LEARNING KILLS

That first weekend with Junior went by faster than Christmas. We must have covered twenty miles, running all over Hills Village. It was the best weekend I’ve ever had.

And then, just like that—poof!—it was time to get back to school. (Don’t you hate how that happens?) Back to math, science, social studies, killer bullies, killer food (not in the good way), and of course, Learning Skills with Mr. Fanucci.

“Good morning, everyone. I hope you had fantastic weekends,” he said, just like last week.

“I’d give mine an eight,” Flip said.

“Mine was super!” Maya said. “In fact, it was super-duper!”

“Did you know that the term ‘weekend’ didn’t exist until the sixteen thirties?” Jonny said.

“I went to the science museum with my mom,” Dee-Dee said through her iPad.

I didn’t say anything because I was sitting there thinking about where I wanted to take Junior after school.

Flip had a pretty good nickname for Learning Skills too. He called it “Learning Kills,” and here’s why. At the beginning of every period, we had to show Mr. Fanucci these notebooks he gave us on the first day. In the notebooks, we were supposed to write down every single one of our assignments for every class, so we could keep track of them. Then we had to check off one box if the assignment was done, another box if we had questions about it, another if it was late—

Just… kill… me… now.

Basically, it was like getting all the usual homework plus three extra periods a week for thinking about homework, talking about homework, and writing about homework. Which, by the way, is exactly as boring as doing homework.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against doing better in school. I’m just against getting truckloads of extra work. (Mr. “Fun” says it’s not extra work, it’s extra help, but he has to say that. He’s the teacher.)

And none of that was even the worst thing about Learning Skills.

The worst thing was, we met in the resource room. It’s a room off the library, and there’s this big window in the wall in between. So anyone who was in the library during fourth period could see us sitting in there, being “special” with Mr. Fanucci. It was like spending fourth period in the zoo, if you ask me.

Not at the zoo. In the zoo.

Mr. Fanucci told us we shouldn’t worry about those other kids. He said nobody was looking at us nearly as much as we thought. He also said that 99 percent of what we imagined people were thinking about us, they weren’t thinking.

But I’m pretty sure they were.

And right after class that day, I got some proof.