I stayed up late on Tuesday preparing for the club meeting. Mom kept telling me to go to bed, but she was staying up late, too, trying on different pairs of pants and skirts and blouses and earrings. She had another interview, to be a receptionist at a radio station. Every five minutes she'd turn to me and ask if something made her look too old. Then she'd say, "Don't answer that. You should be asleep."
I filled five whole pages of my club notebook with questions and conversation topics and trivia. Some of it wasn't even trailer-park related, but I was hoping that no one would notice.
And I was right!
No one noticed, because Genny and Denny were the only two people who showed up.
Genny got ready to take the minutes, and I considered pulling out my notebook for about half a second before Denny's glare switched from his desk to my face.
That's when I just gave up and plunked my head down on my desk.
"What about a different club?" Genny suggested, while my head was still down. The cool wood was kind of refreshing. "I mean, we both like trailer parks," she said, and I didn't have to look up to know that Denny was rolling his eyes, "but it'll be hard to talk about them for a whole year."
"That's a good point," I told the desk. "Put that in the minutes."
Genny's pencil scratched against her paper, shaking the desks a bit.
"A drawing club could be good," she said. "I know some girls who like to draw. Denny, do you know anyone who likes drawing?" Denny didn't reply, or else I didn't hear him. "Or how about a writing club?"
"We can't do a writing club," I said. "My sister started a creative writing club at her old school, and it got her into trouble. Now she has to go to Sarah Borne." Denny made a weird sound, like a snort-grunt, so I picked my head up off the desk and asked him what was so funny.
"Nothing," he said, and actually looked like he meant it.
"Our brother goes to Sarah Borne, too," Genny told me. "He got picked on at his old school. It was so bad, he'd cut class all the time, so he failed everything."
"Half brother," Denny said, like that didn't make them real brothers at all. "And he got picked on because he wore makeup."
"It was eyeliner," Genny said. "Oh, and nail polish. And he has a lip ring."
I couldn't picture this so-called brother. I kept seeing an older Denny, but an older Denny would never wear makeup or nail polish or any kind of ring. "Can we take a field trip to your house?" I asked. "I have to see this to believe it."
Genny pumped her fists like this was a great idea, but Denny stood up so fast his chair flew backward, making Mr. Savage glance up from his stack of papers.
"You're not allowed to come to our house," he said, grabbing Genny's arm, "and neither is your sister!" He stomped out of the room, dragging Genny, who looked as confused as I felt. After the door closed behind them, Mr. Savage raised his eyebrows at me for an explanation.
"Um. He had to go. Suddenly."
"Okay, then." He went back to his papers, humming, scratching his beard with his pen, and I went to pick up Denny's chair.
Honestly, I didn't care that Denny hated me so much, since the feeling was pretty mutual. But how could he hate Winter?
He'd never even met her.
Star Mackie
October 2
Week 3 Vocabulary Sentences
1. These sentences are complicating my life a bit, so I'm going to sit here on my bed and just find stuff in my trailer to write about.
2. Mr. Savage, your weird, old-fashioned words that haven't been used for a hundred years make me want to defenestrate my dictionary. Why is that even a word, when you can just say, "I'm going to throw my dictionary out the window"?
3. If I stretch out of my bed a bit, I can see to the back of the trailer, where Mom has hung a glimmering crystal in the window. The same window I may end up throwing my dictionary out of.
4. Our trailer is immobile, because it never moves, despite having wheels. For some reason this trailer has only two wheels, which are in the middle, so we have to prop our home up with cinder blocks to keep it from becoming a seesaw.
5. I don't know if I would call anything in our trailer lavish except for maybe the collection of fancy soaps in the bathroom. Mom won them in a raffle, and no one is allowed to use them. They just sit on the bathroom sink looking pretty.
6. I presume that if I used the fancy soaps, my hands would smell good and feel like a bed of fresh-picked rose petals. I would also be grounded.
7. Therefore I would regret using the fancy soaps, since the grounding would last longer than the good-smelling hands.
8. I promise this will be the last sentence about fancy soaps, but it's your fault for choosing the words: I would ruefully promise my mother that I would never again use the fancy soaps.
9. There's a picture on the fridge that Mom calls Gloria vs. the Ultimate Donut. It was the ultimate donut because it weighed three pounds and also because it was the only donut Gloria could never finish.
10. My sister and I share a wardrobe, kind of. I get all her old clothes, but mine wouldn't fit her. Have you ever read the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? I haven't, but why are a lion and a witch sharing clothes? How does that work?
