An Analysis of the Copy of Anne of Green Gables

Nobody liked Jane. As soon as Emily Sweet found that copy of Anne of Green Gables-a three-hundred-page-long book!-in Jane's faded purple kindergarten backpack, that was it. Any hope Jane had for a normal life, for swing on the swings, for making a life long friend, someone to share secrets and giggles with, someone to teeter totter with, was over, because nobody likes the smart girl. Nobody likes someone who totes a three hundred page long book to read on the bus. That is the jungle gym's unwritten rule.

Well, maybe it's not totally accurate to say that nobody liked Jane. That's not an entirely true statement. Teachers liked Jane. Teachers loved Jane, even though Jane thought they had a funny way of showing it, giving her another worksheet to do when she finished the assigned worksheet fifteen minutes before the rest of the class, telling her parents that Jane was a special child, maybe they should move her to a higher grade and her parents always saying no, we want our daughter to have a normal childhood. It became quite normal for them to have these conversations while Jane sat outside the door wit ha garage sale, dog eared copy of Gone With the Wind-a five-hundred-page- long book!-swinging her patent leather Mary Jane shoes because they didn't reach the ground and she had to do something to keep her attention through the first twenty pages, pages she always found sub-standard to an otherwise exhilarating book. Yes, supposedly teachers just loved Jane. That's what all the other children accused them of, love, favoritism, unfair grading, and things like that. They just loved Jane, even though they showed it weird ways.

It took Jane's second grade teacher, Mrs. Terada to really show some Jane some love. Jane thought Mrs. Terada was an absolute nitwit, with her long skinny arms and legs, looking down at all the children through a tiny pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose. And oh, it took all the acting Jane could muster to smile and nod, to not roll her eyes and stick out her tongue when Mrs. Terada presented her with the box. The box sat next to the rattling heat register (that always seemed to work in September, never in December). Under its hot pink cover were rows and rows of manila files, each containing a set of math worksheets, maybe a short story with comprehension questions at the end. With an all too happy smile, Mrs. Terada told Jane that while she was waiting for the children to get done with their work, she could come and get a file to work on and then turn it in. Eventually, she would go through the entire box and gee, wouldn't that be special! Even though she wondered why Mrs. Terada made the box sound like some sort of special treat and even though she wondered why she had to do those extra worksheets and even though she would rather be reading Anna Karenina, Jane smiled and nodded and took the first manila folder back to her desk.

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She sat down and smiled to herself. What that twit Mrs. Terada didn't know, what nobody, not her parents, not the children, not even her chocolate colored Labrador retriever, Gus knew was that Jane had a box of her own. To anybody else, it might appear to be an ordinary pencil box. It as an old school pencil box, yellow cardboard with silly pictures of chalkboards and kids on swings, laughing and being dumb (Jane colored homs and tails on most of them, blackened in their teeth). And in big blue letters, it read "My School Box" (well, at least, it used to read that, Jane colored over that with a big smelly black marker too). Whenever she got a gold star or a smiley face on a paper, Jane peeled it off the worksheet of notebook paper and put it in the box.

Whenever she read a good book, passed over a great line, Jane took out a piece of paper, wrote something about the book down, maybe copied down the choice line, folded the paper into a tiny square and put it into the box. Sometimes, she'd see a beautiful picture in a book, hear a lovely piece of music and that would go into the box too. VanGogh's Sunflowers was in the box and so was Edvard Munch's The Scream. That was her favorite painting of all. Jane had a few notes of Brahams' Hungarian Dance No. 5 in there because if you've got to hear a Hungarian dance, you better hear that one. And she smiled the day she put John Lennon's Imagine in there and Sheryl Crow's The Globe Sessions would be in there until her sister realized that her CD was missing.

When she was absolutely sure that absolutely no one was watching her, Jane would carefully creak open and peer inside. She had to be very careful that no one saw her open that pencil box because when she opened the box, the inside shone. Inside the box, an eternal glowing light, bright as the sun, almost blinding radiated. Jane, as special of a child that everyone said she was, did not know what the light was, where it came from. It was a beautiful light. It was a magical energy. But she had no idea what it was. She gave up trying to describe it in first grade and now just kept stuffing stickers and her folded pieces of paper into the box, carefully sliding them into the glow when absolutely nobody was watching her. And sometimes, when absolutely nobody was around, she'd steal a glimpse into the lovely shining box, just to feel the warmth of that energy. One day she was sure she'd find out what it was all about and she was willing to wait for that day.

Jane didn't have to wait too long for that fateful day. The day started out with a surprise. Jane walked into the classroom, faded purple backpack slung over one shoulder (even though they said on 20/20 that everyone should carry their backpacks over two shoulders in order to avoid back trouble) and instead of Mrs. Terada welcoming her from behind a pair of tiny glasses, perched on the end of her nose, a big bald man whose legs and tummy seemed to be spilling out of Mrs. Terada's tiny chair gave Jane a bored stare. He didn't even say good morning. Imagine that.

