"Fireside Diaries"
Story Written by Freedom Fighter

Just like Holly last week, Gretchen has her own dilemma to resolve this week. Not as relatable to most people like Holly's, though. Or is it?

Disclaimer: The characters of 'Phineas and Ferb' belong to Disney.

It was just after 10 in the morning in Mrs. Davenport's fifth-grade class at Danville Elementary. The students there were in the midst of a silent reading assignment when the voice of one of the school's secretaries began to come out of the intercom.

"Mrs. Davenport?"

"Yes?" she shouted in response.

Entry #365 - Written by Gretchen

You wanna know the nine words I thought I'd never hear?

"Could you please send Gretchen to the principal's office?"

The entire class gasped in unified shock. All their heads then turned in Gretchen's direction. In turn, she reacted.

"W-w-w-w-w-what?"

-
Entry #365 [FSD206] - It's Not Academic (02.07.12)
-

When you're the smartest girl in school, all the other students look up to you. They have expectations of what they want to see you do. Being called to the principal's office isn't one of them.

But as the girls were about to find out, this wasn't just any ordinary trip...

The girls had just emerged from the lunch line and were trying to find a place to sit. Isabella led the way, followed by Adyson, Ginger, and Gretchen bringing up the rear. Gretchen seemed nervous, as her eyes darted back and forth from one side of the cafeteria to the other.

"Gretchen!"

Gretchen heard Isabella call her name, and saw that she was waving at her from a nearby table. Gretchen hurried over and took the seat to Isabella's right, while Ginger sat across from her and Adyson over to Ginger's right. They all placed their trays on the table, but just as Gretchen did, she felt someone grab her by the arm. Or, rather, thumb.

It was Buford.

"Go!" Ginger waved at him, in an 'away' motion. "Shoo!"

"Fine! I know where I'm not wanted!"

"Ignore Buford," Isabella said as she grabbed her napkin and tried to clean off Gretchen's thumb. "I'm sure it was a mistake. I mean, when you came back to class after only ten minutes and didn't say anything, I assumed there was no trouble."

"Well," Gretchen said. "I went to the principal's office, and my parents were there! I know parents are only called in when there's a big problem, so I thought I was in big trouble! So I was scared, even though I didn't know why! And then... THIS!"

Gretchen reached into her notebook and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it, and it turned out to actually be an informational pamphlet - which she promptly handed to...

"Roger Doofenshmirtz Junior and Senior High School," Isabella said, reciting the pamphlet's title aloud.

"Actually," corrected Gretchen, "it's currently South Danville Junior and Senior High School. The name was changed to dedicate our mayor last week, but the new name isn't actually official until the new school year starts in September."

"I don't understand, Gretchen. Why do you have this, and what does this have to do with you, your parents, and your trip to the principal's office?"

"Well, Chief, you see... given my extremely good grades, the principal asked my parents to consider skipping me up a grade."

"They want you to skip a grade?" Isabella questioned Gretchen. "That's great!"

"But, Chief! I would be skipping the sixth grade! That means instead of graduating from here next year, it would be next month! I'd be going to a whole new school in the fall!"

"Wait! You can't do that, Gretchen! We promised each other back in the third grade that we ALL would graduate grade school together! And junior high school, and senior high school! You know as well as anyone, Gretchen, that Fireside Girls don't break promises. Even though, well, you know, this was a in-school promise, not a Fireside Girls promise... but it's pretty much the same thing!"

"I dunno." Adyson wanted to put in her two cents. "Junior high's a step up. You could run into some cute older guys there."

Isabella stared at her, unamused. Adyson quickly qualified her suggestion.

"Oh, and expand your horizons and test your intelligence with harder classes! Yeah, definitely all that."

"Girls?"

They all turned their attention back to Gretchen, who looked as if she understood what they were telling her, but at the same time, also seemed to be unconvinced.

"I appreciate your concern, but both my parents and the principal are very adamant. I'm not being challenged here at Danville Elementary. Even gym is no longer a struggle for me!"

Gretchen took a deep breath, seeing sad frowns form on the faces of her friends as she did. Nevertheless, she continued...

"I'm going on a tour slash preview day at the school on Friday. It's a formality, but at the end of the day, my parents intend to fill out the paperwork. Sorry, but I don't have a choice. I'm going to be skipping the sixth grade, and that's that."

