Page 141 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 2.3
continued
Utopian Ideals
and dystopian reality
gamboled: leapt; pranced
my Notes
50 When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
51 Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood—in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
52 “I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
53 “Even as I stand here,” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened—I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
54 Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
55 Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
56 Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head
harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
57 He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
58 “I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
59 A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
60 Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical
handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.
61 She was blindingly beautiful.
62 “Now—” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of
the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
63 The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
64 The music began. It was normal at first—cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
65 The music began again and was much improved.
66 Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while—listened
gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
67 They shifted their weights to their toes.
68 Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the
weightlessness that would soon be hers.
69 And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
70 Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws
of motion as well.
71 They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
114 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
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