The Losers Club

by Andrew Clements

  Alec talked directly to Kent now. “It’s not a club for losers—it’s just called the Losers Club so that nobody else will want to join. Because that means Dave and I can have our own table over in a corner somewhere and do whatever we want.”

  “Look,” said Kent, “everybody knows that what you’re actually going to do is sit around every afternoon and read, so the name of your dumb club doesn’t matter at all. It’s just gonna be a hangout for Alec the bookworm.”

  Alec’s eyes narrowed. It was the second time today Kent had thrown that word at him, and he felt a rush of anger and then a sharp gust of memory.

  At his eighth birthday party, one of his presents had been a new book. He’d torn off the wrapping, and then he sat down and read that book for forty minutes—right in the middle of his own party. When he’d suddenly realized that the party was almost over, he ran out into the backyard. And Kent had kicked a soccer ball to him and called out, “Hey, look who’s back—it’s Alec the bookworm!”

  The other guys had laughed, and they picked up on the name.

  “Hey, bookworm—welcome back to your party!”

  “Yeah, did you have fun in Wormland?”

  “Squish that ball over here, bookworm!”

  Kent was the first kid who had ever called him a bookworm, and the label had followed him to school. Alec had heard it a lot—especially from Kent.

  Did he deserve the nickname? Sure he did, and Alec understood that. He really did love to read, so being called a bookworm almost felt like an honor. And most of the time it didn’t bother him.

  But the way Kent said it? That was different.

  Alec still hoped that Dave would think for himself and like the idea, so he kept on explaining. “But really, Dave, the name of the club does matter. If the club has an ordinary name, then other kids will probably try to join, and—”

  “And,” Kent interrupted, “you don’t want to be bothered by other kids, because all you really want to do is sit around all afternoon and be a bookworm—like I said!”

  Almost yelling, Alec said, “I don’t have to read all the time—I mean, Dave and I could talk…or play some board games. We could do all kinds of stuff!”

  “Yeah,” Kent smirked, “like total losers. Wow, you’ve got Dave in a really tough spot here, Alec. Is he gonna play some epic kickball games, or is he gonna join the losers parade over in Wormsville?” Kent turned and walked away, and over his shoulder he said, “I’ll be at home plate, choosing a fantastic team!”

  Dave’s face was still red. He shrugged, and he tried to smile but couldn’t. He handed the sheet back. “I…I think I’d really rather do the Active Games stuff—sorry, Alec.”

  Then he hurried away to catch up with Kent.

  For the final fifteen minutes of Extended Day, as the girls cheered for Kent, Alec slid back into hiding at the Lego table—and he didn’t care whether Mrs. Case saw him there or not.

  He tried to pick up where he had stopped reading, but he couldn’t get into it. Because every few minutes, he heard Kent’s voice echoing inside his head: Bookworm!

  “Buckle up back there!”

  Alec snapped, “Are you going to say that every time I get into this car? I know how to use a seat belt!”

  His mom turned and faced him. Then in a sharp, high-pitched voice, she said, “ ‘I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you do as I tell you, okay?’ ”

  That was one of his mom’s favorite Star Wars quotes, and she was using her Princess Leia voice.

  It was totally annoying—but also funny. His mom could find a Star Wars quote that would fit almost any situation, but whenever she became commander of the minivan, something happened, and the quotes came tumbling out.

  His mom craned her neck until she could see Luke and Alec in the rearview mirror. She said, “I want to hear all about your first day at school, but I know your dad will want to hear everything, too. So let’s wait till dinner, okay?”

  “Fine with me,” Alec said.

  Luke already had his iPad lit up. “Me too.”

  Alec took out a book—but it wasn’t the one he’d had in the gym. It was Charlotte’s Web. He had first read it during second grade, and it was a book he kept going back to—like Kidnapped, and The Swiss Family Robinson, and the Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and about twenty others.

