The sign at the bank said 76 degrees, but that has nothing to do with this story.

Because Ms. L is as pregnant as a cumulonimbus, I have been assigned the Writer's Club at school. The Writing Club position pays zero dollars, but I have a lot of books with writing exercises, and I like writing, so all of this makes sense.

Since I took Writing Club three weeks ago, we've doubled in size. This is not because of the posters I've made advertising Writing Club (because I haven't hung them yet). But I think a new writing, er, "coach" has gotten the two girls in club exciting about showing their work off again.

Now, there are four of us.

I'll profile, if I may:

Taylor: The first work I saw was from Taylor, when I sat in on writing club with her and Ms. L on Ms. L's last day of Writing Club. (Before she'd said to me: take Writing Club--take it. I don't want it back. It's yours.) She's working on her memoir. She's seventeen, she's skinny, hair the color of nougat. White teeth, perfectly in line. She takes piano lessons, she works at the library, she reads in her free time and she submits to writing contests that she finds online. She wears a silver necklace everyday that spells out the word famous. Her writing is fresh and fluent and conscious. Some of it, is, anyway--enough of it was to get me excited about taking Writing Club into my classroom. Taylor has to turn in all of her stories in 14 point font, because she has a visual impairment. She writes about it, and Ms. L told me about it, but I don't know what to call her impairment. It looks like a lazy eye. It looks as though she's squinting with one eye, consistently.

Taylor, when critiquing, is far too nice to really critique. She has a wretched case of Minnesota, and I think that she's been wounded by teasing so much that she couldn't fathom saying anything constructive about anyone. As a result, I hear I loved it, I loved it, I love this part, I love this part to any piece. And she'll point out where commas should go, or where apostrophes are missing in her critiques. But overall, I loved it. I love this piece.

She's fantastic. She dresses up for school. She loves being a part of something.

Barb: The other day, Ms. H came up to me and said, what are your thoughts on Barb? Every time I walk by her in the hall, she ignores me and turns away. And I said, oh, that's just her, she seems reserved. But Barb was only reserved on that first day. The second I said, I'm happy to take Writing Club because my background is in this--I have a Master's in Creative Writing--Barb's face exploded into a grin. And she stays after Club to chat, and we don't talk about anything much, but I think she just likes being there. And when I read things from my book joke book today about writing, such as ways to end that novel you're working on that included jokes like and then, as they kissed, he reached down and cupped her breast, and then her other breast...and then...her third breast Barb explodes into laughter. She does a lot of exploding. She explodes into smiles, and she explodes in her prose, in her imagery and details, in her character development. I don't understand how she knows so much as a sophomore in high school. I'm dying to know who taught her. Because she's about where I was as a junior in college. Or maybe as a senior in college, and I'm certain she's been infected by some secret, odd gift. I want this. And she plans on going into science for the rest of her life. Figures.

Barb asks for my craft books. When we do activities at the beginning of club, she thinks more on her feet than I do, and I find that I have to really push to show that oh, hey, I can write, too.

Should I describe her, too, other than exploding? Long hair, no bangs, light brown. Just a little chubby, but the cute kind. Red lips, naturally. And when she gives comments, they're sincere and honest and she gives the kind of advice you'd expect the teacher to give. And she's working on a novel, set in 2020, years after the United States has lost a war with North Korea. And, I'm enticed.

Ben: The story with Ben is that he was Ms. A's student last trimester, in 11th grade, and one day he came to school with bloody knuckles, so Ms. A said, hey Ben, what's with the bloody knuckles? And Ben said, I'm just so crazy about this girl, and I'm so in love I get angry and punch the wall because she doesn't love me back and then Ms. A said, after Ben had mentally excused himself for class to swim around in his teenage emotions, Ben, you have to stay with us in class, but if you need to get some of this out of you, why don't you write? And she opened a page in his notebook, and said, write it down.

And then Ben did. He wrote it, and he wrote it. And it turned into some poems and it turned into some, uh, prose, and then Ms. A said, Ben you should join Writing Club and then he dropped by and left his poem with me. And it rhymed, and it was about being in love and we were meant for each other, baby, you are like an angel, sent down from heaven. And I wrote, are these song lyrics?

And they weren't. It just started to rhyme, so he went with it. The next week, he dropped off an entire notebook of writing about a girl.

