05 Can’tractions

Can'tractions Antarctica? Nope. Cartwheel? Nope. Rats! Judy could not check either of these off her kick-the-bucket list yet. She wrote Meet girl with invisible dog on her list and crossed it off. That put her in a better bucket-list mood. Judy scanned her list. Get triple stickers on homework. How hard could it be to get not one, not two, but three stickers for good work? Three stickers was triple good. Three stickers was tops. Three stickers was the trifecta of Mr. Todd stickers. Excelente! Qué bien! Perfecto! Jessica Finch had gotten three Bright Idea lightbulbs. Jessica Finch had gotten Top Cat,

Cool Cat, and Cat's Meow. But even Jessica Finch had not gotten every one of the triple- sticker sets in Mr. Todd's top desk drawer. Judy took out her homework. Eek! She had not done her homework all week. She stared at the no-sticker homework sheets. She imagined Home Run! Grand Salami! Moonshot! dancing at the top of the page. Perfecto! All she had to do was work extra hard. She circled homophones. She learned heaps of helping verbs. She was a synonym sleuth. She unscrambled names of all the desert plants. She filled out her loggerhead turtle fact sheet. She saved contractions for last. Contractions were baby stuff. Kid stuff. Second-grade stuff. Can't go wrong! Won't fail! Couldn't be better! At school on Monday, Judy could hardly wait until Mr. Todd passed back their homework

sheets. At last it was time. Triple sticker time! Judy crossed all eight fingers and both thumbs. "Class 3T," said Mr. Todd, clearing his throat. Uh-oh. Clearing his throat was never good, unless Mr. Todd had his guitar and was about to sing. But Judy did not see a guitar. And that frown was not part of his singing face. He started to pass back the contractions homework. Judy could picture it now. Three stickers in a row: Smarty Pants! Wizard! Fourth Grade Here I Come! What!? Judy stared wide-eyed at her homework. She was seeing red! Instead of seeing three stickers, she saw red, red, red. Triple red trifecta. The page looked like it was covered in ketchup. The page looked like it was bleeding and needed a giant Band-Aid. The page was as messed up as a spaghetti sandwich.

Mr. Todd was saying, "People. People. What went wrong here? Contractions are just a review. I happen to know you learned this in second grade." Frank tried to say they hadn't learned contractions. Rocky tried to say they didn't remember. Judy tried to say they couldn't fit any more stuff in their third-grade brains, because fractions were taking three-fourths of the room

in there. Mr. Todd said, "No excuses." Mr. Todd said they had to do their homework over again. Mr. Todd said, "How will you make it in fourth grade if you don't know contractions?" Grr! Judy stared at her paper. She couldn't, wouldn't, didn't get one single sticker. Contractions made Judy itch. Contractions made Judy squirm. All those apostrophes! Who knew where they went? They should be called can'tractions! If I can't learn contractions, I won't ever go to fourth grade! Judy asked Frank for help. Frank had more red marks than she did! She asked Jessica Finch next. "I'll help, but then you have to call me Queen of Contractions," said Jessica. Roar!

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