5. And by everyone, I mean the four other people in the club, the club that was supposed to be a lot more prosperous than it turned out to be.
6. And I just spent ten minutes looking up the word quagga, and it’s a zebra. Wait! It’s an extinct zebra. When am I ever going to use—okay, fine. I rode a quagga to school in South Africa two hundred years ago when that was still possible.
7. All that time spent looking up quagga could have been spent packing for our trip on Saturday. We’re going all the way to Oregon, and we’re finally going to see Dad. What I’ve packed is scant. I’d like to bring all sorts of things, but we can’t fit much in the truck. So what should I bring to show him?
8. I can’t bring trinkets. I should bring something really important instead. Something that will let Dad know what I’m like. I have to pick out an outfit, too. Something clean without any holes.
9. So it is nice to do these sentences, to be able to write everything out and keep myself off the verge of panicking.
10. But I’m still not turning these in, even after spending all this time on them, because that is my wont, and I don’t think it will ever change.
It took me forever to get my Dad bag packed, and I ended up packing hardly anything. Just a couple of homework papers and projects I got stars on, and my Emily Dickinson poem—the one Jared said sucked. I’m pretty sure Dad will like it better.
I spent Friday’s detention making a list of things I wanted to talk to Dad about, like my club (hopefully he’ll have some good advice), and how Mr. Savage is a terrible teacher, and what Mom was like when she was younger. Maybe he can tell me how they met, because Mom won’t tell me anything except that they went to community college together.
Other than that, detention was pretty dull, and even if I wanted to talk to Eddie, he was working on some math paper the whole time. Miss Fergusson gave him a big smile when he turned it in at the end of detention, but I’m not sure he noticed. He caught up with me in the hallway and asked if I’d read any other poems yet.
“I’ve been busy,” I told him.
“Oh, okay,” Eddie said, and I thought that’s what he really meant and that he’d drop the whole poem thing, but a couple of steps later he started to recite this poem from memory. It was short and kind of funny, but it didn’t make any sense. He said it was by someone named Gwendolyn Brooks and asked me what I thought.
“I think Emily Dickinson wrote two thousand poems,” I said. “I think if we do one poem a week, we’ll be set for life.”
We were almost to the front steps, when Eddie put a hand on my shoulder and shoved me a little bit. Not enough to knock me over, just enough to steer me into the edge of the hallway.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“For being so stubborn,” he said. “Is that why you’re in detention? I’ve been wondering, ’cause it’s not like you’re a bad kid or anything.”
I said it was none of his business why I was in detention, and he muttered, “Yup, I knew it.”
We sat down on the steps, and Eddie started another poem. This one was by Robert Frost, and it was almost as good as one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, but when I told Eddie that, he said, “I hate Robert Frost.”
“Then why did you even recite it?”
“Because I knew you’d like it, since you have the worst taste in poetry,” he said, and I felt like shoving him just a little bit, enough to knock him down a step.
Langston appeared then, plopping down right next to me and saying, “Hey, Mullet.” I wondered if he even remembered my name.
While Eddie recited some more poems, Langston used a wood chip to chisel the dried mud out of the lugs of his boots. At one point he asked me how long my fingernails were and if I would mind trying to dig into this one little crack in his sole, because he was pretty sure there was a rock there, and he’d do it himself except he had a bad habit of eating his fingernails. Eating his fingernails. Eating his fingernails.
I used my pencil instead. Langston asked if eating fingernails was one of those things that boys did that girls did not like, and I looked him right in his sunken eyes and said, “Yes.”
When I finally got home, I couldn’t believe it was 5:30. But the microwave said it, and so did the clock on the wall, and so did the answering machine when I checked the messages. I even asked Mom and Gloria, who were sitting at the built-in table talking about some girls they’d gone to high school with, and they both said the same thing.
I just couldn’t believe I’d spent a whole hour sitting on the steps with Eddie and Langston, talking.
Why couldn’t they be people I actually wanted to be friends with?