And in Writing Club today, he read the first two pages. It was like the poem, abstract, about how much he loooooooved her. And the group said, Oh, it's so cute! And Taylor said, I loved this piece, I just loved how nice it was and how you loved the girl. And Barb said, you just might want to throw in a metaphor or simile--you just describe how pretty her hair is and how you like the same things, but the reader can't really picture her--instead you just say you love her over and over again. And the new girl, who's name I don't know yet, said, Oh, I just get it! I just replaced she with a he and it was so romantic, I just got it.

And I said, well, what I like about this is that it shows us more about the narrator than it actually does about the girl. What I mean is, that, the fact that you're so obsessed with her, and we hear all these things, and the fact that you know you asked her "to be yours" on February 26, 2010, at 8:07 tells us that this sort of love really matters to you.

And then, when Ben got to talk, he talked and talked and talked. And he said, well. Well, I just kept repeating that I love her over and over again so I could remind that reader that I loved her, and I kept repeating about how pretty she was because I didn't want the reader to forget how pretty she was--I just wanted to emphasize that.

Uh-huh.

And then I asked, so, how does it end? It's nonfiction--I'm interested in how it ends. And he turned to the last page and said, oh, should I read this whole last page? (He'd just read and read and read the earlier part for workshop, since he'd only had one copy.) And I had to do everything in my power to not keep him reading, so I said, no, no just the last line, and he read, I just can't explain how much we are meant to be together.

So, are you still together, I said?

No.

So, why don't you tell a whole story--tell us what happened. ...What happened?

And Ben broke into this story, this story. He met this girl and she lived in a different town, and then they just hit it off so quickly, he couldn't believe he'd found someone who just knew him so well, who listened to techno. And they just saw each other all the time and kept talking about how perfect they were for each other. Until, three weeks later, she said to him, Oh, hey, it's just that we seem to bee too perfect for each other, I've just never met somebody so into me, and it feels weird, and it's just too much, too much right now.

And, poor little Ben, he didn't quite get that too much right now meant that it was coming from him--I mean, he still doesn't get it--and he went on with his story, I just don't know how it could be too much (should I mention Writing Club turned into a therapy session at this point?) how it would be hard to just know someone was almost too perfect for you. I mean, it was really hard, because then I had to go over there and get my sweater--and I'd said to her, "I want you to have this sweater so you feel like I'm with you and I'm protecting you even though we're not with each other" and really, I'd just wanted her to keep it, and I'd wanted her to keep the promise ring too, because, I mean, I felt something when I gave that to her.

What. Promise ring.

And he went on, and on about this girl. Poor, poor Ben. Poor, pitiful Ben.

I said, what if you called it "The Three Week Relationship," this prose piece, and then break it into sections by week, writing about how you feel and what happens every week? Or, it could be organized like "day one" and then it would read, "Oh, I love her, she's my angel, we just connect..." and then "day two" would show us how the narrator progresses: "Oh, I hate her, she is just a big slut."

He just looked at me.

I should mention that he's skinny, wears skinny jeans, and has straight red-orange hair (but a soft red-orange) that gets in his eyes. Actually, if you put some bell bottoms on him and took a picture of him, you could blow that picture up and put it on your wall and pretend it was a rock poster and the year was 1976. David Cassidy, Ben is.

Girl-Who's-Name-I-Don't-Know-Yet: She joined today. Barb said, oh, my friend [blank here, obviously] wants to join us, so she'll be coming later. GWNIDKY is a strong writer, strong images, but a weird short story. That's okay, she'd just written it in 15 minutes, she'd said. But I can't tell about GWNIDKY--she seems like the kind of person who just likes to be a part of everything (if I recall, she joined the school newspaper for about 6 minutes). It's like she spends her high school career trying to make memories. After our group activity, she collected all of our little stories and said she was going to type them into a big portfolio. I hope she's part of the group.

She has a lot of teeth in her mouth, and tries to be funny, but she's talented and pretty and will find herself eventually. And I feel horrible for not knowing her name, and it was an awkward way of running that meaning, trying to address her without have to say, hey, yeah...you.

Ms. A said that after Writing Club Ben popped into her room and said: I love Writing Club!

Anway, I was thinking of Glee today when I was in Writer's Club. Taylor is my little Rachel, perfect and precise and wearing skirts. And Barb is like the black chick, but not black and not as large, And now there's these new people, and we're growing by the week. I mean, part of me wonders if I'll say, someday, come on club, let's go. Work on that flash--we've got to get to sectionals! I know it's hard to accept these new people, intial group people, but they've got talent, and it's time to go for it. Time for sectionals!