You probably fell down a hole.

Dear Dad,

Tomorrow is our first basketball game. I kind of like basketball practice. Or at least I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Not that I’m good at it or anything, but I kind of like getting all sweaty and tired and hanging out with friends. Not in a gay way or anything. In a sports way.

Does it make sense to call these guys friends? I guess they’re the closest thing I’ve got. I mean, I don’t want to tell them my deep secrets or anything. There’s no way I would talk to them the way I talk to you, about girls and your being dead and stuff like that. And if I was hanging off a cliff and had to call one person to come and save me, I probably wouldn’t call any of them. I’d call Mom, I guess. Is that weird?

I don’t think it’s all that weird, because Mom would actually come and save me, where even Donnie Joad, who I suppose is my best friend, would stop and call people to tell them the news before he actually did anything helpful.

I had a math test yesterday and got a C on it. I was actually pretty happy about that, because for some reason, this whole pre-algebra thing is somehow starting to make sense. I mean, I’m not a math whiz or anything. But I don’t think even that hag Mrs. Fletcher would call me a math idiot anymore. C means average, right? If I could be average in math, I’d be pretty happy. Is that wrong?

Is it?

Answer me!

I don’t know why I keep writing these stupid letters to you. You don’t write back anymore. You wandered off into the woods, where you probably fell down a hole and now your flesh is slowly burning off in a lake of fire.

OK, I hope that’s not true. I hope you found heaven.

I don’t really think you did, though.  I mean, I love you and everything, but you don’t sound like you’re ready for heaven. In your letters, you kind of just mope around. Now you’re probably moping around in the woods and can’t find your way back.

I kind of hope you don’t read this letter, because I sort of sound like a jerk in it. I sound like I don’t like you very much.

Please write back,

Your son,

Trevor

Mrs. Fletcher, math troll.

Dear Dad,

Will Mudgett called me at home again last night. He told me he has been really sick. I don’t think he thought I believed him, so he said he could even bring the doctor’s note, if I wanted. I said I didn’t care. He told me he’d decided not to fight me right away. I was relieved. I almost started crying right there on the phone. Don’t tell that to anyone.

I’ve been thinking about that fight since he first brought it up, wondering if I would chicken out, if I would lose, even if he might actually stab me and I might actually die, with Misty Lee and all my friends looking on. And I thought about what you said, about how I should fight him, because that kind of stuff is part of living.

Maybe it helps a little, but man, Will Mudgett scares me so much I can’t eat.

Anyway, I went to school today, feeling more relaxed than I have since sixth grade. I saw Misty Lee and she showed me how she’d written our initials all over her book covers. M + T = L U V. It kind of creeps me out a little, but it’s kind of cool, too, in a dorky sort of way.

Will Mudgett came up and talked to me during P.E. I was standing behind the baseball backstop and he came over and stood next to me and basically repeated everything he said on the phone, about deciding not to fight me right away. He was still acting kind of cool, like he knew he freaked me out. I didn’t say a word back to him.

But he was right. He really freaked me out.

Donnie Joad was on the other side of me and after Will left he punched my shoulder and said, “Dude, how come you didn’t say anything? You acted totally gay. Now he knows you’re afraid of him!”

At lunch I sat by Misty Lee and Donnie and a few other people that I pretty much like. Donnie acted like he’d forgot all about me wimping out with Will Mudgett. Then after lunch I went to math class and Mrs. Fletcher said that we would be having a test on Monday. She listed out the kind of problems we’d be doing and the equations we were supposed to know. I felt so lost on most of them. I so don’t want to take that test. Mrs. Fletcher says I am a math idiot and she is right. If I could swap out all my math classes for English classes, I would do it in a second.

I drew a picture of Mrs. Fletcher and put it in with this letter. That’s pretty close to what she really looks like.

I think I may just stay home Monday and skip the test. I don’t feel very good anyway. But I have to go to school tomorrow, because tomorrow night I’m supposed to go with Misty Lee to this overnighter at her church and I kind of want to go. If I don’t go to school, I don’t think Mom would let me go with Misty Lee, even if her thing is at church.

I’ll keep you posted.

Your son,

Trevor

We all have to get naked.

Note to readers: Today’s post is a bit more adult, in a Judy Blume kind of way.

Dear Dad,

So I got my math test back from Mrs. Fletcher and guess what? She says I am officially a math idiot. Me and two other kids who look completely retarded—Eugene Tinkham and Larry Melding. These guys are the dorks of the school. Mrs. Fletcher even invited the three of us up to the front of the class to correct our mistakes on the board. I bet these new kids think I’ve always been a math dork, even though I swear I really was good at math last year. What I don’t understand is how all the other kids from Mrs. Rommel’s class did so much better than me. Did they take secret classes over the summer?

I’m pretty sure Mrs. Fletcher is doing something wrong with this whole testing thing. Either that, or the whole school system is evil and corrupt. It’s possible.

I’ve been trying to imagine what must have happened to Mrs. Fletcher during her childhood to make her so mean now. I’m guessing she was always ugly and unpopular and that kids were always mean to her. Her back was always covered in kick me signs and boys wiped their boogers on her book covers. So when she grew up, she decided to become a teacher to get her revenge. Now she is the evil math troll.

Speaking of trolls, today I got dressed for P.E. right next to Rusty Foster. We have to wear jockstraps in P.E., which means we all have to get naked right next to each other. It is totally gross and further proof of the evilness of the whole school system. What is the point of making kids my age get naked? Anyway, Rusty is this red-haired kid whose entire body is covered in freckles. He’s one of the tallest kids in our class and a total dork, but not like Eugene or Larry. But let me tell you, his thing is huge. It looks like the penis of a grown man. And hairy, too. It reminded me of when we used to all go to Steel Lake to go swimming. We’d change in the men’s room and there’d always be some naked old guy coming out of the showers and standing right next to you, like he wanted to make sure you saw how naked he was.