"But... but..." Isabella muttered, trying to come up with some sort of way out of this.

Gretchen was no longer interested in talking about the issue, so she picked up her tray and her books and got up to find another seat to spend the rest of lunch by herself.

To be honest, it wasn't a done deal yet, and part of me wanted to stay there and have the Chief try and talk me out of it. But then the other part of me kept saying that this was a wonderful opportunity that I couldn't afford to pass up.

Friday...

Gretchen and her parents were sitting in the office of Darren Johannson, the school's seventh-grade counselor at South Danville Junior and Senior High. He was a rather buff for someone in his profession, but his calming voice was a perfect fit for it.

"Your daughter, Gretchen, is very gifted. Her principal at Danville Elementary faxed me her transcript. Very studious, a hard worker, a good test-taker, and she's expressed interest in the sciences! Two blue ribbons in her last two science fairs... very nice."

Mr. Johannson then reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small pamphlet entitled 'Science and Technology Program.' He handed it to Gretchen's father, who began reading it as the counselor summarized it aloud.

"I'd recommend enrolling Gretchen into the Junior Science and Technology, or JSAT, program. It's open to all junior high students. It's a step up from our school's normal program. Students in the program mostly take the same classes as those not in the program, with two exceptions: math and science. Students in the JSAT enroll in math and science classes that are more rigorous than their normal counterparts, and they also have extensive out-of-class research assignments. The JSAT also offers preparation for the Senior Science and Technology, or SSAT, program, which has a strict, selective admission process..."

As Mr. Johannson explained the program in more detail, I began to envision what it would be like to be in such a program. I'd probably have fun with numbers, participate in all sorts of experiments, and maybe spend some time with a scientist, or an astronaut, or even a doctor. I know of a few of my friends that would be jealous of me. If I were the sort of person who wants people to be jealous of me.

Friends...

"Gretchen?"

Gretchen looked up and saw her parents and Mr. Johannson staring at her. The guidance counselor was asking her a question.

"Would you like to sit in on a JSAT Algebra 1 class?"

Gretchen nodded her head. And then the school bell rang.

Mr. Johannson was leading Gretchen through the crowded halls of the school during a scheduled change of class.

I never realized how big teenagers were. I felt like an ant in an echidna farm! Hopefully, without the me getting eaten part.

It was hard for Gretchen to tell how old every single kid around her was, as it was a hodgepodge of junior high, underclassmen, and a few rare upperclassmen - for this part of campus, anyway - that seemed to never end. She felt Mr. Johannson grip onto her right hand tightly to make sure she did not get lost in the sea of teenagers, and even then she was getting bumped left and right. Mostly from people who did not even notice her because of her short stature.

At some point the crowds thinned out a little bit, and the number of senior high students around trickled down to next to nothing.

Mr. Johannson told me that the main library - there was a secondary annex in the upperclassmen wing - served as the unofficial border between the junior high and senior high portions of campus. There were no classes that any ninth graders and above took that were housed on either floor of the school north of it. So it was basically a school within the school, so to speak. It allowed the younger students to still have the traditional junior high experience, as Mr. Johannson told me.

Once past the library, the crowd volume picked up once more, though Gretchen felt more relieved as she was now only around others that were, at most, two-to-three years older than her. And there were a number of people that were her size, although that was still the minority. Finally, they reached their destination. Gretchen caught a glimpse of the room number, stenciled in white paint on the doorway. It was A16.

Mr. Johannson began talking to another male in the room, who was the teacher. Gretchen stood off to the side and took a gander at the other students sitting in the room, who in turn were staring at her. The same could be said for those entering the room after her. The next thing Gretchen knew, she heard the bell ring, exactly seven minutes after the one she had heard while in the counselor's office.

After traveling through the halls and noticing the last third of the seats in the room being filled within the last 30 seconds before the bell and the first 15 afterwards, I had begun to think about the disadvantages of having to go to a different place in the building for each subject. And debating if it was possible to traverse one end of school to the other, with all of that foot traffic, in such a short amount of time.

That would require further research. Hopefully not first-hand, when I start going here next year.

At that point, Mr. Johannson said he was leaving to talk more with my parents, specifically in detail with what else the school has to offer and such. He exited, and this new adult closed the door.