"Who are you?" asked Jane, not bothering to say good morning herself. "Where's Mrs. Terada?"

"Mrs. Terada's cat choked on a hairball," the man said, chomping on a nine a.m. Tootsie Roll like a cow with its cud, "She had to rush Moopsie to the vet." Eww...the chocolate was stuck in his teeth. "I'm the sub today, Mr. Moore."

Jane shrugged. "Oh." At least now she wouldn't have to get a stupid manila folder of boredom out of the hot pink box. She could maybe finish Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov had been burning a hole in her backpack for the past few days, ever since she found him in a musty box in the basement marked twenty-five cents for the garage sale mother had last summer.

Mr. Moore turned on a video in front of the room, pulled the shades, turned off the lights and said, voice void of emotion, "We're watching this movie about pears until recess."

There was just enough light shining through the space between the shade and the window for Jane to get lost in the streets of St. Petersburg, beggar women, schisms and Sonia. The class was silent. The class was bored. The class didn't care about the history of pears. Emily Sweet was first to break the silence. Jordan Peters was first to break the boredom.

Jordan thought it would be funny to toss rolled up wads of paper, aiming them for the ramp made by the spine of an open copy of Crime and Punishment a five-hundred-page-long book. Jane didn't even honor him with a dirty look. Jane kept on reading.

It was Emily Sweet sauntering up to the hot pink box and announcing over the sounds of the movie that she was going to be "a brainiac just like Jane" that really changed the day.

Everyone laughed as Emily removed a manila folder and threw it to the ground.

Bored with his rudimentary paper wads, Jordan ran up to the box. "I wanna be a genius, too!" He laughed nastily and tore out another manila folder, exposed it to the class, naked and vulnerable away from the safety of the hot pink box. Everyone laughed louder. Mr. Moore didn't even look up from his newspaper.

It took no time at all for everyone to want to join in the fun, and Jane could ignore them and their silly ways until they realized her powers of ignoring and decided to take their game a step further. Folders in hand, worksheets flying through the air, the children, the whole class of children, circled around Jane's desk and danced like pagans. Jane, the centerpiece of their torment, felt hot tears swell up in her eyes. Her cheeks burned. She glanced up at Mr. Moore for help but he was eating his 9:30 a.m. Tootsie Roll and was immersed in the sports section. He was no help. So, the children kept circling around her in the darkened room. Finally, she could take it no more.

Jane slammed shut the story of Raskolnikov, shoved the paper back translation into her desk and by instinct grabbed the yellow pencil box. She jumped to the top of her desk and looking down on the children warned them to "Watch out!"

"Oh, Jane! We're so scared!"

"What are you going to do? Give us a math problem?"

"Two plus two is four!"

Laughter. Dark, evil laughter.

"I'm warning you! Watch out!"

More laughter, dark as night.

They didn't deserve the warnings. They certainly didn't listen to them. Jane knew it had come time to test the power of the yellow cardboard pencil box. She looked down into Emily Sweet's ugly blue eyes, nasty perfect white teeth and yellow ponytails, perfectly kept in place with red hair ribbons. Jane knew what she had to do. She opened the box towards the hideous, laughing Emily. There was a flash! A poof of smoke! And all that was left of Emily Sweet was those red hair ribbons.

The other children didn't notice Emily was gone. They kept circling Jane's desk in the dark room, illuminated only by the glow of the stupid pear documentary.

"Look at me!" snarled Jordan Peters. "I know everything! I think I'm so smart!" He let the manila folder in his hand fly and the papers fluttered to the ground. He was another one, too stupid to listen to warning. He had to go. So, Jane looked straight into his ugly laughing face and revealed the box. It revealed its amazing light in the darkness of the classroom. Another great flash! More smoke! And all that was left of Jordan Peters was his blue Nikes, still smoking from the energy of Jane's yellow pencil box.

One by one, one flash after another, poof of smoke after poof of smoke, Jane's pencil box disintegrated the children into nothing more than hairbrushes, a candy bar, a pack of Pokemon cards. The box even took care of David Jones until he was nothing more than the black shiny pager that didn't even work, it was only for show.

When the classroom was finally silent, save the droning sound of the continued history of pears, Mr. Moore finally looked up. It might have been the relative silence of the room that caused him to look up, or maybe he was just stuck on the answer to 15 across on the crossword, even though everyone knows Larry Hagman played J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Whatever the reason, it was when the substitute teacher looked up that he uttered his last words.

"Where did everyone go?"

Jane actually smiled when she opened the box that time. All that was left at the desk was a handful of Tootsie Rolls.

Jane was alone in the room. That was good. She turned off the movie, sat down at her desk and began to read again.

"He drew the ax out all the way, raised it back with both hands...the moment he started bringing the ax down, strength sprang up in him."

Jane smiled for the second time that day. She copied down the words and put the paper into the box. It still glowed with overflowing energy.

"The blood gushed as from an overturned glass..."

Alone in the room, Jane had to smile. Crime and Punishment was her favorite book. Now she could finish it for the third time.

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