Attendance

Calling attendance is really weird. Why does Tracy have to call out our names? Can’t she just look at us and know who’s here? She knows who we are. Carrey Leister? “here” Donelle Moyer? “here” Donna Parker? “here” Alicia Zeigler?…Alicia Zeigler?… Miss Zeigler?… OK, not here. She says Alicia like Alisha- like the I in igloo. How come her mother calls her ALEESHA? The flag hangs from a pole in the corner. I don’t like the way it droops. My uncle wires his flag so it always waves. The chipped gold painted eagle on top is almost brown with age. You can still see a gold fleck in places. It might be staring at me. The huge spider in the bathroom does. It’s powder blue. The bathroom, not the spider. How can powder blue be dingy? It must be thousands of years old, but the tiles in that ancient temple in Mesopotamia in the National Geographic were bright. Maybe Mesopotamia has a better Janitor than the Yorkanna Firehall. They might have fires here sometimes, since there isn’t one here when we have Brownies. The spider web looks like it’s always been there. It’s fuzzy and gray. The spider’s legs are curled up to its body and it never moves, but it stares at me just the same. The cobweb reminds me of Esther’s hair. Esther has to be like 100. Her hair looks like gray and white cobwebs spun into a cotton candy beehive on her head. Bees might come out of it, it looks like bugs could live there. Or die there. I wonder if it tastes like sugar or like cobwebs. Probably like old people, like her breath and my grandpa’s dentures that time I asked him if I could hold them. Maybe Esther is always grouchy, her face looks mean. Her skin is like see- through, yellowy skin colored crepe paper. I bet it would twist like party decorations if it came off. She looks like that Mummy I saw in National Geographic. There’s boobies in National Geographic, too. The only boobies I ever saw were in the National Geographic, in that magazine that was laying open in the parking lot in the rain that time Grandma took me to Eastern Market, and Mindy Stauffer’s when the Girl Scouts camped at Echo Trail. Mindy’s boobies are high and round like a cut in half a soft ball. The boobies in National Geographic are long and lay flat on bellies with brown points at the end. The ones in the magazine looked soft and pink. Mindy’s look hard. I hope I get hard boobies. Amy Heimer said I won’t get them until I’m 10 like her. But Mindy can’t be 10 yet, she’s in third grade. 9 at the oldest. Esther’s mouth is a cave, a dinosaur mouth cave with no teeth. My mouth can do it, but my lips don’t crinkle like that. I’m afraid of Esther. No one is that old. Just Mummies. She couldn’t camp with us at Echo Trail, probably because she couldn’t bring her sarcophagus from its tomb at the pyramids. I like to sneak Dad’s National Geographic. I almost saw a weener in one, but Amy Heimer said she thought it was just part of the vine tied around his ankle. I’m not sure how his twig tower didn’t collapse when he climbed it. But when he jumped off, how could it hold him at the bottom of the fall? I tied a string to a rock and dropped it to try it out and the string broke. Or maybe my knot wasn’t tied right. Sandy is fat. She must work at Kmart. All fat people work at Kmart. Except for Deb. She’s skinny but she works at a desk behind a window at the back of the store. Everyone else that works there is fat. My hair has a point on my forehead like Eddie Munster. Sometimes I think I’m Eddie Munster. I have a cape, but it is brown and has fringes. Not a cool Dracula cape, like Eddie Munster. I have to pee and Tracy said we have to wait until refreshments to go to the bathroom. It was Bethann Connor’s turn to bring them and her mother always sends yucky carob brownies and no punch so we have to drink water. BLECK. I’m going to wait until refreshments to go. If I go now I’ll be alone and the spider will stare at me the whole time. BUT if I go with everyone else, the spider will have to take turns staring at ALL of us. It just can’t look at ME the whole time. When Billy Clarke barfed in class the Janitor put orange saw dust on it and that made Jennifer Stiles run to the sink and barf. The Janitor rolled up his sleeves and pushed it down the sink drain. He touched Jennifer Stiles’s barf with his BARE HANDS. I almost laughed, but Miss Schumaker saw me staring and cuffed me on the cheek. I just looked at my desk. I wanted to use my pencil and draw really black thick lines on it. Angry Lines. I could see my face while I did it. Red. Lots of pointed teeth. Crazed eyes. Even though I didn’t do it. Miss Schumaker would have made me go to THE SINK and get the gritty desk cleaner and a paper towel and clean it myself. I’m not going anywhere NEAR that puke sink. Even though the water fountain is there and we’ll all line up to get a drink from it before second recess. It’s really the third recess. We have MORNING recess, LUNCH recess, and SECOND recess. I don’t know who named it that, but they can’t count. The teachers even call it that- not just dumb kids like the Special Ed class or something. I don’t know why Timmy Kimes has to go down there to Special Ed. He’s in all my classes, he’s like my best friend. We kick each other. But he has to go down to Special Ed after lunch, he can’t go out to lunch recess with us. He comes back when we start math. Morning recess must be like Kindergarten, lunch recess is like first grade, and second recess is like second grade. Second Grade is third, but they still call it Second. Barb is the new Brownie leader. Tracy says she’s going to help us for a little while for COMMUNITY SERVICE. Barb looks like she smokes too much like the lady at Turkey Hill and my Great Aunt Sally Mae. Her skin is leather and her hair is too short. She looks like a q-tip. I am afraid of her because she looks like she wants to cut something. Her eyes look at you like they are sharp. She’s dangerous. I hope her community service is over soon. I try to be small so she doesn’t see me. Maybe next week when they call attendance I will be invisible- I’m going to practice this week- I won’t even say “here” when Tracy calls my name, then Barb won’t be able to look at me with her razor edged eyes.