Absolutely Almost (13 page)

O
n Saturday when I was at the park with Erlan and his brothers and sisters and two of their nannies, I saw Darren Ackleman throwing a football with his dad. Me and Erlan were playing poker on the bench while the other kids ran around screaming. The cameras were everywhere, but they couldn't film me because I was “no release!” I think that made Erlan happy, because it meant they mostly stayed away from our card game.

“That's him,” I whispered to Erlan. “That mean kid from my school. Darren. With the bug.”

Erlan lifted his head and turned to look behind him at Darren with his dad across the grass. He sort of showed me his cards when he did it, but I tried not to look, because that would be cheating.

Next to us on the bench, Calista looked up to see Darren too, but she didn't say anything about him, just went back to drawing in her sketchbook.

“That kid with the football?” Erlan asked, turning back to look at me.

“Yeah,” I said.

“He looks like he smells.”

I laughed. Darren didn't smell, not really, but I liked that Erlan thought he might.

“I raise you three acorns,” I said.

• • •

After Erlan and his family had to go home and the whole camera crew left too, Calista and I decided to stay in the park and play cards a little longer, because it was a nice day outside, and also because Dad was home and he had a bad headache and said he didn't want to be bothered by anything. Calista said the best way not to bother anybody was to stay in the park. So we stayed.

Calista was teaching me a new card game called Spit, where you had to slap your cards down really fast. I was good at it, faster than Calista most times. Only sometimes I'd get
too
fast and my cards would fall between the slats of the bench onto the ground, and then we had to make the game pause while I picked them up.

I'd just won my third game in a row when all of a sudden I heard, “Hey, Albie.” I looked up, and Darren Ackleman was standing right next to me.

I waited for Darren to say something mean, but he didn't.

“How's it going?” That's what he said.

I looked over at Calista, but she wasn't paying any attention. She was just shuffling the deck of cards, over and over. I didn't know you had to shuffle them that much, but I guess so.

“Pretty good,” I told Darren, which was true.

Darren stuck his hands in his pockets. “How come all the cameras were here?” he asked. “Were they making a movie?”

Calista's shuffling got really loud, and she started cracking the cards on the bench between shuffles. But she still wasn't paying any attention to us.

I shook my head at Darren, to answer his question about the movie. “It's for my friend Erlan's family,” I told him. It was weird because Darren wasn't being mean to me like he normally was at school. So I decided not to be mean back. “They're making a reality show.”

Darren's eyes got all big. “Really?” he said. “Cool! And you're friends with him?”

Calista's shuffling got so loud that it made a squirrel jump into a nearby trash can.

“Yeah,” I told Darren. “Erlan's been my best friend since six years ago. He lives on my floor. He's really cool. He likes chess.” I don't know why I said that last part.

“Wow,” Darren said. He seemed impressed. I guess it was sort of impressive, that I had a really cool best friend who likes chess.

Darren took his hands out of his pockets and then stuck them back in. “Hey, you want to play football with me and my dad?” he asked.

I looked at Calista, and she shrugged, still shuffling her cards. “It's up to you, Albie,” she said. So I went.

It turned out Darren wasn't mean like I thought. Actually, it turned out he was really friendly. His dad too. Darren's dad taught me all sorts of useful stuff, like the right way to hold the football and how to throw it so it spiraled just right. I wasn't very good at that stuff, but Darren's dad said I had potential.

Calista stayed on the bench with her sketchbook the whole time. I guess she didn't like football. I noticed she kept watching us, though.

I told Darren's dad that I thought the bug Darren brought in for Science Friday was super cool, and he laughed and said that if I liked
that
one, I should come over someday after school with Darren and see his whole collection.

“Really?” I said. I turned to Darren.

“Yeah, totally,” Darren told me. He was smiling. “That would be cool. You should bring your friend too.”

“Betsy?” I said. I didn't know Darren liked Betsy. But I didn't know that Darren liked
me
before that day either, so I guess sometimes you can just be wrong about things. “I'm not sure if she could come.” She liked bugs, but she didn't like Darren. I was pretty sure about that one.

“No,” Darren said. “Your other friend. Erlan.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

“Bugs aren't for girls,” Darren said. And I don't know why, but I nodded at that like I thought it was true, even though I didn't.

I was almost 100 percent sure that Erlan thought bugs were gross.

“Well, champ,” Darren's dad said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I liked being called “champ.” No one had ever called me that before. “We better get going. It was nice meeting you.”

“You too, Mr. Ackleman,” I said. “Thanks for teaching me about football.”

Darren put out his fist like he wanted to fist-bump me, so I fist-bumped. Darren had pointy knuckles. “Stay cool, Albie,” he said. “See you Monday!”

And when Darren and his dad were walking away, I heard his dad say, “That's a very nice friend you've got there, Darren.”

A friend. Darren Ackleman was my friend, and I didn't even know it.

