Hope Is a Ferris Wheel (21 page)

M
r. Savage switched our seats. I figured maybe he was tired of alphabetical seating, but Jared told me it was because Denny and I couldn't sit near each other anymore.

Good,
I thought. But bad, too, because Genny also sat far away and wouldn't look at me, all through class. Instead, she paid extra attention to everything Mr. Savage said and tugged her sleeves down to her wrists. If I'd known that Genny was going to be this upset, I never would have thrown anything at Denny.

During math, Mr. Savage got a phone call. It lasted all of two seconds before he put his hand over the receiver and said, “Denny. Star. Office.”

Somewhere between my new desk and the door I remembered that I was supposed to write a letter of apology to Denny
and I totally forgot
! Why couldn't Mom have called the school to say, “Oh, you know, last night I found out my older daughter is pregnant, and I told Star the truth about her deadbeat father. Could you give her an extra day on that apology?” But I wasn't mad at Mom, because she was probably just a little distracted.

So I arrived at the office empty-handed.

Denny had about a dozen pieces of paper in his hand, some crumpled, and I was a little flattered that he'd written me such a long apology, but then he told the principal, “I want to say mine out loud.”

The principal probably thought the same thing I did about Denny's apology being so many pages, because he checked his watch and said, “Well …”

Denny plowed on ahead and said, “I'm sorry I called you and your sister trashy and for telling you not to be around my sister.” And he said it while looking me in the eye. And he even said it without glaring.

Denny Libra
.

A satisfied smile took up the lower half of the principal's face. He obviously did not realize how un-Denny-like this was.

“I'd like to say my apology out loud, too,” I said. I looked
Denny in the eye and tried not to glare. If Denny could say an apology, so could I. “I'm sorry I called you a termite and dumped milk on you. And …” I almost didn't want to say it, but I knew I had to. “I'm sorry I kicked you out of the club. You can be in the club again, if you want.”

Denny nodded, and the principal clapped his hands together and said that he could tell we really meant it and that we'd both have detention this week but that he hoped we could put this behind us and try to get along.

Neither of us rolled our eyes.

Outside the principal's office, before I took one step in the direction of Mr. Savage's room, Denny shoved his twelve crumpled-and-smoothed pages at me with a rough-sounding “Here.”

Some of the papers were stained, but I recognized them right away, because at the top of the very first page in my handwriting were the words
Week 1 Vocabulary Sentences.

“Heavenly Donuts!” I said, flipping through the whole stack. “Where did you get my sentences?”

“Out of the trash,” Denny said, as if I were stupid and he hadn't apologized for a single thing. His voice softened when he added, “You kept throwing them away, so you obviously didn't want them anymore.”

Denny's name had popped up a few times in my sentences, I knew, so I asked, “Did you read them?” When he
didn't answer, I knew he had. Great. Just what else had I written in there?

“Look,” said Denny, “I'm giving them back so you can turn them in and get your stupid club started again.” He paused while I gaped at him. “Genny won't talk to me,” he said, looking at the floor. “She's never been this upset. When we got home yesterday, she scrubbed all her tattoos off. Then she cried in her room for the rest of the day. Mom had to drag her out of bed this morning, and she screamed all the way down the stairs.”

Of course Denny had a house with stairs.

“Isn't that what you wanted?” I shot, because he had. And I wanted to rub it in. “For her to be
normal
? For her to
not be like me
?” And then I felt horrible, because Denny actually looked upset about it. As much as Denny disliked his half brother, he really loved his sister.

“I want her to be happy,” he said. “So get your dumb club back. And don't let her get detention anymore.” He began shuffling his way back to class.

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Whatever,” he said, without looking back.

What a jerk. “I regret letting you back in the club!” I called to him.

“And I regret having to be in it,” he said.

I figured that was the best we could do.

W
e came back just before recess. I knew Mr. Savage would keep me inside, and I knew he had a bucket of water with my name on it. The desks weren't even slightly dirty anymore, since I'd been washing them every day, so I don't know why he kept making me do it. Didn't he have anything else that needed to be cleaned?

The bell rang, and Mr. Savage told me to stay in, and when everyone had left the room, I gritted my teeth, clenched my toes inside my combat boots, smoothed my hair, and marched up to his desk, where I dropped my whole pile of crumpled-and-smoothed sentences right on top of the papers he was grading.

Then I had to concentrate on standing and not falling over or running to the other side of the room.

Mr. Savage picked up the first page of my sentences, put it down, leafed through the whole pile, scratched his beard, and told me, “You can go to recess, then.”

“Do I get my club back?” I practically shouted, causing him to scoot his chair away from me.

“Let me look them over first.”

So I forced myself to walk, not run, out of the classroom, and when I finally got out into the open air, my fists managed to unclench themselves, and my toes straightened out, and my jaw relaxed. It was too soon to tell if I would get my club back or not, and I didn't want to get Genny's hopes up, so I sat down on the bench by the map of the United States, kicking a couple of pebbles at California.

I took out my postcard.
Dear Frankie
stared back up at me. What in the world was I supposed to write next? All I knew about him—all Mom had told me—was that he liked poetry. And I thought that anyone who liked poetry couldn't be a complete deadbeat jerk.

