Michael A. Day 12 - 21,202

The next day every freshman student but one in Miss Henry's English class failed a quiz on The Scarlet Letter. Even kids who had read the stupid book. Even straight-A students. They all bombed. Bombed. No one could even be sure why they failed. They just did. They walked into class; the quiz started, and they wrote down the dumbest bunch of garbage ever committed to paper. Quite a few pencils broke and a number of pens bled ink everywhere and Sheena Flint's glasses spontaneously broke, the lenses dropping from the frames and hitting her desk and ricocheting onto the floor, rolling like little crystal wheels. It was as if the class was destined to fail. Miss Henry read the tests in shock and decided it must be some sort of organized protest on the students' part. They always hated Hawthorne.

"The Scarlet Letter is a book about a crazy man who writes the alphabet every day, and every day one of the letters turns red, and he doesn't know why," began Susan Eck's answer.

"Hester Prynne's scarlet A symbolized her membership in the Avengers," wrote Clarence Dobbs, the big kid who always wore overalls and carried his books in a grocery bag.

When Felix's quiz was handed back to him, he stared at it in wonder. He hadn't read the book, but his answer made him look like a psychotic moron. "The Scarlet Letter is about a young actress name Scarlet, who is so awesome she wears the letter A on her shirt. She is killed near the end of the book by a pack of dogs controlled by an evil priest, who happens to be a failed film critic and a master of animal hypnotism."

Alexa thumped her head dully on the desk, embarrassed that a teacher had read her test. "Scarlet, a plucky teenage scientist, invents her own letter. The letter comes after Z and is shaped like a cross between an R and a D and is pronounced with a sound similar to a frog choking on a sunflower seed. Scarlet's letter has magical powers."