  Some people had comfort food, but Alec had comfort books—stories so familiar that they made reading feel like coasting downhill on a bike, or water-skiing on a smooth lake. And Charlotte’s Web was one of his all-time favorites.

  Except these days, this wasn’t a book he would read in public. A story about a farm girl who talks with a pig and a spider and a bunch of barn animals? Not what most sixth-grade guys were into. But it worked for Alec, and in less than two minutes Kent and all his insults had faded away.

  Luke suddenly nudged Alec, something that happened way too often. Alec hated interruptions, and he especially hated being jabbed in the ribs.

  “Check out this scene I animated at EDP today.”

  Luke abbreviated everything he could, and EDP was short for Extended Day Program.

  He shoved his iPad under Alec’s nose.

  On the screen, a slimy green-and-yellow monster with bulging red eyes was chasing a tiny white kitten around and around, until it finally got the fluffy little guy trapped in the lower left corner. Just as the beast opened its drooling jaws, the kitten’s mouth opened up even wider, and with razor-sharp teeth longer than its body, it sliced the monster into seven chunks with one giant chomp, and the lumps lay there oozing and quivering. Then the kitty closed its mouth and made a tiny mewing sound, and the words Play Nice! popped onto the screen.

  Alec laughed. “That’s awesome!”

  Luke seemed to reply, but he was actually talking to himself.

  “Animation’s too blocky. And the sound needs tweaking. And I have to spike the ending—more slime.”

  Luke turned away, flipped to a different app, and began tapping.

  Alec had figured out a long time ago that his little brother was from a different galaxy—actually, the same galaxy his mom and dad came from. They lived in the computer universe, all three of them, and Alec didn’t. They were screen people, and he was a paper person.

  A woman in a white sports car sped past their minivan, honking her horn.

  Using her Yoda voice, his mom said, “ ‘You must unlearn what you have learned.’ ”

  Another Star Wars quote.

  One Friday night during third grade, Alec had watched the original Star Wars movie with his dad and mom. About halfway through, he noticed their lips moving. Both of them knew the whole movie by heart—every single word!

  His parents owned a huge Star Wars collection. They had all the small action figures, at least two of each; X-wing fighters in all different sizes; two each of all the Star Wars Lego sets, one for playing with and one unopened; six different lightsabers; seven or eight board games; the huge Death Star space station; an Imperial starship; the Millennium Falcon—the stuff went on and on.

  Impressive? Yes.

  Plus a little crazy. They even had a restored Star Wars arcade game from the 1980s wedged into a corner of the family room. Alec had gotten pretty good at that game—the lightsabers had hooked him. He loved the way they hummed and whirred, and when they smacked together? That sharp, echoey sound was amazing. And after reading Robin Hood and the Chronicles of Narnia and so many Lloyd Alexander books, Alec was no stranger to sword fights.

  He had not been surprised one bit when his parents explained that they had named him after Alec Guinness, the actor who played the first Obi-Wan Kenobi—and that his little brother had been named for Luke Skywalker.

  Alec eventually watched all the other Star Wars movies with his family. He liked the movies, but what he loved was his dad’s shelf of Star Wars books, more than forty different picture books, comic books, and novels.

  During fourth grade Alec read everything on that s
helf, and then he read each of the novels again. And then again. And when his dad got the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels? He read all ten of them. Twice.

  But most of the movies he watched only once.

  Sure, they were loaded with action, and there were explosions and wild chase scenes, and a lot of the sound effects were cool—especially the lightsaber fights. But compared to the novels? The movies seemed pale and thin. And it was the same with the Black Cauldron movie—the book was ten times better. Movies were always so…short.

  The ride home from school was short, too—not even long enough to read half a chapter, especially with Luke muttering and tapping next to him.

  As they turned into the driveway, his mom pushed the garage door opener. And when the minivan stopped inside the garage, she hit the button that opened both of the back sliding doors.