Besides, I didn't know any poems. Only Emily Dickinson ones. Did he even like Emily Dickinson? It was worth a shot. I wrote, “
Hope is
…” and stopped.

He had written Mom a poem.

Maybe I should write him one.

But then the bell rang, and then we had science. It was a journaling day, so we were writing about the progress of our sprouting lima beans.
November is a terrible time to sprout beans
, I wrote. Halfway through, Denny and I looked at each other from across the room without glaring. I think he was trying to ask if I'd turned in the sentences, so I nodded and went back to my dying bean.

When the lunch bell rang, Mr. Savage told me to stay while the rest of the class went off to the cafeteria. I inched toward the front of the room, unable to make myself get there any quicker. But eventually there I was, gripping the edge of Mr. Savage's desk for support.

“I'm glad you turned these in,” he started. “I'm curious about why some of these sentences are about what a terrible teacher you think I am.”

Oh, right. I hadn't only written bad things about Denny. I'd written some bad things about Mr. Savage, too. Maybe I should have reread those sentences before I turned them in. I told Mr. Savage how the sentences were written a long time ago and that I never thought anyone would see them.

“Hmm.” He had the whole pile of sentences in front of him, his fingers lifting the corners and letting them fall back down. “So you don't feel that way anymore, then?”

I could have lied and said yes, because even though I
didn't like him, I never wanted to hurt Mr. Savage's feelings. But I looked him in the eye and said, “Well, you did think I hadn't done my sentences when I really had. And it's not fair to treat me like a delinquent just because I wasn't turning in the sentences.” I figured I'd share one good thing about him, so I added, “I liked learning about Emily Dickinson.”

“I know,” he said. “Miss Fergusson was telling me all about your club the other day. Trying to convince me to let you keep doing it. She said you were very respectful and smart, and I just kept thinking, ‘Are we talking about the same Star Mackie?' ” He laughed, although I didn't think it was very funny. “Anyway, when I read your sentences, I realized she was right. I just had a hard time seeing it.”

“I guess you're not so bad either,” I said, which made him laugh again. He had a weird sense of humor, I decided.

He took the first four pages off the pile and slid them over to me, saying, “I do need these first ones redone, unless you're willing to accept half credit on them. You're supposed to—”

“Use the words in a sentence,” I finished for him. “That's why I never turned them in.” The ticking clock reminded me that I was supposed to be in the cafeteria, and that the line for hot lunch would be very long, and that I would
soon not have enough time to talk to Genny. “Do I get my club back now?”

It was like he knew I was in a hurry, so he took a long time thinking about it. “Are you still going to have it in Miss Fergusson's room? Because if you wanted, you could have it here again. I know a lot about Emily Dickinson, you know.”

The clock kept ticking, but I knew I wasn't getting out of there without a good answer, so I ignored it. “Yeah, I know. But I think we might actually change the club now. And I'm probably not going to be in charge of it anymore. We'd probably have to take a vote, and Miss Fergusson has a quilt and a couch, and that's a major plus.”

“That's too bad,” he said. “Miss Fergusson tells me it's a great club. But if you ever want any help, you know, with the Emily Dickinson stuff …”

I nodded, taking my Week 1 sentences. “I'll give these back to you soon.” And I turned to leave, finally.

“One more thing,” he said. “Do you really hate the weird words?”

I stopped, confused. “What?”

“I'm required to teach you certain words,” he said. “But I can't resist some great old-fashioned ones, too. I know they'll never show up on tests, but I keep hoping I'll hear someone using them.”

I always assumed Mr. Savage was trying to torture us with those weird words, not that he really liked them. “Well,” I told him, “I've been using the word
vexation
a lot. I guess it's not that old-fashioned.”

I tried to leave again, but before I made it out the door, I heard, “One more thing.”

“You
already said that
,” I told him.

He laughed again. It was more of a chuckle. “Don't get into any more fights, all right? It makes me look bad.”

“The beard makes you look bad,” I told him, and I was gone before he could think of
one more thing.

I
ran all the way to the cafeteria, even though you're not supposed to run in the hallways. The hot-lunch line was too long, so I skipped it. Who needs to eat, anyway? I found Denny and Genny sitting across from each other, completely silent except, probably, for their chewing.

“Hi, Denny,” I said first, to show Genny that there were no hard feelings about Denny being a jerk all year and the big fight we'd had yesterday.

I think he caught on to what I was doing, because he said, in a very fake, happy voice, “Oh, hi, Star!” Which was the first time he'd actually said my name. To my face, at least.

But I think Genny could tell we were faking. “I'm sorry
Denny was such a crab to you,” she told me. “I understand if you don't want to be my friend anymore.”

“I'm sorry, too,” I told her. “For making your brother look like a doofus.”

Denny was back to glaring.

“He always looks like a doofus,” Genny said, and Denny shifted his glare to her. It was nice to hear her standing up to him a little. “Do you have anything to eat?” she asked me, and before I could answer, she ripped her sandwich in two and gave me a piece.