Hope Is a Ferris Wheel (8 page)

I stayed home with Mom and Gloria, since it was Gloria's day off. Mostly she complained that it was raining and she couldn't go to the duck pond and that the stale cake donut she'd been saving was totally going to go to waste.

“Get your microwave fixed yet?” Mom asked.

“Heavenly Donuts, I think I need a priest to exorcize it,” Gloria said. “I want to find out if someone died in that trailer before I got here. Tinfoil Man's not talking, but I know there's something weird going on with my lot. Eat a donut, Star.” She handed me a maple round from the box on her lap. I looked to Mom to see if that was okay, since it was almost lunchtime and we usually don't eat dessert first. But Mom just kept talking to Gloria, so I bit into my donut and got cream filling all over my shirt.

“How's school going, Star?” Gloria asked as I dug through the utensil drawer for a napkin.

Mom answered for me. “She's doing real good. I think California's a good fit on her.”

I guess no one had told her about my having detention, but I certainly wasn't going to be the one to break it to her. “It's hard to make friends,” I told her instead. “They're all a bunch of house-dwellers.” I wished there was a harsher word for people who didn't live in trailer parks, something as bad as
trashy
, but the truth was, no one made fun of you for living in a house.

“You don't have any friends yet?” This was from Gloria.

“Well, I kind of have one friend, but—” I started, before Mom cut me off.

“When I was growing up, all I had was Gloria,” she said. “Sometimes I got teased, especially once when I got
my hair cut too short. It made me look like a boy. But Gloria just gave 'em the elbow, and that was that.”

“Yup. Your mom did the same for me.”

They gave each other a best-friends hug, even though they're both over thirty, and I guess I should have informed them that Genny was not exactly my best friend or my friend, period. She was probably the closest thing to a friend that I had, but since her only competition was Denny, it wasn't that hard. It's not like we were having sleepovers and putting false eyelashes on each other. Genny had offered me one of her tattoos the other day, but that wasn't quite the same.

Besides, I couldn't imagine Genny giving anyone the elbow.

But when I tuned back in to Mom and Gloria, ready to ask for advice and pointers and an elbow demonstration, they were in the middle of a conversation.

“Maybe a cat died in there or something. You know old Mrs. O'Grady's always going on about her missing cats.”

“Yeah, sure, Carly. I'm being haunted by a cat.”

They'd gone right back to the microwave.

I
knew Monday was going to be terrible, because someone put banana peels in my desk, and then the hot lunch was a gray-colored beef stroganoff that smelled like a basket of dirty laundry. I was starting to think Winter had the right idea about being a vegetarian.

Just like every day, I chose a seat at the lunch table with the fewest people at it. Then I had a silent stare-down with the stroganoff, and it won. I shoveled a couple of noodles into my mouth before I noticed Denny and Genny heading over.

They set their sack lunches down across from me and sat down. I have no idea why Denny was there, but Genny said right away that we needed to talk about the club.

“What club?” I asked, because I was pretty sure the Trailer Park Club had been disbanded by Mr. Jerky McBeardface.

“Our new club,” she said. “We just need a new angle and a new teacher, and then we're back in business.”

“Back in the business of being the only three people in a club?” I asked.

“That's what the new angle's for,” Genny told me as she peeled all the salami slices off her sandwich and piled them in front of Denny. “We'll get more people in this time.”

I couldn't help smiling, even though Genny didn't know what she was talking about. Maybe she can't elbow people like Gloria, but she doesn't give up—that's for sure. So I said, “I'll think about it.”

Denny choked on his salami after I said that, so I figured that might be a sign that Monday wasn't going to be so bad after all.

W
hen we got back from lunch, Mr. Savage had a poem written on the chalkboard. I probably wouldn't have cared so much about it, except:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

—Emily Dickinson

December 10, 1830–May 15, 1886

Whoever she was, Emily Dickinson had the exact same birthday as Winter! (Except the year.) The poem was good, too, and when Mr. Savage started talking about Emily Dickinson Week and our new vocabulary words, I just tuned him out so I could reread it over and over again.

The thing I liked about it was that it was about hope, so it was kind of happy, but there was something sad in there, too, like Emily Dickinson had written it on a very bad day. She must have been like Winter, then, writing to make herself happy. I wondered what other poems she'd written and whether the library had any books about her, and did she know that
soul
and
all
didn't rhyme very well?