Nothing like a giant, naked, hairy thing to make a kid feel inadequate.

This may be a weird question, but, based on your own anatomy, do I have any chance of getting anywhere near that big? Is this something I should worry about?

All in all, it was a lousy day.

Your son,

Trevor

Mrs. Fletcher, Math Troll

Dear Dad,

I officially do not love Junior High School.

Big surprise there, I know. I didn’t expect it to be like Disneyland or anything, but you know, I thought it would be cool to hang out with only teenagers. Now all I do is school. School has taken over my life. I don’t think school should be that much of a priority. It seems to me that the whole school system is a bad way to learn. I mean, personally, I am much more excited about summer vacation than I am about school. And so is every other kid. So doesn’t it make sense to make school more like vacation and do away with all this annoying crap like teachers and classrooms and stupid posters on the wall about dental hygiene like the one in our homeroom with the worm coming out of the apple?

Now that vacation is over, I get up, get ready for school, get driven to school, then go from homeroom to P.E. to social studies to Bible to English to lunch to math to science and then to soccer practice (the school team!) and then home to do homework (from school!) and then to bed. Tell me one person who thinks that is a good way to live? No kids, for sure. And you know all the teachers would rather be on vacation, too. So why do we do it?

My math teacher’s name is Mrs. Fletcher and she looks like a troll. She’s about five feet tall with short, red hair cut like a boy, a red nose and tons of wrinkles and she talks like a troll, too, like she’s smoked too much or got punched in the throat. It wouldn’t really surprise me if she did get punched in the throat, because she is an evil woman and there are probably 10,000 kids who wouldn’t mind taking a swing at that saggy, wrinkly throat of hers.

Mrs. Fletcher doesn’t look interesting enough to be a smoker. When I think of smokers, I think of people like Aunty Iola, who holds the cigarette in one hand and the whiskey glass in the other. Aunty Iola is still around, by the way, meaning that she hasn’t died. She’s still really cool and actually really smart, too. I like how you can smell the smoke and whiskey on her breath when she kisses you. Man, she’s got an awful cough, though.

I can’t imagine Mrs. Fletcher drinking whiskey. I guess I can imagine her drinking something else, though. Something really awful. Milk that’s gone bad. Or maybe just plain old human blood. She so clearly doesn’t like kids. She said that anyone who got less than a C on the take-home test last night was what she likes to call a “math idiot.” A C? I swear, Mrs. Rommel didn’t teach us half that stuff last year, so I’ll probably be in that group, but at least I’m not a troll. She’s a math troll.

Why do people who don’t like kids become teachers? It makes no sense. Mrs. Fletcher should have got a job in a laboratory or the city morgue or some place where she wouldn’t have to talk to people. She’d get along great with dead bodies. Or she should be a guard in a woman’s prison. Then she could get punched in the throat every day.

You probably don’t know this, but there was this guy in grade school named Brian Haase. We used to fight all the time. His best friend from last year, Max Baxter, left to go to another school. Brian and Max were the biggest bullies of grade school. He is in almost all my classes and comes up and talks to me all the time. He actually seems pretty cool. Since Donnie is now always having lunch with his “girlfriend,” I’ve been eating my lunch with Brian. We talk about all the fights we were in over the years. I won most of them, by the way, even if he says he won his share. I don’t blame him for lying. I’d lie too if I lost fights. I don’t think I lost any. Maybe a couple. Anyway, Brian is a lot nicer this year.

I guess that’s another thing that’s different about junior high school. Everyone changes.

Your son,

Trevor

Trevor’s first soccer practice

Dear Dad,

I had my first soccer practice today and guess what? Not that many kids tried out for the team and Mr. Schick said no one would be cut. That’s good news for me. He also said I have a real strong kick and would make a natural defender. I’m pretty sure that’s what he tells kids who aren’t any good, but still, it was pretty cool of him to say it to me. Honestly, only a few of the kids look any good at all and I don’t think I’m any worse than the rest of them.

He asked if I was the brother of Steffan and Keith. When I said I was, he said, “Well, if you’re half as good as either of them, it will be a pleasure to have you on the team.” I just nodded. I’m probably not half as good as either of them. He didn’t mention Rhett at all, even though he played soccer, too.

There are a lot of new kids at school this year. I guess that’s another thing that happens in junior high. There are still kids I know from sixth grade, but a bunch of other schools dump their sixth graders here, too. Like the goalie on our soccer team—he’s a new kid named Rick Jarvis. He thinks he’s some kind of superstar soccer player, but he’s only better than me because I bet he’s played on club teams. He wears one of those shiny black jackets around school and it says “Hawks” on the back in orange stitching, which is probably the name of his other stupid team. He told me he is going out with a girl named Misty Lee. She’s new, too. Is every one in seventh grade required to have a girlfriend by the end of the first week? Misty Lee is cute, I guess, in an annoying sort of way.

I had my first math homework today. A take-home test. I just finished it. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. I’m hoping it was one of those tests where they just want to see how much you know, because there was a lot of it I didn’t know at all. I’m guessing that everyone else did about as bad as me, because I was kind of a math ace in sixth grade. Were you any good at math at my age? I know you were an English major at college, but I assume you did some math in seventh grade, right?

Not that I need it, but I wish you were here to help me with my math. Anyway, time to stop writing and mail the letter. I hope I have your address right. And I hope one stamp is enough.

Your son,

Trevor