Absolutely Almost (11 page)

A
s soon as Mom hung up the phone with the counselor, I could tell something was wrong. Her eyebrows were all crinkly.

“What?” I asked her.

Mom didn't look at me. She set her phone down on a stack of papers and opened up the cupboard with the mugs. “That was Ms. McPhillips,” she said, and she peered inside one of the mugs like there was something dirty in it, then put it in the sink. She took out another one. “With the results of the test you took last week.”

“Oh.” As soon as she said that, I knew it was something real bad. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked. I was always screwing up on tests.

“Oh, Albie, no,” she said, setting the mug on the counter. But she still didn't look at me. She was searching through another cupboard now, the one with tea and rice and stuff. I thought if she was really mad at me for screwing up the test super bad, she'd probably be yelling at me, but I was confused too because when I do good on tests, she always gave me a big hug and told me how proud she was. And she wasn't doing either of those things.

“It's not bad,” she went on. Which made me let out a little breath I didn't know I was holding. “It's . . . ,” she said. But then she paused for a second, searching through all the teas in the cupboard—picking them up and then setting them down in different stacks. “You don't have dyslexia,” she said at last.

“Dis-what?” I asked.

“
Dyslexia,
Albie,” she said, and that time she did sound like she was mad at me, although I couldn't tell why. “The reading disorder Ms. McPhillips tested you for. Remember?”

I wanted to say that of course I remembered. I was the one who took it. But Mom was mad, and I didn't know why, and I didn't want to make her madder. “I don't have it?” I asked.

She shifted another box of tea to look behind it. “No,” she said.

“So I did good on the test?”

“It's
well,
Albie,” she said, slamming the box of tea down. Maybe she was mad at the tea. “You did
well.
And it's not a matter of—” She stopped talking and set the mug down on the counter. She closed the cupboard with a soft click. “You do not have a reading disorder,” she said, looking up at me. “That's the important thing.”

“Oh,” I said again. All of a sudden my insides felt twisted, like I wasn't sure whether I should be happy or sad. Because it seemed like it should be a good thing, that I didn't have that long-word-
x
reading disorder, that my brain didn't mix up letters and numbers on the page. But I could tell from the look on Mom's face that she didn't think it was.

“Maybe I can take the test again,” I said quietly.

Mom closed her eyes for a long time, not talking, and after a while, I started to worry that maybe she had fallen asleep like that, standing up, and that maybe I should try to shake her or something. But then she opened her eyes and said, “Your father forgot to get coffee. I'm going to run downstairs to get some. I'll be back in a sec, okay?” And she grabbed her purse and her keys, gave me a peck on the forehead, and left me at the table with my social studies homework.

The whole time she was gone, I stared at the page and squinted and shifted my head to look at it, but no matter which way I turned—me or the paper—I couldn't get the letters to look funny. The
d
was just a
d.
The
p
was just a
p.
And even when I blinked, faster faster faster,
bad
didn't come out looking like
dab.
I shoved the paper in my backpack and gave up trying. I was never going to get a reading disorder.

• • •

When Mom came back, she put the coffee in the cupboard but left her mug on the counter and said she needed to lie down for a bit. I didn't tell her that we already had coffee, that Dad had told her yesterday that he wanted to start keeping it in the freezer for freshness. I didn't tell her that. I didn't say anything. Because nothing I thought mattered. And I had a test to prove it.

The only thing wrong with my brain was my brain.

I
don't know how to spell “mountain.” Or “business.” Or “especially.” I do the flash cards over and over, and I never get those ones right.

I don't know how to subtract without a pencil.

I don't know Mom's cell phone number without looking it up, even though I call it all the time.

I don't know the name of Dad's company he works for. I stopped asking because he rolls his eyes every time I ask and says, “Albie, I
told
you.” But I never remember.

I don't know how many nickels in a dollar, or how many dimes. Darren Ackleman says everybody learned that in first grade. Somehow I didn't.

I don't know the capital of Arkansas, and I don't care. Arkansas should go learn its own capital.

I don't know the best way to make a model volcano, or what it feels like to get your Science Fair project picked to go to the gym for Parents' Night.

I don't know how
anybody
could like
Johnny Tremain.

I don't know how to make my dad smile when he looks at my report card, instead of clenching his jaw tight.

I don't know how to make Mom stop worrying so much about me, even though she says she doesn't.

I don't know why I'm always screwing up at everything, even when I try so hard, all the time, not to. I'd do better if I could, I really would. But I don't know how.

There are a lot of things I don't know.

T
hursday night, me and Calista studied and studied with the flash cards.

Five, that was the most words I could get right at once.

Five was not perfect.

After I took a shower and was in my pajamas, I told Calista I was coming down with the flu, but I could tell she didn't believe me.

