The whole mess felt like a weight hanging around his neck. Alec sat there half in a daze, sort of paying attention and sort of participating in the class. But his mind was off in club world.
When the bell rang, he got up and walked with the crowd to the cafeteria. It was pizza day, so he got a slice of pepperoni, but he barely tasted it. And the second he was done, he rushed to the library—where he discovered that his list of a dozen great books for Kent wasn’t much use. Mrs. Haddon reminded him that he could only have four books checked out at once. Kent had one, and Alec had left the library’s copy of Hatchet at home last night, so he could only get two books.
He got to social studies just as the bell rang, hot and out of breath, and then worried through the whole rest of the class about whether he had picked the right books for Kent to choose from.
Then he remembered he had another book in his locker that would work, too—which made him feel a little better. Still, Alec’s mind was lit up like a pinball machine, his thoughts bouncing from one problem to another right up till the end of the school day.
Just as he had predicted, at the start of EDP Kent sat down, tossed him the copy of The River, and said, “So…what’s next, boss?”
Kent acted like he was bored, and he might have fooled Nina and Jason and Lily—they hadn’t seen him reading during chorus like Alec had.
Alec played along with the game. He laid three books on the table between them. “You can stay with the same series—that’s this one. Or a different adventure story set during the Klondike gold rush, or there’s this biography—your pick.”
Kent started to reach for Brian’s Winter—book three in the series. But at the last second, he grabbed the biography and said, “Gotta go with King James, y’know?”
The book was I Am LeBron James, and Kent opened it right up. Then he made an odd face. “This is your book?”
He turned the inside cover of the book toward Alec—and Alec saw his own name, right where he’d written it with a permanent marker.
“Yeah—I got it this summer.”
Kent said, “And you’ve read it?”
What Kent was thinking was right there on his face: He couldn’t imagine how a bookworm like Alec could enjoy a book about a sports superhero—as though only sports guys liked sports books!
Alec said, “Yeah, I’ve read it twice—the guy is just amazing! And I want to get this other one called LeBron’s Dream Team, about when he was a high school star—but my dad says I have to wait because the language is too rough.”
All Kent said was “Cool,” and he settled in his place and started to read.
Alec was smiling to himself as he opened up Brian’s Hunt. It had been sort of a crazy day, but it had turned out pretty well—even though it still felt like there were too many kids in his club now…and then there was that other book club, in the cafeteria. Still, he felt good about things.
And Alec kept on feeling that way right up until dinnertime—which was when he and his mom and dad looked at his weekly progress reports. They saw a seven in math, a seven in science, and a six in social studies.
Alec was completely surprised—and then completely not surprised. He knew exactly how this had happened: It had been a great couple of days for the club, and a terrible couple of days for his classwork.
His dad said, “You know what this means, right?”
Alec knew. It meant he had to report to the Homework Room at three o’clock on Monday afternoon and stay there for two weeks.
After some honest explaining and some serious begging, Alec managed to whittle down his penalty period from two weeks to just one.
Still, with everything that was happening in club world? One week away felt like a life sentence.
A man named Mr. Langston was in charge of the Homework Room, and Alec peeked at him through the open door. He was large, almost bursting out of his gray sport coat—not fat, just big. White shirt, striped tie, broad face, close-cropped brown hair, huge hands. He looked like a guy who would be sitting behind a desk at a police station on some TV cop show.
Amy Wells, a girl Alec knew from math class, came over and said, “How come you’re here? I heard you started a club for loners in the gym.”
He smiled. “Not loners—it’s called the Losers Club, and it’s actually a reading club. I’m here ’cause I messed up in some of my classes last week, and this is my penalty.” He nodded toward Mr. Langston. “So what’s he like?”
“Pretty nice—until someone tries to talk or goof around. So don’t. At all. Ever.”
Alec walked into the room and went up to Mr. Langston’s desk. “Hi—I’m Alec Spencer.”
The man smiled and stood up to shake Alec’s hand, which felt like shaking hands with a grizzly bear.
“Hi, Alec. Glad to have you on board.” There was a spiral notebook on the man’s desk, three sharp pencils, and a thick paperback book: Environmental Law.
Mr. Langston opened a desk drawer, then handed Alec a sheet of blue paper. “You might have seen these rules, but here they are again. Sit there in row three, the fourth desk.”
The room was about half full, with the kids all spaced a few desks apart.
Alec sat down and read the sheet. It was a short paragraph copied from the Extended Day Handbook.
The Homework Room is only for completing current schoolwork, and students work on the honor system. Students are to stay at their assigned desks. If students finish with daily homework assignments, any remaining time should be spent reviewing for tests or quizzes and working on long-term assignments or other school projects. Extra time is not for socializing, for recreational reading, or for recreational computer use. Cell phone use is not allowed. The Homework Room director and assistants are not tutors, but they will try to help students with everyday academic questions. If special academic help is needed, please contact the Extended Day Program director.