Maybe she knew and she just didn't care. I could picture a critic telling her that the poem didn't rhyme right, and her saying, “rhyme this!” and punching the critic in the throat.

When the bell rang and everyone rushed out the door, I raced over to Genny's desk and said, “Let's start a club about Emily Dickinson.”

T
here was no way I was having my new club in Mr. Savage's room. Even if I'd been allowed, I wouldn't have wanted to anyway. I wanted Miss Fergusson's couch and quilt, and when Genny asked if we could hold the club in her room, she said yes! We just had to do it on Monday afternoons instead, which was fine.

It had to be Genny who asked, just in case Mr. Savage came poking his beard around and asking questions. He'd only said I couldn't have the club
in his room
, but I knew he'd be like Mom and say, “You know what I meant!” if he found out.

But Miss Fergusson thought it was a great idea for a
club, and she lent me a book full of Emily Dickinson poems to read, with the poet's stern face plastered on the cover. “And,” she said, fixing her brown eyes on mine, “I have a student who I think would like to join this club.”

Which was perfect, just perfect, because I knew I wouldn't be able to invite anyone from my class without Mr. Savage finding out. So I thanked Miss Fergusson and shook her hand, all the while pretending not to notice the glare Denny was shooting me from over by the door.

For the next few days, I paid extra attention whenever Mr. Savage talked about Emily Dickinson and wrote down everything he said in my old Trailer Park Club notebook. Every day he put up a different poem, and every day I copied it down.

On Wednesday, our creative writing assignment was to write our own Emily Dickinson–inspired poem. I wrote:

In the Winter!

We get Snow –

But – in the Trailer!

We Don't Know –

Where Autumn Ends!

And Winter Starts –

'Cause Winter's There!

Inside our Hearts!

Most of the poems Mr. Savage had put up were just like that, with dashes everywhere and random words capitalized for no reason. Mr. Savage didn't tell us why Emily Dickinson did that, but I'm guessing it was her way of cheering herself up. When you see her face, you can tell it hasn't smiled very often.

We had to exchange poems with someone else, so Jared read mine and I read his. This part wasn't so great. Jared was really confused by my poem. He said, “So you don't have a calendar?” and “Are your hearts all frozen?”

So I had to explain that it wasn't about winter the season, it was about Winter the sister. Which made Denny groan in his seat, but I'll take that over glaring any day.

Jared told me my poem sucked, but he had just copied one of Emily Dickinson's poems and changed a few words, so his poem started just like hers:
I'm Jared! Who are you? Are you Jared, too?

I'm so glad he's not going to be in the club.

Star Mackie

October 9

Week 4 Vocabulary Sentences—Emily Dickinson

1. Emily Dickinson is excused for using the word
abstemiousness
because she was actually alive when people last used it. But fine: Gloria doesn't have any
abstemiousness
when it comes to a large box of donuts, and she'll eat the entire thing. (So why she couldn't eat a three-pound donut is beyond me.)

2. There are a lot of very obvious
comparisons
between my sister and Emily Dickinson, which is why I think I like her poems so much.

3. You can tell that Emily Dickinson was an
eccentric
person from all the random dashes in her poems, but if you only looked at her picture, you'd think she just sat in a rocking chair all her life, picking petals off flowers or something.

4. There doesn't seem to be any
extremity
to Genny's tattoos. She just plants fresh ones over the ones that have already flaked off. Is there a bucket in her room that's just full of tattoos?

5. I was supposed to be
idle
about my sentences this week, but all of our words are from Emily Dickinson poems, so I actually want to know what they mean.

6. Lately Winter is very
listless
about her hair—or, more specifically, her roots. So I've become
listless
, too, because dyeing roots is something Winter and I always did together.

7.
Plummetless
wasn't in my dictionary, which means Emily Dickinson made up words. Or maybe her dictionary
plummeted
into the ocean, which would also explain why she capitalizes things that shouldn't be capitalized.

8. I've been
recollecting
an old memory of my dad. It used to be vague, but now that I've been thinking about it every night, it's gotten clearer. Some nights I even sneak outside onto the steps of the trailer, because the cold breeze reminds me of being at the top of that Ferris wheel.

9. Emily Dickinson dropped out of college, and Winter was expelled, so you could say they were both
spurned
by their schools.

10. Everything Emily Dickinson wrote was kind of in
vain
, because she died before people even read her poems. I hope that doesn't happen to Winter. I hope one day people will read her stories without expelling her.