While Mom made dinner, something noodle-y with bell peppers and carrots, I checked on my Dad bag, which I’d hidden under my bed. It felt like something was missing. What else was I supposed to bring? Since Mom had never taken us on a Dad trip, I had no idea. I tossed in my club notebook, in case Dad had any ideas for it, and, at the last second, Eddie’s big red poetry book. I was determined to find a poem, a good poem, so that he would have to take back what he’d said about my taste in poetry.
“Do you have a favorite poem?” I asked Mom as she dumped a Gloria-sized portion onto my plate.
She chewed on the end of her wooden spoon for a moment, then she said, “‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …’ ”
“No, no,” I told her. “That won’t work.”
“What about ‘ The Raven’?” Gloria said. “‘Said the raven, Gimme more!’ Isn’t that how it goes?”
“That doesn’t sound like a good poem,” I said, and then I told them both to forget about it, but of course they didn’t, and they just came up with one bad poem after another, their laughter shaking the table. Luckily Winter came home a few minutes later.
“Ah, Winter graces us with her presence,” Gloria said.
“Don’t you have an appointment to go ruin somebody’s hair?” Winter said back to her. Then, letting her backpack fall to the floor, she turned to Mom. “I was thinking maybe I could take Star to the redwoods park tomorrow.”
“Redwoods,” Mom scoffed. “You know we had redwoods in Oregon? California acts like they own all the redwoods in the world.” We’d never visited the redwoods when we lived in Oregon, but I think sometimes Mom likes ragging on California the way the rest of us do.
“So can we go?” Winter asked.
“I don’t know why you’re asking me,” Mom said, dropping her fork on the table. “Usually you just do whatever you want, and I find out about it later.” Which was unfair, because if Winter was doing whatever she wanted, she’d be sneaking off to the public high school every day.
Still, I hoped Winter would not start a fight with Mom. An angry Mom would not let us go anywhere tomorrow, and we’d be stuck inside with nothing but Gloria’s rented copy of Beverly Hills, 90210: The Third Season.
Winter swallowed, took a breath, and said, “Well, I apologize. May we please go to the redwoods tomorrow?”
Mom stuffed a forkful of noodles into her mouth and chewed slowly. We all watched her throat bob as she swallowed. “Fine.”
I smiled at Winter, and she smiled right back before heading straight for the fridge. “I made this vegetarian, you know,” Mom told her, but Winter said she really wanted a grilled cheese sandwich and asked if there were any pickles. We only had the sweet kind that Winter and I hate, but she ate some anyway.
Once I was done eating, and after Mom went to walk Gloria back to her trailer, I checked my Dad bag one last time. “Is there anything else I should bring?” I asked Winter. I wanted to bring him our whole trailer. I wanted him to see all the things he’d missed for the last ten years.
“It’s not like we’re gonna stay overnight,” Winter told me. “Just bring yourself. That’s what I’m doing.”
So I zipped up my bag and put it in the truck and worked on my outfit. I had a couple of clean skirts but figured the black one would be best so I could match Winter. And I grabbed the one shirt I owned th
at Mom had bought at a department store clearance sale instead of at St. Vincent’s, along with my least-frayed pair of tights.
But my combat boots were a problem. They were so old and scuffed. I reached under my bed for the high-tops Mom had bought for me. They really did look almost new. I put them on, just to try out, and, yup, they still made my feet look flat. Maybe Dad was like me and would like the combat boots better. Even if they weren’t as new.
I put the boots with the rest of my outfit and chucked the high-tops back under my bed, making sure Mom wasn’t watching. And then there was nothing left to do but wait for tomorrow to hurry up and get here.
It was a lot like being on the Ferris wheel again and finally coming down to the ground. It was the slowest part of the ride, but at least this time I knew that when I finally got off, Dad would be there waiting for me.
Mom microwaved us some breakfast burritos. She was still in her robe, which was odd, because she always likes to shower first thing in the morning. Then Gloria came over with a small bag of donuts and her big bag of hair-care products.