“You have fun?” Calista asked me when I got back to the bench. She had all our stuff packed up, ready to go home.

“Yeah,” I said. “Darren and his dad are pretty nice.”

Calista raised her eyebrows at me like she wanted to say something, but she didn't. She just hoisted the backpack onto her shoulder.

“What?” I asked. Because I was wondering what it was she didn't want to tell me.

“Just . . .” Calista was staring off across the grass. Finally she looked back at me. “Just be careful, all right?”

“Be careful of what?” I said. I didn't see anything to be careful of, like a dog that wanted to bite me or a mud puddle to slip in or anything.

Calista handed me the trash from our snack and we headed off down the path back to my building.

“Sometimes,” Calista said slowly, and then she stopped to point to the garbage can, and I threw the trash inside. “Sometimes people aren't always nice for good reasons.”

That made me confused. Because how could being nice not be good? And then I got even more confused, because I figured out that she was probably talking about Darren.

“But he's my friend,” I told her. His dad had even said so. “And he said I was cool.”

Calista sighed. “I just don't want to see you get hurt, Albie, that's all. Promise me you'll be careful around that kid.”

“I promise,” I told Calista, because I could tell she was upset, and I didn't like when she was upset. But I wasn't really sure what I was promising, because what did she mean about being careful? And anyway, she was just being silly. No way Darren would ever
hurt
me.

That wasn't the kind of thing friends did.

D
ad remembered about the spelling. Three weeks after the parent-teacher conference, he asked me how I'd been doing with my grades. So I showed him the last one.

Seven. Seven words. The best I'd ever done. Calista gave me two whole chocolate donuts after I showed her.

But I knew by the look on Dad's face when he saw that C grade at the top that I wasn't getting any donuts from him.

“I only missed three words,” I told him. My voice was a squeak. “That's seven right. Which is almost all of them.”

“Almost, Albie,” Dad said slowly, putting the test down on the table, “isn't nearly good enough.”

H
ere's what it's like to be cool:

Cool kids play Pokémon by the drinking fountains before school starts. I found that out on Monday when I got to school. Darren saw me walking up the steps and pulled me over. I never knew that the cool kids did that before. No one told me. I always thought drinking fountains were just for drinking.

Cool kids don't raise their hands to answer questions in class. That's what Darren told me. I liked that rule, because I hardly ever know the answer to Mrs. Rouse's questions anyway. Maybe I was cool all along, and I never realized it.

At recess the cool kids play tetherball, which it turns out I'm sort of okay at.

The only thing I didn't like about being cool was that I couldn't sit next to Betsy at lunch because Darren said cool kids didn't sit next to kids who weren't cool, and Darren said Betsy definitely wasn't cool.

“Maybe she
is
cool,” I said when we were all grabbing our lunches from our cubbies. Betsy was frowning at me talking to Darren, and I didn't like it. “She never raises her hand in class either.”

Darren snorted. “Buh-Buh-Buh-Betsy,” he said, “is
not
cool.”

I was starting to think I didn't get what was cool and what wasn't.

I told Darren I needed to talk to Mrs. Rouse about something, and I'd meet him in the lunchroom. But I didn't really have to talk to the teacher. That was a lie. After Darren left, I made sure no one was looking, and I snuck over to Betsy's cubby, where she was busy unstuffing her coat.

“Hi,” I said.

She didn't say anything, which was pretty normal, but usually she
looked
at me while she didn't say anything, and this time she wasn't looking at me, so that didn't seem normal at all. I didn't like it.

“Hey, um, Betsy, do you know how to play Pokémon?” I asked her.

Betsy did look up at me then, and she looked confused-mad. Which was not a look that made me happy. I did my best to try to explain to her.

“Because all the cool kids play Pokémon,” I said, “and I'm cool now, so I'm learning it, and I thought if you knew too, then you could be cool with me and then we could still sit next to each other at lunch. Wouldn't that be good?” I thought it sounded good. “Anyway, if you don't know Pokémon, I could teach it to you. When I get better, I mean. I'm still not very good.”

I must not've been doing a very good job explaining about Pokémon and being cool and lunch and everything, because Betsy went from looking confused-mad to just mad-mad. Which was even worse.

But I didn't get a chance to explain any better, because Betsy started talking then, and even though it took her a long time to get the words out—longer than normal—I waited for her to say what she wanted and didn't interrupt because Betsy hated when you interrupted her before she was done, and I was nice. And cool.

“N-n-n-n-
no.
” That's what she told me. “Y-y-you are n-
not
c-c-cool.”

I couldn't believe I waited for
that.

Then she stormed off to the lunchroom. She forgot her lunch bag in her cubby, and I thought about bringing it to her, but then I decided not to. I wasn't feeling very nice right then.

Just cool.

That afternoon was the first lunch of the whole school year where I didn't get any gummy bears.