"Last call for homework!" the teacher exclaimed. They were the first words that Gretchen had heard clearly from his mouth. She then turned her attention to the teacher's desk, which had a two-tier plastic bin on it. She saw that the top tier was labeled 'In,' and the bottom, 'Out,' and both were full. The teacher was about to grab the papers out of the 'In' box, but stopped when he saw a boy towards the back of the room jumped out of his seat and speed-walked to the front with his paper in hand. He handed it to the teacher, who did not seemed pleased with this 'late deposit,' but took it without penalty as he placed it on top of the rest, and then pulled the pile out of the box. The student then hurried back to his seat.

"Before we begin today, as you see we have another prospective student sitting in on our class today. I trust you'll all be pristine examples of why she should considering enrolling in the program!"

Following that introduction, I was pointed to an empty seat. But since in this class every seat had someone in it, that empty seat happened to be the one at the teacher's desk. Not that he minded, as I would find out, as he spent the entire class at the blackboard. Though looking out at the class and seeing all the stares at me, I was not feeling all that comfortable. Thankfully, they stopped once their teacher, whom I later learned was named Mr. Bell, kept their attention with the topic of the day. 'Binomials and Radicals.'

Mr. Bell had written a fraction on the board. The numerator was 5, and the denominator was the sum of the square root of 2x and the square root of 5.

"Does anyone know what the answer to this is?"

Gretchen's first instinct was to take out a calculator. But she did not have one on her. She saw that a few others in the class had the same idea, and they were trying to come up with an answer. After a few seconds, someone raised their hand.

"1.369757?"

"Yes. 1.37." Mr. Bell had rounded up, for simplicity. "But what if you didn't have a calculator? As I've told you all year long, I don't allow calculators on tests! So... how would you get the answer if I were to ask a similar question to this on the test?"

He answered his own question by writing on the board, at which point the class followed suit in their notebooks.

"As we've learned," he read aloud from what he had on the board once he was finished, "to rationalize a denominator, we multiplied both the numerator and the denominator by what is needed to raise all of the powers of denominator to the nth root of that denominator. What happens when we try to apply that rule in the case where the denominator is an n-term polynomial, where n1?"

For the first time in years, I was looking at a math problem that I had no idea how to solve! And even as Mr. Bell went through his lesson and explained how to get an answer to the aforementioned problem without using a calculator and prove the answer was the same, I was still confused. At first, I thought it was because his explanation was inadequate, and by the befuddled looks on most of the students in his class, that may have been the case. Then again, this is the first time I've heard the term 'rationalization' used to refer to math, so I myself was thoroughly confused as to why it works.

I'm being challenged! And I don't mind! I think I'm starting to love algebra! And once I get a foothold of the basics, maybe I can help out Chief and the others when they take this class. Even though they'll... be a year... behind...

Friends...

Roughly 50 minutes or so later, Gretchen found herself back in the hallway, shortly after class had ended and Mr. Bell had delivered a short pitch to her encouraging her to sign up for the program. Once she was back among the mass of students trying to get to their next class, though, things became unpleasant.

Just as I was beginning to like the idea of skipping straight into junior high, things got ugly. Kids, older than me, starting saying mean things to me without provocation...

"Watch out, shorty!"

"Did someone lose their baby?"

"Hey! Check out the girl runt!"

"You're with the big dogs now, WOOF WOOF!"

One after another, some kids barked at her, intentionally walked into her, and one kid even threw a small paper ball, which hit her right in the glasses. Others were passive, keeping their comments to themselves, gossiping within their small groups, or just flat out ignoring her. The jocks, the populars, the goths, the nerds. It did not matter whom a kid was with, they all appeared determined to belittle Gretchen and her presence in a place in which she did not belong.

I was trying to stay strong, but my resolve was weakening! I was ready to break down and cry right there and then, but then SHE showed up...

"HEY! Knock it off!"

A redhead with curly hair had appeared from the crowd out of nowhere, and she went over to Gretchen and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Don't you all have more important things to do than pick on a little girl? Like, go to class?"

A tall boy wearing a basketball jersey, who had been among the jeerers, replied. "Sorry, Miranda! We didn't know she was wit' you!"