  Luke grabbed his things and left, but Alec stayed put and kept reading. He was almost to the part about Templeton the rat and his rotten egg, and he didn’t stop until he got to the end of the chapter.

  He closed the book and discovered he had been sitting alone in the dark garage, reading by the dome light in the backseat of the minivan. He imagined Kent’s mocking voice again: Bookworm!

  But then Alec heard his own voice, echoing off the garage walls: “Well, guess what, pal—I like being a bookworm, and I’m good at it!”

  And then he grinned. It was like Kent had just given him the answer to his problem—because he didn’t need to convince some so-called friend to help him start this new club.

  What he needed was another bookworm.

  “Go away.”

  Those were her first words, before Alec even opened his mouth. The girl didn’t look up—just used one hand to shoo at him like he was a fly. She was with the Origami Club, but sitting so her back was against the edge of their table, facing away from it, her feet propped up on her book bag.

  And she was reading.

  Most of the time, talking to girls made Alec’s hands sweat. Finding the courage to walk up to this one had taken him almost an hour and a half, and suddenly it seemed pretty clear that this might turn into another smackdown—maybe worse than the one he’d gotten yesterday from Kent and Dave.

  Alec didn’t know this girl. He thought he might have seen her in his language arts class, sitting somewhere at the back of the room, but he wasn’t sure. Up there in the front row with Mr. Brock giving him the stink eye every two minutes? He was too nervous to look around. He wasn’t even sure this girl was in sixth grade—maybe she was in fifth.

  She was wearing jeans and a faded red T-shirt, and she had folded up a pale blue sweatshirt to use as a cushion between her back and the table. Brown hair down to her shoulders, black-and-red sneakers, white socks. It was hard to tell much about her face because she still hadn’t looked up at him. She was reading a hardcover copy of A Wrinkle in Time, another book on his list of favorites.

  Which gave Alec an idea.

  “I’ll leave,” he said, “but before I do, I’m going to tell you the ending of that book.”

  The girl jumped to her feet so fast that Alec’s mouth dropped open. She shook the book at him, her eyes narrowed to slits.

  “If you even start to say one word, I will—”

  “Hey, hey! I’m kidding,” Alec said, and he backed away and put his hands up like he was under arrest, which was exactly how he felt. She was shaking her book six inches from his nose. And at that moment Alec got a good look at the girl’s eyes. They were brown.

  The five other kids in the Origami Club looked at them, and they seemed worried, especially one smaller girl who looked like a fourth grader.

  “Really,” Alec said, speaking quietly, “I would never drop a spoiler on somebody—honest. I…I just want to ask you one thing. And then I’ll go away and never talk to you again, if that’s what you want. Okay?”

  She lowered her book, and Alec lowered his hands.

  “Okay,” she said. “Talk.”

  He motioned for her to step farther away from the origami table, then spoke softly. “I want to start a new club, and I need one other person to sign this application.”

  He held out the paper.

  She nodded at the table. “Nope, I’m doing origami. I joined something the first day to get it over with.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, “but have you met Mrs. Case? She’s all about the rules, and very soon she’s going to notice that you’re not folding any paper, and she’s not going to let you sit there. So…if you sign this application, then we can start a new club, and you’ll be able to read all you want to—just like that.”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “Eww…you’re starting a book club? I hate book clubs—a bunch of stupid talking. Like I said, go away.”

  And she started back to her table.

  “It’s not like that,” Alec said quickly. “I just want a place where I can sit and read—no discussions, only reading. But I don’t want a lot of other kids hanging around. If I could, I’d get a table all for myself—but it takes at least two kids to start a club. So two is all I want. And the deadline for setting up a new club is today—in about an hour and a half.”

  She was listening now. And thinking.

  “But how’re you going to keep more kids from joining?”

  “Well…,” Alec began, and then stopped. “Have you read a book called Hatchet?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve read it at least five times.”

