Letters from a Hillcrest Detention

Did you know that tallow is the solid fat taken from the natural fat of cattle to my soap? I do now! I spent the past hour copying definitions from a dictionary with print too small for an ant to read. Detention is another world, my friend.
Our supervisor (we will call her Ms. Gertrude) continuously told us to "shut up" because, dad gum it, she wasn't going to talk over anyone, "especially not detention kids." Yes, "detention kids" are not like normal kids. We are bad kids. Our mothers didn't raise us like normal kids' mothers raised them.
Heaven forbid one of us shifts in our seats or so much as breathes the wrong way. No noise, or you can join Ms. Gertrude next Thursday for another exciting episode of All My Wayward Children. One guy (we will call him Fredward) whispered something to his buddy, um, Marvin and, Oh! how Gertrude squawked. Once he pulled the bird's tail, there was hell to pay. Poor Fredward didn't have a chance.
"But I wasn't talking."
"You most certainly were talking. Want me to call Mrs. Thomas up here?"
"No, ma'am, but I --"
"Do not get loud with me. Do not get loud. Mrs. Thomas would love to take you --"
"Everyone in here will tell you that I didn't even--"
[picks up handy-dandy walkie talky that they give only the cool faculty] Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Thomas, please come to the library. Immediately." By her tone I would have thought a kid got impaled by a stray flaming arrow or internally combusted, but talking during detention would have been my third guess. At least there were no machetes. (Machetes? Yeah, a kid at out school shanked another kid after detention this semester. Go Patriots!)
I made a new friend in detention. When I walked in the library, (the artist formally known as...) Martha, said I could sit by her. I placed my bags at her table and could already tell she had been here before. She got her paper and pencil out and placed them on the table. I followed suit and retrieved my paper and pencil.
"Oh my gosh! I've always wanted to use one of those pencils!"
I looked at her, expecting her to grin smugly, insinuating a joke. Instead, she eagerly waited for me to offer my super cool mechanical pencil to her. Of course I let her use it.
Gertude's alternate ego let us out twenty minutes early. Oh, happy day!

Detention. Keeping us in line, one definition at a time.