With that, students quickly proceeded on their way.

So, out of the blue, this girl, Miranda, saves me from what I'd equate to being stuck in a hornet's nest! She's very pretty and, based on that display, very strong-willed and caring for others.

"Lemme guess," Miranda said as she led Gretchen to the side of the hallway, just beside a grouping of lockers, "you're on a tour of the school, right? Comin' here in the fall?"

"Wow!" Gretchen was surprised that Miranda was right on the money. "How did you know?"

"Your deer in the headlights look gave you away. Don't worry. It happens to all of us."

Miranda brought Gretchen over to her group of girlfriends, which included a blonde Texan, a black-haired Korean, and a brunette Kenyan. She quickly introduced them.

"These are my friends! Daisy, Sonya, and Angela!"

They all waved hello. Gretchen returned the favor and told them her name.

"I'm Gretchen. I might be coming here next year as part of the Junior Science and Technology program."

"The JSAT?" Miranda was thrilled after hearing that. "What a coincidence! We're all in it now!"

"You're all in the JSAT?"

All the girls nodded.

"The girls here were in your exact position this time last year! And myself, two years ago!"

"So... so that means you're an eighth grader?"

"Yep! And I got into the SSAT next year! Only the smartest get into that, you know!"

"Whoa."

"Look, Gretchen. Don't let the bad crowd around here influence you about whether or not to come here. There are more kids like us around here than you may think. Kids who are actually friendly towards one another and don't try to do mean things to others. We're like your friendly neighborhood sisterhood. Without the traveling pants. Or... traveling anything, for that matter. The point is, don't let a few bad eggs spoil it for you. You seem like you definitely wanna be here. If you feel like you belong, then you should come here! And rest assured, you'll have friends like me and the girls here to watch your back, if you ever need it."

Gretchen looked over at the girls, then back at Miranda. She began to smile.

It's satisfying to know that even in an unfamiliar and hostile environment, it's nice to see that there are kind strangers who want to be friendly with all of people, regardless of any differences on the outside. Or inside.

Friends. Just like Isabella, Adyson, Ginger, and Holly.

Friends.

"Gretchen!"

Gretchen looked up the hallway and saw her parents and Mr. Johannson waving at her, trying to get her attention. She waved back to confirm that she had seen them, then turned towards her new friends to say goodbye.

"Thank you! I think I'm confident in what I've decided!"

With that, Gretchen gave Miranda a hug, and then started walking up the hall.

"Good luck, Gretchen!" Miranda shouted after her. "Can't wait to hang out with you the next time we see you!"

Gretchen joined up with her parents and Mr. Johannson and begin to tell them what she had decided.

That afternoon, Gretchen was standing by the mailbox in front of Isabella's house. The school bus that she normally rode home had just stopped over at the corner, and her friends were running towards her, anxious to hear of her decision.

In dilemmas such as mine, there is no surefire correct answer. Some think it's a no-brainer. When you're given a chance to skip a grade in order to take on an academic challenge more suited for your intelligence, you don't pass it up.

"So," Isabella said, quickly getting to the point, "what did you think? You movin' on?"

Gretchen tapped her finger against her chin, as if she was still debating - when in fact she had already made her decision back at the school.

"It's nice... but the biggest takeaway from the trip is that it wouldn't be fun without my friends."

Isabella, Adyson, and Ginger all flashed huge smiles, and they quickly surrounded Gretchen, initiating a group hug.

But you never abandon your friends, especially ones as loyal as the Chief and the gang. Miranda showed me how much more important it is to have friends who will always stand by you, no matter what. And it wouldn't be right to move on to the next level of academia without mine after everything we've been through over the years.

Junior high school and the JSAT can wait for me one more year. Friends like mine? They'll be with me... forever!

- Gretchen

P.S. If you're reading this, Miranda, thank you for helping me make the right decision! And if your offer still stands, I'd like to bring my sisterhood to meet yours. I think they'd get along great.

End Entry

Author's Notes:
So this was another one of those odd episodes which caused me so much trouble during writing and it worked out a lot differently than I originally planned. Especially the last school scene, which was going to end with Gretchen making the decision by herself, instead of with from Miranda and her friends, who were added at the very last moment.

Anyway, back to the fun stuff next week. One word: Ginjeet!