Written by hand at the bottom of the sheet was one more bit of information:
WASHROOM AND SNACK BREAKS:
4:00 TO 4:10 AND 5:00 TO 5:10
Alec got right to work, and he used the same homework plan he used at home: Do the stuff you don’t like first. For him, that usually meant start with science, then do math, social studies, and finally, language arts.
He was forty minutes into the first hour before he looked up from his science book and noticed something—he hadn’t thought about the Losers Club once in all that time. At first he felt kind of guilty. Then he thought, But there’s nothing I can do, not from here. He shrugged and went back to studying how radiation, conduction, and convection differed from each other.
The quiet room, the other kids bent over their work, Mr. Langston reading and scribbling notes—it was all very serious and orderly. Alec finished with his science reading and completed a third of his math problems before Mr. Langston stood up and said, “It’s four o’clock. Be back at your desks in ten minutes.”
Alec didn’t need to use the washroom, but he walked toward the boys’ room anyway—it was down past the gym.
He had talked to Nina before third-period language arts today and told her where he was going to be after school for the whole week. She had barely blinked.
“And Kent can read the next Hatchet book—or whatever he wants,” Alec had said. “He’s only got today and tomorrow before he leaves.”
“Oh…okay.” That was all she’d said. Then she added, “The club’ll be fine.”
She was right, of course, and Alec knew that, but he still wanted to go peek in the gym and see for himself.
Mrs. Case wasn’t at her table—not that it would have mattered to Alec. As far as he knew, walking past the gym doorway wasn’t breaking any rules. Except he didn’t just walk by. He stopped, stepped inside, then took a long look around.
He felt like an alien, like he was seeing a whole planet for the first time—but it was totally familiar, too. The free-for-all kickball game, the chess players hunched over their boards, the Chinese language kids plugged int
o their iPads—it was the same little world it had been last Friday…except that today, a kid named Alec was missing.
It looked like that didn’t matter one bit.
And at the two tables in the back corner? Even from this distance, he could tell that the three girls at the chatty table were laughing about something. And the five kids at the other table? They were reading quietly, just like always. Nina was leaning forward, elbows on the table, chin in her hands, and Alec wondered what book she…
Wait—five kids? Alec stared and counted again. Someone new was sitting next to Jason, right across from Kent! It was a boy, sort of thin—but too far away to recognize.
Alec wanted to run straight across the gym, ask who he was, how he got there—but he stopped himself. In a way, it didn’t really matter. In his mind he heard Nina’s words again: The club’ll be fine.
And then he saw Kent turn and say something, and Nina gave him one of those great smiles. And this time he wanted to run right over there and ask her, Yeah, I know the club’ll be fine, but will we be fine? Except he didn’t know if there really was a “we”—and if there was, what did that even mean?
But he shook off those thoughts, glanced at the clock, then turned and hurried out into the hallway. He had three minutes to get back to his desk in homework jail.
When Alec took his second snack break at five o’clock, he went to peek into the gym again. He wanted to see how Nina and Kent were doing. He was also a little worried about the girls at the chatty table—they had looked kind of wild before.
This time, when he rounded the last corner, he saw Mrs. Case sitting at her table. He almost stopped and turned around, but she glanced up and saw him.
So he walked up to her table and said, “Hi, Mrs. Case. I’m at the Homework Room this week—I didn’t know if you noticed I wasn’t here.”
She smiled. “Of course I noticed—you’re the cofounder of the first book club in Extended Day history!”
Alec smiled at her. “Yeah, that’s me. And there’s a brand-new member over there, too.”
“Yes,” she said, “Eliot Arnold. He’s a fifth grader.” Then she said, “I hope this time away won’t put your open house planning off track—that’s coming up pretty soon, you know.”
Alec shook his head and said, “No, it won’t change our plans”—and he thought, Which is true, because there aren’t any plans!
Then he looked past Mrs. Case and across the gym.
Even from this distance, he saw that Julia Hampton and her friends weren’t reading at all. The three girls were knocking a tennis ball around the table, like a mini soccer game—and Nina and the kids at the quiet table were just ignoring them.
He said, “Um, Mrs. Case, would it be okay if I…” But he stopped. He didn’t have time to walk over there and try to talk to those girls—he had less than five minutes to get back to the Homework Room.
“Would it be okay if what?” she asked.
He had a different idea: “Would it be okay if I asked you a favor?” He pointed at the second club table. “See those girls? They’re all in fourth grade, and I told them they could talk about books after they read them. But they’re just messing around, so would you maybe help them—with their reading?”
Mrs. Case said, “I really don’t have time to—”
Alec interrupted, “Maybe there’s a book that you liked, something you’ve already read. You could ask the girls to read that same book. They might not listen to me, but I know they’d listen to you.”
Mrs. Case didn’t know what to say, but Alec could see her thinking, remembering.
He said, “So, was there a book you really liked when you were their age?”
She smiled. “Sarah, Plain and Tall…I read it several times—such a sweet story, and I still have that book!” Then she added, “But I don’t think—”
Again Alec cut her off. “Sorry, I have to go—can’t be late! Thanks a ton, really—that’s a great book for them! This’ll help so much!”