“Gloria’s gonna touch up my lowlights,” Mom said. “Then we thought we’d hit a couple of thrift stores. What time will you girls be home?”
Winter said maybe around dinner, and Mom said, “There’s that many redwoods to see?” and Winter said, “It takes a while to drive there, you know.” Then Mom gave Winter a few dollars for lunch, and we headed out the door.
“Hey, Winter,” Gloria said as she set her bags on the table. “When are we going to deal with those roots of yours?”
“I think I’m just gonna let the dye fade out,” Winter said. Already Winter’s hair had faded into a rusty sort of reddish-black, but it was permanent dye, so it still had a couple of months before it finally croaked. So that was doubly surprising, especially since Winter hated having blond hair. It made her look too nice, she always said. No one was going to buy bloodbath horror novels from a girl with blond curls.
As we got into the pickup, I thought about letting my dye fade out, too, but once the blue faded, I’d be left with a bunch of white streaks in my hair. I’d look like some kind of mutant skunk. Langston would call me Skunk Girl.
Mrs. O’Grady came out of her trailer while we were buckling our seat belts. We could barely make out her head over the portable fencing. “Tell your mother to stop stealing my newspapers!” she yelled, and then her hand appeared, shaking a broom at us.
Winter yelled back, “Okay, Mrs. O’Grady!” And then muttered to me, “Who steals some old lady’s newspapers?”
We drove out of Treasure Trailers. I guess since it was now less than a week until Halloween, everyone was decorating. Some people replaced their Christmas lights with orange and black Halloween lights. Even the guy in the tinfoil-covered trailer had a tinfoil-covered jack-o’-lantern sitting in front of his steps.
“Are you really not going to dye your hair again?” I asked. “I thought you liked black.” I know I liked Winter better with black hair, because it made us look more like sisters.
“I just want it to grow out a bit,” she said. “I’ll dye it again eventually. I just … don’t know when.”
“When you go back to public school?” I asked.
“If I go back to public school.”
Of course she’d go back to public school. I told her that, but she didn’t reply, and her lips pursed tightly together like she didn’t want to say anything at all.
Maybe she was as nervous as I was. But I wanted to talk, talk, talk. I wanted Winter to tell me about the time she’d talked to Dad at the fair, or any other time she’d seen Dad. Hadn’t she seen him when she was really little, before I was born?
Instead, I opened the glove box and let all her stories fall into my lap. Winter reached over, plucked one from the pile, and held it out to me. The paper was bright and new, the folds crisp. A brand-new story! Maybe the first that Winter had written since school started in September.
“What’s this one rated?” I asked.
“Probably R,” Winter told me. “But only for violence. And some language.”
The story was about a girl who’s at a party with a boy she likes, at a house by a dark and dreary lake. The boy dares her to drink some of the lake water, which is icy cold going down her throat. The next day she feels sick, but her mom won’t let her stay home. She goes to school and feels sicker and sicker and sicker, and it feels like her insides are being sliced apart. But no one believes her when she says how much pain she’s in. Finally, at the very end of the story, she goes to the bathroom, thinking she’s about to throw up. But instead, a giant gross maggot bursts out of her stomach.
That’s how it ended.
“So, she’s dead?” I asked. “And then, does the maggot get bigger and bigger and start eating all the girls who come into the bathroom?”
Winter laughed and said, “Hey, that’s pretty good! Maybe you should write some stories.”
“I wrote a poem,” I said, thinking about my Emily Dickinson poem. The first one, about Winter, was tucked safely in my Dad bag. “No one liked it, though.”
Winter told me no one had liked her first story, either, back in elementary school. She’d written about some radioactive gum that made the girl chewing it melt into her desk. “You’ll get better,” she said.
