Hope Is a Ferris Wheel

by Robin Herrera

  To my left, a hand went up. And to my right, a hand went up. And somewhere in the back corner, another hand went up. Three whole hands. Maybe Mr. Savage was right and they really had decided not to turn in their sentences because of me. Because I was getting away with it.

  I felt this hard poke right in my back, and Delilah hissed at me, “Star! Raise your dang hand!” And Denny was turned all the way around and glaring with full force, and even stupid Jared was telling me to put my hand up. Mr. Savage’s eyes stayed on me, and he made this “up” sign with his hand so that he was saying it, too, and everywhere I looked, someone else was saying the same thing.

  Everyone really thought I was some kind of juvenile delinquent.

  So I put my hand up, because I was tired of having to prove that I wasn’t. I wondered if this was how Winter had felt last year, after her third and final trip to the principal’s office. Did she know that no matter how much she tried, no one would ever look at her the same way again?

  But that wasn’t true. There was one person who didn’t think Winter was a delinquent, besides me, because he hadn’t seen her in years and hadn’t even said anything to her since she was thirteen.

  That must be why Winter wants to see Dad so much. Hope you and your sister are doing well. It doesn’t seem like much, but he hopes. Maybe because he knows things will get better.

  When the bell rang for lunch, I dropped my sentences into the trash, and hoped.

  Fifth-graders have detention on Fridays in Miss Fergusson’s room, which is next to Mr. Savage’s room on one side and the school garden on the other. Miss Fergusson’s room has a couch with a quilt that you can tell was handmade. There are names stitched into it, and before she told me to sit my butt down, Miss Fergusson said each name was done by one of her former students.

  I wish I’d gotten Miss Fergusson for fifth grade. Her hair bounces when she walks, and she has kind, brown eyes that match her skin perfectly. Plus, when some big-eared jerk asked why my hair was so stupid, she told him that if he didn’t have something nice to say, he could write it on the whiteboard in perfect cursive one hundred times.

  But no, instead I’m stuck with Mr. Savage, who sent only me to detention and let all the other kids who didn’t do their sentences finish them at recess. At recess, he made me wash desks. And then after class he said that obviously I couldn’t hold any club meetings in his room until I had turned in all my sentences.

  But that was kind of a relief. Now, instead of having to say that my club was so bad that no one wanted to join it, I could tell everyone that, actually, Mr. Savage had just canceled the whole thing before anyone could join.

  I bet Miss Fergusson wouldn’t have canceled my club. And I bet she never would have told me it was a terrible idea for a club, even though it was.

  I ended up sitting in a back corner, far away from the other delinquents, who all looked like they lived in detention. There was one kid sitting next to me, though, and I couldn’t figure out why he was in there. For the whole hour he did nothing but sit at his desk and read a book. And not a normal book, either, but one of those thousand-page paperback books that are starting to yellow with age, the ones that always pop up at porch sales. This one didn’t have a cover, though. Someone had ripped it clean off.

  I wanted to see what he looked like, but the boy had his book so close to his face that all I could make out was his hair exploding out of the top, dark brown and curlier than Winter’s. His hair was just a little bit darker than his hands, and he seemed a little taller and a little wider than all the other fifth-graders. When detention ended, I thought I’d see his face finally, but he left with it still buried in the book.

  Outside, all the other detention junkies from the fourth and sixth grades stood around in their little groups, talking. Book Boy was out on the lawn talking to some sixth-grader with a mohawk. They were talking about the coverless book, I could tell, because Book Boy kept pointing to it, and Mohawk Boy kept throwing his hands up in the air. I got close enough to hear Mohawk Boy say, “I think it was him,” and then I had to jump out of the way, because Book Boy came barreling right past me and up to a group of sixth-graders.

  The group stopped talking, and he held up his book and said, “This look familiar to anyone?”

  The whole group took a big step backward, except for one boy, whose whole face had stretched into shock. “Eddie, I didn’t know it was yours,” he said, and before he could say another word, Eddie slammed his fist into the side of the boy’s head.

  I gasped. I couldn’t help it. Eddie swiveled on the spot and squinted at me, like he couldn’t believe anyone would have the nerve to be even remotely surprised at the sudden punching. Then his mohawked friend came and grabbed his arm, and he forgot all about me.

  By the time I got to the trailer, I still hadn’t figured out which was worse: doing three weeks of sentences for the world’s worst teacher or spending another Friday in detention with a boy who probably wanted to punch me, too.

  Apparently Winter got a job on Tuesday and didn’t tell me, but Saturday was her very first day of work. I wanted to go with her to the mall, and I promised I’d stay out of the way and only come by once an hour, but Winter said she had to face this one on her own. She did promise to bring me home a soft-baked pretzel with hot mustard, though.

  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.

  When 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.”

  There 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.

  I’m starting a sentence boycott. This time d
idn’t count, because I needed to know the words for the club, and besides, I just threw them in the trash as usual. I had to stop myself from giggling several times when Mr. Savage was standing next to the trash can, because it was so funny that they were right under his beard and he didn’t even know it. Genny thought it was funny, too, when I told her at lunchtime.

  Then she asked why I was throwing my sentences away.

  So I told her, “I’m boycotting sentences. I’ve been doing them the whole time. I’ve just never turned them in.”

  Denny coughed and said he was going to get some milk, grabbing Genny’s quarters on his way. Genny asked if she could join the boycott, but I don’t want her getting detention, so I told her I had it covered. But it was nice of her to offer, I thought, considering no one else had. They’d all turned in their sentences this week, and now that Mr. Savage was giving me detention every time I didn’t turn mine in, I didn’t think anyone was going to try and get out of doing them again.

  Since Genny couldn’t boycott sentences, she decided to boycott her organic chocolate pudding and gave it to me, and when Denny came back and saw me spooning the pudding into my mouth, he scowled.

  “You’re supposed to eat that,” he told Genny.

  “It’s basically milk, which I already have.” And she took one of the milk cartons Denny had brought back. “Mom won’t care.”

  Denny glared at me like it was all my fault. I tried telling him Genny had given it to me, but my mouth was full of organic chocolate pudding. Which I don’t think tastes that much different from regular chocolate pudding anyway.

  After school Genny and I went to see Miss Fergusson again so we could hang a flyer up in her room. I asked if she had anyone else in mind for the club besides the student she’d mentioned, and she said, “Yes, I also know a sixth-grader who’s planning on joining. He’s even named after a famous poet.”

  “There’s a boy named Emily?” I asked.