel, but Robbie already interviewed her. My interview was going to be much more in-depth, but I don't want you to think that I stole his idea. If anything, I think he stole mine, because I was talking to Kennedy in drama class and it was pretty clear that I was going to ask her to be my person to interview. Now I have to think of a new person to interview, and I don't know if I will have time to do that by Friday.

—Arthur

Arthur,

I will give you time to interview Robbie during class on Thursday, which should give you enough time to hand in your interview for Monday morning.

Ms. Whitehead

• • •

From: Kennedy Laurel ([email protected])

To: Arthur Bean ([email protected])

Sent: January 15, 15:20

Hi, Arthur!

How much fun is drama class!?! Mr. Tan was saying that there are going to be auditions for
Romeo and Juliet
soon! How awesome will that be?! I'll answer that for you: SO AWESOME LOL!!!

ANYWAY, how is your story coming along? I totally realized that I haven't read ANY of it yet! I think I'm almost done with mine! I made it so that the aliens are really good at mind control and then my main character doesn't know if she's under MIND CONTROL or if it's all a dream! If you want, you can send me your outline!! Of course, only if you've actually written something! Just kidding—I'm just making fun of you since you haven't sent me anything! You're so SECRETIVE! LOL! But seriously, you can TOTALLY send me something! I want to be helpful! PLUS, I'm going to send you the rest of my story SOON too!