  That answer made this girl at least five times more interesting to Alec than she had been just seconds earlier, and it also made him smile.

  “How about the third book, Brian’s Winter?” he asked.

  She looked at him scornfully. “Of course.”

  “Great. So, how does the kid keep bears away from his shelter?”

  “Simple,” the girl said. “He has a pet skunk.”

  “Exactly!” said Alec, and he grinned at her.

  She scowled. “So…like, I’m the pet skunk? I’m your big plan for keeping beasts away from your precious table?” She pointed off to her left. “Go!”

  “No—no!” he said. “Look,” and he held out the application form. “I want to call it the Losers Club—the name is the skunk!”

  She stared at him, but only for half a second. Then she smiled and nodded. “That’s genius!”

  Which was a comment that made this girl even more interesting to Alec. Plus, she looked nice—especially when she wasn’t shaking a book in his face.

  She pulled a pen from her back pocket and pointed at the application.

  “My name’s Nina—Nina Warner. Where do I sign?”

  “Right here at the bottom…and I’m Alec Spencer.”

  She took the application, read it, and stopped smiling. She pointed at a short sentence printed just above the signature lines.

  “Did you see this?” She read from the form: “ ‘The members of each club must make a presentation about their activities during the Extended Day open house on October twentieth.’ ” She shook her head. “I hate that kind of stuff, and with just the two members? I’d have to say something…or do something.”

  “Oh, that?” Alec said. “Open house won’t be a problem. It’s a reading club, right? So I’ll just give a book report or something—I’ve always been really good at book reports. I’ll take care of everything.”

  She said, “Well…okay, if you promise.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  So Nina Warner clicked her pen and signed her name—exactly ninety minutes before Mrs. Case’s deadline.

  On Thursday afternoon as he checked in for his third Extended Day session, Alec gave Mrs. Case a big smile. She smiled back, but he barely noticed.

  Because today was different. Today, the entire giant gym was different. Today, he had somewhere to go, a place of his own, and all the rules were on his side. But getting everything settled hadn’t been automatic. It had taken some work.

  Nina had signed the club application yes
terday at four-thirty. Alec had given it to Mr. Willner, and by five o’clock Mr. Willner had given it to Mrs. Case. Ten minutes after that, Alec was standing in front of the program director at her table by the main door of the gym.

  Mrs. Case had looked up from the application into Alec’s face. “The Losers Club? That’s not a very nice name for a book club.”

  Alec didn’t want to explain his real reason for choosing the name, and he hoped she wouldn’t make a big deal about it.

  So he shrugged and said, “I just like the way it sounds.”

  Which was true.

  Mrs. Case frowned a little, thinking. “Why not call it Extended Day Book Club, or the Page Turners, or something like that?”

  Alec shrugged again. “The Losers Club sounds more interesting to me.”

  Which was also true.

  Then he asked, “Is there a rule that says clubs have to have a certain kind of name?”

  “Well…no,” she said, “but I still think it’s an odd name.”

  Alec shrugged his shoulders a third time. “I still like it.”

  Mrs. Case wasn’t happy, but she said, “Okay—I can’t see what harm it’ll do. After all, a book club by any other name is still a book club, right?”

  “Right,” said Alec. But he was pretty sure that his idea for this club was not the same as her idea.

  Mrs. Case moved on. “You saw on the application about the open house in October? This is the first book club we’ve ever had at Extended Day, and I’d love to see it do well. So I hope you and your group can come up with an interesting presentation.”

  Alec said, “We already talked about the open house. It’ll be great!” Then silently, he added, Probably…well, maybe.

  Mrs. Case had run out of questions, so she signed the application form. She smiled and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about a new club!”

  All that had happened yesterday, and it already felt like ancient history.

  As Alec walked toward the far wall of the gym, he saw that there were now six folding cafeteria tables. And there was Mr. Willner, hard at work, helping kids get their bins out of the storage closet.