"Yes," I said, and folded my arms across my chest.
"Where did you learn that?"
"In —" I started to say 1975, but caught myself. "In France."
"Yes."
"Yes," I said. The fingers of dawn crept across my comprehension. "Oh."
Mama smiled at me.
"But it's not fair! So what if I already knew everything before I started? I still did all the work."
"Why are you in school, James?" Mr Nicholson asked me again.
"To learn."
"Well, then I think you'd better start learning something, don't you? You're the brightest student in the class. You're certainly smarter than I am — I'm just an old sailor struggling along with the rest of the class. But you, you've got it. You've been marking time in class all semester, and I daresay you haven't learned a single thing since you started. That's why you got F's."