When I got to school on Monday, I wasn't even thinking about clubs until Jared Barrel asked if he could join the Trailer Park Club while we were lining up outside Mr. Savage's room. "Sure!" I said, kind of excited, but then he and a bunch of other boys laughed, so I don't think he was serious.
All through class, Denny glared at me like it was his official classroom job. And instead of passing papers back to me, he whammed them onto my desk, making me jump every time his palm hit the polished wood. I think he was trying to scare me, but he's too lanky to be scary.
At recess, I was hanging out on the bench by Mr. Savage's room—where Pepperwood has a map of the United States painted on the blacktop—when Jenny, grinning, and Denny, glaring, walked up to me.
"I talked to Mom," Jenny informed me, "and she said I could join any club I want." She stopped, maybe waiting for Denny to argue, but he just stood there and did his thing. And then she smiled, said, "See you Wednesday!" and turned and skipped off, her skirt bouncing at her heels. Denny stayed where he was and tried to glare me off the bench.
"Yes?" I asked him.
He left without a word.
But now something was bothering me. Denny and Jenny had some weird thing going on with each other. I thought maybe they were related, except that Jenny's last name was Withagee, and Denny's was Libra.
The roll sheet was already gone by the time we came in for lunch, but Mr. Savage kept a list of all our names—in alphabetical order, which must be his most favorite thing ever—above the pencil sharpener. I pressed my pencil hard against my paper during our practice spelling test so I'd have an excuse to go study the list and make sure I wasn't wrong about Jenny's name, even though I'd heard her clearly the first day of school saying that she was Jenny Withagee.
As it turns out, I was dead wrong, because there wasn't a single Jenny on that list, not even a Jennifer. But right below Denny Libra was the name Geneva Libra, and it was only after staring at it for a minute that I finally got it.
Jenny Withagee. Jenny with a G. Genny. Geneva Libra.
Of course.
Then Mr. Savage asked what was taking me so long at that pencil sharpener and had I even sharpened my pencil yet, and so I sharpened my pencil for something like half a second before sitting down again and writing out the next word with a stubby pencil lead. Which I hate.
After school I hung up the very first club flyer in Mr. Savage's room. It had everything: 3-D block letters, glitter, and a picture of a very fancy-looking trailer I'd printed off the Internet.
Hopefully people would see it and decide to join, because there was no way I'd run a club with Denny's sister as the only member.
