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We
had another group meeting in English
today. This time things we so different I
am still trying to figure out what
happened.
It
started as soon as Ms Phipps told us that
if we hadn't figured out what we were
doing yet, we absolutely had to decide the
storyline of our play in the next fifteen
minutes. Since I thought that we had all
voted at that very first meeting to do
Dee's version of Clueless meets
Cinderella, I pulled out my French
homework because I figured this wasn't
going to be much of a group meeting and I
might as well get started on tomorrow's
assignment. But apparently Chaz had
another idea. He got up and said that he
hadn't really been honest when he voted
before. He said he completely changed his
mind about Dee's idea for the play and
wanted to do mine instead. After what
happened at the mall I knew Chaz felt bad
about lying, but I didn't really expect
that he'd tell everybody else! It made me
feel really good to hear him say that he
thought my idea for the play was much more
relevant than hers. (Which, of course, it
is!) Well, Dee looked like she was a
having a bad day to begin with so when
Chaz announced that, I completely expected
her to explode or something. But she
didn't. In fact, she didn't react at all.
Maybe she was playing it cool, like it was
no big deal and she was dreaming up some
way to get back at Chaz and me. Then
Miguel said that he wanted to hear me
explain my idea again. So I told him the
story and since I've been thinking about
it some more, I added a part about how the
Outsiders are really mistrustful of each
other at the beginning, and how they try
to distance themselves from each other to
get accepted by the Insiders and how it
fails for each of them. And so they are
separate from the Insiders and separate
from each other. Miguel listened carefully
and then he nodded and said that he
thought that would make a much better play
than Dee's. So there it was. Everything
had completely shifted and it looked like
three out of four of us were absolutely
convinced that we should do
my idea.
And
all this time Dee hadn't said a word. She
was definitely thinking about something
else...maybe trying to figure out how she
had lost control over Miguel and Chaz and
what she could do about it. Or maybe she
was just thinking about something totally
unrelated. Anyway, it was time to vote so
I asked her what she thought
about us doing my play idea instead of
hers and you know what she said? "Sure.
Whatever." Chaz and I looked at each other
like we couldn't believe it. Then the bell
rang and Ms. Phipps said she wanted a
summary of each group's idea by tomorrow.
I told the group that I would write it up
and everyone left for their next class. As
I was getting my books together I looked
over at Dee. She was checking the polish
on her nails, not seeming to be in any
hurry at all, which is odd because she's
in my history class and Mr. Hirsch gets
really irritated at people who come in
late. As I hurried out of the classroom
Dee was still kinda sitting there, like
she had some very large problem on her
mind that was weighing her down. And when
I looked at her this wave of sadness
washed over me, which was really strange
because now that we're doing my idea for
the play, I was feeling very
happy.
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