Every morning after Mom leaves I do these things:

Enter at least ten contests but usually way more

Make my bed and make Berkeley make hers

Put away the dishes from last night

Exercise

Fifteen push-ups. The boy ones.

Thirty sit-ups and I make sure to keep my lower back on the floor, because Jillian Michaels says that if you don’t have good form, don’t do it at all.

I once entered her personal training sweepstakes. She sends me emails and texts every day even though I don’t have a phone so I put in a fake phone number. Maybe someone in Texas or somewhere is getting fitness texts from Jillian Michaels.

Twenty-five squats and twelve lunges on each leg.

Berkeley watches from the couch and lets me know if I have bad form.

She says, “You aren’t doing them right.”

And so then I do them lower.

Then I do plank. I’ve gone two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

After I exercise we go outside. We always try to make it out there by nine thirty because that’s when Delilah gets her lunch hour from her early morning shift at Shirley’s Bakery. Delilah is old like a grandma and has big round cheeks and bright red hair and a roly-poly body. She likes to hug you so warm, it feels better than a fleece blanket.

She lives alone at the opposite corner of the trailer park from us.

Sometimes Mom goes over there and she and Delilah watch shows together. Sometimes we go over, too. My favorites to watch are Iron Chef and Fixer Upper.

So every morning we try to get out there by the time Delilah comes home because if we’re lucky, she brings us the leftover cinnamon rolls or raspberry danishes or one time she brought us an entire loaf of pull-apart orange bread that me and Berk ate so fast, I had to lie down afterward.

“Go easy,” Delilah always says, because she’s seen me and Berkeley eat.

And we always say, “We will.”

And then she says, “Wake me up if you need anything.”

And we say, “We will.”

And then she winks and drives on down to her trailer and goes to sleep for an hour before she heads back to the bakery.

Then me and Berk, we go out to the trampoline and start school. I use books from the library and I make Berkeley take the workbooks Mom gets for her at garage sales. Berkeley’s ahead for her age. She missed the kindergarten deadline by four days and can already read chapter books. Dad always said she was smarter than him.

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So we both read and do workbooks.

Then we have art.

I found lots of ideas on Pinterest:

Chalk animals

Chalk body outlines

Chalk outline of shadows

Chalk hopscotch

Painting on paper

Painting rocks

Painting fabric (only if it’s already stained)

Coloring by number

Coloring in coloring books

Coloring pictures for Dad

Hearts

Cornstarch and water

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Art is Berkeley’s favorite time of day.

Then we eat lunch.

Then we take a nap on the tramp for quiet time.

Then we go for a walk and see if Randy, who is in charge of the neighborhood, is in his trailer. Sometimes he’ll pay us to pick up litter and then we can go buy candy at the pharmacy down the road. If he’s not around, we sometimes spy on Melody, who is married to a man named Harry.

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Melody has long blond hair and big blue eyes and lots and lots of lipstick and she’s so sophisticated she doesn’t belong here.

Neither does Harry, who wasn’t so good looking but he was tall and wore ironed shirts.

But they lived here anyway and put up Christmas lights in July and had parties with people in tight jeans, and they are happy, except sometimes they scream at each other in the middle of the night and Harry leaves for a few weeks but he always comes back.

Melody will sit on her front steps when that happens and I think I should go talk to her but I don’t.

Nobody does really.

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So sometimes we spy on Melody because she likes to dance in her living room to music turned up loud. Or sit in her room, where the walls are covered with fancy posters of models and rock stars and cats.

If neither of them were around, we might walk to the river and watch the fish for science.

Or sometimes we look for money with Dad’s old metal detector.

Then school gets out for the normal people and I watch Carlene come home and she sometimes says hey and I say hey, and then instead of coming over and seeing how I’m doing or when do I think I’ll go back to school or seeing if I want to go to her house and watch YouTube videos, instead of any of that, she just goes inside. Berkeley plays with her friends, which she has two of, Sadie and Jane Johnson, who are twins that stay with their grandparents after school till their parents get off work. Sadie and Jane are in kindergarten but they can’t read so Berkeley pretends like she’s their teacher, which she is.

And then I sit.

And then the day is almost over.

And then I make macaroni or spaghetti or potatoes.

And then I check my email to see if I’ve won anything—one time I got a whole box of Kool-Aid packets, another time I got a free subscription to Modern Dog Magazine, and even another time I won a grandfather clock which we never got because I had to pay shipping and handling.

And then Mom gets home.

And then we eat.

And then we watch Wheel of Fortune.

And then we go to sleep.