I spend a lot of time at school staring at the back of Denny Libra's head, wishing I had superpowers so my eyes could bore a hole right between his ears and see what Mr. Savage is writing on the whiteboard.
But it's not like Denny doesn't do the same thing to me when he turns around to pass papers back; he glares at my forehead like he's trying to vaporize it. I'm sure he'd rather look at Delilah Manning, who sits behind me, but is it my fault that Mr. Savage made all the fifth-graders sit alphabetically?
Today was different, though. Staring into the void of Denny's black hair, I finally came up with the perfect idea for a club. Mr. Savage was busy telling us about our vocabulary words, but I already knew what he wanted, so I turned my notebook to a fresh piece of paper and wrote, The Trailer Park Club.
It was absolutely perfect. I could teach our members about all the good things in trailer parks so that they'd stop thinking trailer parks were full of trash. (Although, with our flamingo-capped trailer being right next to the dump, sometimes trash just finds its way over the fence.) Maybe I could even figure out a way to talk about layered haircuts and how they are not mullets at all.
After school I asked Mr. Savage if I could hang a sign for my new club in the classroom. This was something I'd learned from Winter: if you're asking for something, make sure you sound like you already have it.
Mr. Savage rubbed his beard for a few seconds and then asked, "You want to start a club? No one's ever wanted to start a club." Mr. Savage has only been a teacher for two years, but I couldn't believe he'd never had anyone ask about clubs before. "You want to have it here?"
"At the school? Yes," I said.
"In my classroom," he said, now scratching his beard.
"Yeah."
"You want me to supervise it?"
"I don't need a supervisor," I told him. "If you leave me the key, I'll lock up when I'm done." I used to do this for my third-grade teacher in Oregon so she could get to her second job on time. "I can leave the key in the drainpipe for you," I added, pointing out the window.
"You know, I prefer to lock my own classroom." The scratching increased, and behind my back, I crossed my fingers for luck. "I stay late on Wednesdays. Can you do Wednesdays?"
Wednesdays would be fine, but Winter says that you should always act like the first offer isn't good enough, so I pretended to think about it, scratching my own chin and looking at the ceiling. After I counted to six in my head, I said, "I guess that'll work."
Mr. Savage went back to his computer, and I thought about asking if I could use it to make some posters. But Winter says you can't ask for too much too soon, and she's the club expert.
So I headed home. Maybe Winter had some of her old club flyers left, and maybe Mom would let me use the white-out she took from her last temp job so I could make some updates. Instead of THE CREATIVE WRITING CLUB, it'd say THE TRAILER PARK CLUB, maybe with a picture of a clean-looking trailer. And below that: NOW OPEN FOR MEMBERSHIP.