I didn’t think so, considering my unfinished second poem. But that reminded me of the poetry book I’d brought along, so I asked Winter if she wanted to hear some poems, and she said sure. We were out of town now, and the traffic had thinned out, though the highway still had two lanes instead of one. Trees rose up all around us. Redwoods, which meant we could tell Mom we’d actually seen them.
I flipped through Eddie’s book, looking for short poems, and read them to Winter, and we voted on whether they were good or bad. Most were somewhere in between, which I planned to tell Eddie to prove that Emily Dickinson really was the best poet in the world.
“See if ‘The Tyger’ is in there. It’s by William Blake,” Winter told me. “I bet you’d like it.”
I flipped to the table of contents to see, and found, at the very bottom, that someone had added a title in pencil. Sloppy pencil, like a really little kid had written it. It said, Amarica’s Gratist Poem, followed by lots of dots and the number 548. So I flipped to the very end of the book, past the index, and into the blank pages that are always at the back of a book.
There, written in the same sloppy pencil, was the poem “The Bagpipe Who Didn’t Say No” by Shel Silverstein. I must have said the title out loud, because Winter said, “What?”
I knew this poem. Everybody in the United States probably knew it. It’s about a turtle who falls in love with a bagpipe, but the turtle gets his heart broken, because bagpipes don’t have feelings.
“This is not a great poem,” I said. I couldn’t believe Eddie had written it in there, but who else would have done it? No one, because then they would have been punched across the playground, even if they were a little kid. “He doesn’t know anything about poetry,” I told Winter, snapping the book shut.
“You got your club under control?”
“Yeah, I think.” The book went back into my bag, but now I wished I’d just left it at home. “I still have to come up with something for next week, but I don’t want to. Or maybe Dad will have an idea.” That would be good.
“Yeah,” said Winter. “I hope so, too.”
That word, hope, stood out, and I asked Winter, “What do you think hope is? Eddie said it was a rock.”
“You talk about Eddie a lot,” Winter pointed out. “Hey, look. The ocean.”
I’d seen the ocean before, and besides, with all those darkish clouds in the sky, the ocean looked gray and swampy. “I thought it was a good answer,” I told her. I could hardly remember what everyone else had said about hope. I mean, Genny’s was a haiku, and it didn’t even make sense.
“Well, maybe he does know something about poetry,” Winter said. I told her he got held back in first grade, and he
used to be a bad reader, and now he went around punching and shoving people, sometimes for no reason at all.
“I think he’s the reason no one else will join the club.” Also Langston—Langston wasn’t helping. “Plus, Eddie wants to stop doing Emily Dickinson. He wants to do all the other poems in the world. Anyway, what do you think hope is? You didn’t answer yet.”
Winter smiled and said, “I know.” And then, just as little sprinkles of rain began pecking at the windshield, she said, “Maybe a raindrop. It goes hurtling to the ground, aiming for a puddle or a lake or the ocean, so it can be with all the other droplets.”
I’d known that Winter would have a good answer, but I hadn’t expected it to give me chills. It was like she was describing me, except I was hurtling through school and hoping to make some real friends.
I looked around for a pen to write it down—on my arm, if I had to. But then Winter said, “usually, though, it just splatters against the cement. Sometimes hope isn’t enough, Star. Remember that.”
I told her I would, but for the rest of the ride I stared out the window and tried to forget.
His name was plain old Robert, and his house was bigger than three trailers combined. Tall green shrubs guarded his lawn instead of a fence, and his paved driveway, with two brand-new trucks parked in it, was miles away from any dump. The only bad thing I could say about the house was that it wouldn’t stop raining outside. It always rains in Oregon.
Without our umbrellas or raincoats, the walk to the front door was much wetter than I would have liked. Winter’s curls sagged with the rain, while my hair clung to the back of my neck.
We rang the doorbell but didn’t hear it go off inside. I hoped he would be the one to answer the door, not his wife, because, according to Gloria, his wife didn’t like Mom at all, and so she probably wouldn’t like us either.
Hope Is a Ferris Wheel Page 8