“You didn't have the flu thirty minutes ago, when we were eating dinner.”

“It came on all of a sudden,” I explained.

“Mmm-hmm.” She crinkled her mouth up and peeled the
Johnny Tremain
title off the old
Captain Underpants
I already finished and stuck it to the new one. “This flu wouldn't have anything to do with your spelling test tomorrow, would it?”

I shook my head. “I feel really sick,” I said. Which was true. Every time I thought about that spelling test and not getting all ten words 100 percent perfect, I felt sick, right in my stomach. It would be better if I just stayed home.

She put her hand on my forehead. “You're not warm,” she said slowly. She studied my face carefully. “Well, I guess we'll know if you're really sick if you start to feel sharp pains on the left side in your ribs. That's usually the first sign of the flu.”

I was just moving my hand over to see if I had sharp pains there, where Calista said, when I saw the look on her face, and I stopped. “Is that really true?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. “No,” she told me.

I moved my hand away. “Then my ribs don't hurt at all.”

“Albie.” Calista sat down on the bed and patted the bedspread for me to sit down next to her. I sat. She looked at me for a long time, but she didn't say anything. Which was weird. Then she got up and left the room. I stayed put. I didn't know what else to do.

When Calista came back, she was carrying her blue backpack. She sat back down and pulled out a handful of papers, all sorts. Some on thick paper and some that looked like they were ripped out of her sketchbook, because they had crinkled edges on the side. She looked through them and then handed me one.

I looked at it carefully. It was covered in drawings, all of them done with a pencil. They were all of people—some sitting up, some standing, some lying down. They looked realistic, not like the cartoon people she was helping me draw. Lots of them were just parts, elbows floating next to a pair of crossed legs and, next to that, three pairs of feet. Hands were everywhere—open, holding pencils, scrunched up like a fist. Some of the pictures were scribbled over, like they were started and then given up halfway through.

“You did these?” I asked Calista.

She nodded, but she was still flipping through her mess of papers. “For my figure drawing class,” she said. She glanced over at the paper in my hands. “Look,” she told me. “Right there.” She tapped a bright blue sticky note stuck to the top of the paper. “That's from my teacher, Professor Milton.”

I read what was on the sticky note.

Lacks perspective

I didn't know what that meant, but I could tell by the way Calista had her mouth scrunched up while she looked at it that it wasn't a good thing.

“Here's another one.”

She handed me another paper of sketches. The sticky note on top of that one said
Blocky.
Calista gave me another paper, then another after that, and another and another. They all had sticky notes on them.

Loose lines

No movement

Stiff!

Draw what you SEE

Are you even trying?

“I hate Professor Milton,” Calista told me when I was finished reading all the sticky notes.

I looked up at her. “You do?” That surprised me, I guess, because I couldn't really imagine Calista hating anything. But I thought I might hate someone, too, if they wrote sticky notes like that to me.

“Yep,” she said. “But I still go to class, every week, because I have to.”

I was starting to see where this was going. “And you don't ever get the flu?” I asked her. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, though.

She shook her head. “You know what I do instead?” I didn't answer, because I didn't know what she did. “I found a soft-serve place,” she said, “right by the school. Tasti D-Lite, the one you told me about, remember?” I remembered. “And I tell myself that every Tuesday afternoon, after class is over, I get to stop there and have some ice cream.”

“With sprinkles?” I asked, because I knew that Calista liked sprinkles.

“
Lots
of sprinkles,” she said.

“That doesn't sound too bad.”

“Right? So now, when I wake up on Tuesday mornings, instead of thinking, ‘Ugh, I have to go to Professor Milton's class today,' I try to think, ‘Hey, I get ice cream after class today!'”

I squinted one eye at her. “And that works?” I asked. “You never feel like getting the flu?”

Calista nodded. “Most of the time I don't.”

I thought about that. “Can tomorrow be an ice cream day for me?” I asked.

Calista handed me
Johnny-Treeface
-not-
Captain-Underpants.
“I think it needs to be.”

“Okay,” I said. “But instead of ice cream, can it be donuts? Because I like donuts better.”

“I'll make sure we get some when I pick you up,” she said.

“Can we go to the bakery on Seventy-Eighth Street? They have the best donuts. Even better than the ones at the bodega.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“But it's all the way on up Seventy-Eighth Street, though. That's far.”

“Not too far for Donut Day. Now get some sleep, all right, Albie? Good night.”

“Night, Calista.”

Donuts,
I thought, after I was done with my reading and turned off my lamp.
Donuts.
Every once in a while, the spelling test would sneak back into my brain, but mostly Calista was right. It was way better to look forward to a donut day than a spelling test.