And he turned and rushed away before she could say another word.
Alec smiled all the way back to room 407. He didn’t know if Mrs. Case would actually do anything. But seeing the look on her face as she remembered that book? All by itself, that was worth a lot.
As Alec’s week in jail continued, he had to admit that good things were happening. On Wednesday, he got his best grade ever on a math test: 97 percent correct. In science, he understood the entire unit on heat transfer perfectly, even enjoyed it, especially the stuff about Earth’s atmosphere—and he aced a big quiz. And his special bulletin board assignment about key science concepts? Totally up to date. Plus, during his leftover time in the Homework Room, he had almost finished the first draft of a big social studies report on the deserts of Africa—which wasn’t due until November. Not only was he on top of all his schoolwork, but he was enjoying his own quiet reading time again—at home in the evenings.
Alec got updates all week long about Luke’s adventures in club-building. During their first five days, enrollment in the Mini Losers jumped to eleven members. They had become the largest club in the cafeteria, and they had added a second table—after Luke had asked his big brother how to deal with the kids who wanted to talk about their books. Alec couldn’t remember the last time Luke had asked him for advice.
His dad and mom had noticed that Alec hadn’t complained once about being cut off from his reading club. And when they opened his weekly progress reports Friday night at dinner? Alec had done well—dangerously well. He got a 10 out of 10 in every class except art, and Ms. Boden had given him a 9.
His mom said, “These scores are so good, Alec! I’m going to make copies and send them to Mrs. Vance—she’d love to see this progress! And…I might be wrong, but it seems like you’ve been happier this week than you’ve been since the beginning of school. The new schedule is really working. So, don’t you think you should stick with the Homework Room—just forget about the reading club?”
Alec had had to fight his way out of that argument. And he truly did fight. He eventually won by making a new promise: “How about this? From now on, I’ll keep getting nines or better on all my weekly reports—or else I’ll go right back to the Homework Room!”
And his mom and dad had agreed. It was going to be a tough promise to keep, but if that was what it would take to stay in the gym, Alec was ready to do it.
Because he had not abandoned the Losers Club—not at all. In fact, he’d done some recruiting during his snack breaks. Amy Wells, the girl from his math class? She’d left the Homework Room on Thursday to join the Losers Club, and Rob Belwyn, another sixth grader, had followed her on Friday.
And something else had happened on Friday.
As Alec left the Homework Room for his five o’clock break, he’d found Lily waiting for him in the hallway. She’d looked half upset, half excited, almost bouncing off the lockers.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
Lily had barely been able to stand still. “Okay? Um, yeah, but this thing? It’s great, and it’s…”
Some of the other Homework Room kids were staring at them, so Alec had said, “Okay, quiet down, quiet down…good. Now, just tell me.”
Lily took one deep breath and said, “So, today, about an hour ago? Mrs. Case came over, not to our table, but the other table, and we all thought she was going to yell at them for just playing around and stuff. But she sat down and handed out books to Julia and Sarah and Ellen, and then she stayed there for a long time, until they all got started reading! Isn’t that amazing?”
Alec had pretended to be surprised. “Wow! That was really nice of her!”
Lily had nodded about ten times. “I know, I know! And guess what book she gave them? Sarah, Plain and Tall !”
Again, Alec acted surprised. “Great book!”
Suddenly serious, Lily said, “Yeah, except…well, I really want to go and read it, too, you know? ’Cause I got that book at the book fair last year, but I haven’t read it, and I th
ink it’d be fun to do it with a group—especially if Mrs. Case is there. Would…would that be okay, if I switched tables? It’ll probably just be for a while….What do you think?”
“I think it’s great—you should switch, definitely!”
“Good. Well, I just wanted to let you know, that’s all. See you later!” And then Lily had turned and skittered back toward the gym.
Lying in his bed late Friday night, Alec admitted to himself that the five days in the Homework Room had been good, really good. The truth was, he had felt completely free all week—free from worrying about his grades, free from worrying about the club, free from dealing with Kent…and free of Nina, too. Except he didn’t want to be free of Nina…not this free.
And him being away from the gym? Apparently, it had been good for everybody else, too…including Mrs. Case. And Lily.
But that club had been his idea, and he knew it was where he belonged.
As he drifted off to sleep, Alec found himself wishing that the weekend would hurry up and disappear. He was ready for Monday, ready to get back to his life.
Since Alec’s week in the Homework Room, the club had gotten a flurry of new members—mostly because there were a number of kids who weren’t having much fun at Active Games anymore. The three new girls had each recruited one additional girl from the games group, and Jason had found two other boys who wanted to join—the guy who had arrived while Alec was away, and another kid a week later, both of them fifth graders.
With three more girls and two more boys—plus the two sixth graders Alec had found in the Homework Room—that brought the total number of members up to fourteen. With about half the group always at the chatty table, everyone still had enough room to feel comfortable. And it had stayed that way until Tuesday, October 7.