Hope Is a Ferris Wheel (2 page)

That was the end of our conversation. Winter raced to the top bunk with her backpack and kicked her combat
boots off the side. A few seconds later Mom walked in, loaded down with groceries, followed by Gloria, still in her Style Cuts apron. “Heavenly Donuts!” Gloria yelled, loudly enough for the whole trailer park to hear. “I don't remember it being this cold in Oregon!”

“Hey, Star, put these away, will you?” was the only thing Mom said to me before she noticed Winter. “I can see you sulking there, Winter,” she said, which I thought was pretty obvious—you can see every inch of the trailer from the front door, except for Mom's room, which Winter wouldn't be in anyway. “How was school today?”

And just like every day since the end of summer, Winter said nothing.

Mom straightened her glasses and said, “I just don't get it,” before pulling a pizza out of the freezer. I got it, but I was busy putting the groceries away, and when I finally finished, Mom and Gloria were already talking about some woman who'd only tipped Gloria a dollar on a dye job. When I asked if that was bad, they both scoffed and threw their hands up in the air, so I decided to just stay quiet for the rest of the night.

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.

T
he pickup truck was in the driveway when I got to Treasure Trailers, which marked the first time in months that Winter had beaten me home. She was supposed to have lots of extra work to do after school, since she'd missed half her sophomore year in Oregon, but maybe she'd gotten it all done already. Maybe now that real school had started, she could be around more often.

I pulled open the doors and announced, “Hey, Winter! I started a Trailer Park Club!” But then my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw that I was talking to an empty trailer. I checked the driveway again to make sure I hadn't been seeing things, but, yup, the truck was still sitting there, empty cab and all. The trailer was truly empty, too—Winter
wasn't in the bathroom or in the closet or even in her bed. Slamming the screen door shut behind me, I climbed into Winter's truck—she never locks the doors—and opened up the glove box.

It was stuffed with Winter's stories, all folded into thick, tiny squares. A couple of them were typed, probably at the library or at school, but most she'd written in red pen. My favorite one wasn't even in there—maybe her old principal still had it, if he hadn't thrown it away or burned it or given it to the police.

Mom said I wasn't allowed to read Winter's stories anymore, since the characters in them have the misfortune of dying horrible deaths, like having all the blood explode out of their bodies. My favorite story was about Winter axing a bunch of zombies who were trying to eat her brain. She'd tried telling the principal that she was going to change the names later, since some of the zombies just happened to have the same names as some of her classmates, but I guess everyone had been freaking out, especially after they'd read Winter's novella about the family of inbred mutant cannibals.

I don't think Winter should have been expelled at all, especially over a story, but the school board didn't agree. They wanted Winter to go to counseling, which we couldn't pay for, so Mom decided we should just move
instead and find a new school for Winter. We left as soon as Gloria got her beauty school diploma in June.

So all of Winter's best stories were gone now, but she still had lots of others hidden away. I unfolded a good one called “Hand It to You,” about this girl's amputated hand trying to reattach itself to her arm every night. The ending always makes me laugh.

About three stories later, a knock on the driver's-side window nearly made me scream. It was Winter, wearing her giant sunglasses and carrying a plastic dollar-store bag. “What'd you get?” I asked, when she opened the door and climbed in.

“Buncha candy,” she said, handing me a box of gummy bears. “Don't let Mom see these.” And she stuffed her tiny story squares back into the glove box. “She'd probably make me do an extra semester at Sarah Borne if she found out. I've gotta get out of that place.” Her head sagged, and she held it in both hands as if, if she didn't, it'd fall into her lap.

“You will,” I said, and as I reached out to put my hand on her shoulder, she started to cry. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd seen Winter cry. She hadn't shed a single tear when she got expelled, or even when Mom took away the card Dad had sent her for her thirteenth birthday. All the times I'd ever cried, Winter had held my hand or put
her chin on my head and told me not to worry, that things would get better. So I did that—put my hand on Winter's. “It's okay,” I said.

But it wasn't okay, and it didn't help at all. Winter sat there sobbing, and I had nothing to say. I thought I could tell her about my club, but would that cheer her up, or would it make things even worse? Maybe it would remind Winter that she wasn't allowed to form clubs anymore.

So I didn't say anything, just kept my hand there, and eventually Winter's huge shuddering breaths turned into soft sniffles. “It's okay,” she said, even though I wasn't the one crying. “I'm just … tired of being at that school. I'm tired of feeling like a loser.”

“You're not a loser,” I told her. “You're the coolest person I know!” She lifted her head the tiniest bit, so I fired off a couple more compliments. “You're a really good writer, and your makeup's always perfect, and … and …” I reached deep into my mind for something really, really good. “And Dad sent you a birthday card.”

She swiveled her head, and I saw my face reflected in her glasses. “Three years ago,” she said. “Geez, I almost forgot about that. Whatever—it wasn't that big of a deal.”

“He never sent
me
a card,” I pointed out.

“Mom probably wouldn't let him.” Shifting, Winter moved her hand so that it folded around mine. With her
other hand, she took off her sunglasses and wiped away the stray tears on her cheeks, smudging her eyeliner. “She doesn't even let him pay child support, which is just stupid.”

“I know,” I said. My hand felt warm and safe inside Winter's. “But he
did
send you a card, even though he wasn't supposed to. And he
did
give you the truck, when he could have just given it to Mom. Doesn't that mean something?”

The cab was silent for several minutes. Mrs. O'Grady came out of her trailer with a sagging trash bag and jumped when she saw us just sitting there inside the truck. She crept back into her trailer, taking her bag with her.

“There was a note at the bottom of the card,” Winter said. “Right before he signed his name. He said, ‘Hope you and your sister are doing well.' ” She squeezed my hand. “Do you think
that
means something?”

“He really said that?”

“Yup.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

Heavenly Donuts! Mom was always saying Dad didn't really care about us, that he was a nice man deep down but a very terrible father. That he would never be there for us when we really needed him, which was why it was better if he didn't contact us at all.

But maybe that one little line proved that he cared, even if it was just the tiniest bit.

I wished I could hold that card in my hands to see the way he'd written it. Sloppily? Carefully? In slanting cursive that was hard to read?

If he'd gone through all that trouble to send Winter a card, it wasn't so hard to believe he'd send me one someday. Maybe he was waiting until I turned thirteen, too. In that case, I'd only have to wait three more years.

Winter and I stayed in the cab even after it started to get dark. I didn't get to work on my club flyers, but Winter helped me with all my vocabulary words, so I didn't have to lug out the dictionary.

It was nice to know that the club was going so well. I mean, the hardest part was being allowed to start it, and that was already done. The flyers would be easy, and once everyone saw them, they'd join in a snip.

I just wished Winter's problems would go away that easily, too.

Star Mackie

September 18

Week 1 Vocabulary Sentences

ABUNDANT
. Like, lots of. Where I live, there are a lot of cats, like tumbleweeds in a desert, except here cats tumble around under your feet. Unlike tumbleweeds, cats make yowling sounds when you step on them. That is one of the many differences between cats and tumbleweeds.

ALTERNATIVE
. This means a choice. Another choice. My sister goes to an alternative high school now, and it's full of shoplifters and juvenile delinquents and pregnant girls. Alternative sounds like a choice, but it doesn't seem like she had much of a choice to me. The juvies probably didn't have a choice either.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL
. Sometimes we watch Crime TV, and that is where I hear this word the most, and it's always followed by “evidence.” I think it means that it makes someone look guilty but doesn't actually prove anything, so it's like how Mom and Gloria are always calling Dad a deadbeat jerk, but since I've never met him, I don't know if that's really true.