Absolutely Almost (19 page)

I
barely talked to Calista the whole way home from school that day. And when we got home, I didn't even wait for her to make my snack. I went straight to my room and closed the door. Then I sat on the carpet, right in front of my dresser, and opened the bottom drawer.

Under all of my pairs of swim trunks that were too small for me to wear anymore, that's where it was. The letter. I pulled it out.

“Albie?” Calista was knocking on the door. “Albie, you okay in there? What's wrong?”

I unfolded the letter and pressed out the creases, one, two.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Schaffhauser,

That part was easy to read. The rest was harder.

I'm writing in regards to the academic progress of your son, Albin Schaffhauser, which, as you both know, has been a matter of much concern for some time now.

“Albie?”

I didn't have a lock on the door. I guess that was how Calista got in.

“What are you reading?” she asked. She sat down on the carpet, right beside me. “What is that?”

I set the letter down in my lap, and I think my eyes must've been blurry from reading too hard or tears or something, because all I could see was the name of the school in big red letters at the top of the page.
MOUNTFORD PREPARATORY SCHOOL.
I couldn't read any of the other words.

Not like I'd understand them anyway.

“It's from my old school,” I told Calista.

She must've guessed I was upset, maybe by the way I was talking, quiet like a snowflake, because she started rubbing my back in slow little circles. And she didn't say anything, just nodded.

“It's the letter they sent right before my parents decided I should go to a new school. Only I think maybe they didn't really get to decide that.”

Kicked out. I'd been kicked out. I couldn't understand all the words on the page, but I knew enough to know that much. I wasn't smart enough, so they kicked me out.

I wasn't even smart enough to read the letter about kicking me out.

“Oh, Albie,” Calista said. Her voice was quiet like a snowflake too.

“It's okay,” I told her, because she sounded so upset. But it wasn't okay, not really, and I think she knew that too.

We were quiet a long time. We just sat there, me staring at the fuzzy red letters of the school, and Calista rubbing my back in tiny circles.

Calista was the one who spoke first.

“If you could go back to that school,” Calista asked me, “right now, would you?”

I thought about it, long and careful. There were things I liked about Mountford. Erlan was there, and I missed seeing him in class and having lunch with him. I missed having lunch with anyone.

But my teachers were nicer now. And math made more sense at this school, because I had Mr. Clifton and math club. And I got to read books I liked, like
Captain Underpants,
and Mrs. Rouse didn't care so much.

And P.S. 183 never sent home a letter about me, saying I wasn't smart enough to go there.

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

“So maybe,” Calista said slowly, “your old school being a bunch of mean jerks was the nicest thing they could have done for you?” She said it like a question.

I laughed at that, because it was funny, thinking about my old school being a bunch of mean jerks. They sort of
were
a bunch of mean jerks. I wiped at my nose. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”

And then I thought of something Mr. Clifton had said.

“You can't get where you're going without being where you've been.”

Calista raised an eyebrow at me when I said that. “Where did you get a saying like that from?” she asked.

“Mr. Clifton's grandma.”

“I like it,” Calista told me.

“Me too.”

• • •

That night when I went to sleep, nothing really had changed. I still wasn't cool. I still didn't have a finished A-10 Thunderbolt in a display case in the living room, or a dad who would help me build one. I still didn't have anyone to sit with at lunch. I still had never got more than seven words right on a spelling test. But things
felt
a little different. Just a tiny titch of a bit.

That's because me and Calista had made a frame out of cardboard, she'd helped me paint it and everything, so it looked just like a fancy one on a museum wall. But hanging inside it wasn't a piece of art. Hanging inside it, high on the back of my bedroom door where no one could see it but me when I was tucked in bed with the door closed ready for sleep, was my letter from Mountford.

I looked at the letter from across the room, squeezing Norm the Bear close to my chest, and I noticed that the red letters at the top of the page went from fuzzy to clear to clearer.

W
hen my dad walked into my room when I wasn't expecting and saw me working on the A-10 Thunderbolt, almost completed except for the stickers I never got to putting on the first one so they were a little tricky, he seemed really impressed.

“Albie!” he said. He squatted down right there on the carpet to look at the airplane close up. “How did you do this so quickly?”

What I could have said was “I don't know. I'm just good at putting airplanes together, I guess.”

What I could have said was “Why? Do you think it looks cool?”

What I could have said was nothing, just a shrug.

I could have said any of those things.

But I didn't feel like it. I felt like telling the truth.

What I said was, “I already put one together before, so this one was easy. I already put together the one that we bought when we went to the Sea, Air, and Space Museum a year and a half ago that you said you'd help me with, but then you forgot. And then when you got me this one for my birthday, I threw that one out the window. And I was going to throw this one out the window too, but I didn't. I put it together instead.” And then I looked up at him, and I shrugged, and I said, “Why? Do you think it looks cool?”

I think my dad did not know what to say to that.

I think my dad planned on squatting there forever, with his mouth hanging open, not saying anything.

I went back to putting on the stickers. It took a little bit to figure out which way they should go, but I looked at the instructions for a long time, and eventually I figured it out.

“I'm so sorry, Albie.” That's what my dad said after a long time of not saying anything. I'd sort of forgotten he was there. I looked up. “I'm really sorry,” he said again.

I just shrugged.

Dad watched me work on the stickers even longer, and I guess his legs must've got tired of squatting, because after a while he scooched down on his stomach, his elbows on the carpet. And he picked up one of the sheets of stickers I hadn't gotten to yet and peeled one off and said, “Where does this one go, do you think?” And we looked at the directions together.

I put most of the A-10 Thunderbolt together by myself.

But my dad did help, at the end.

B
etsy didn't really need any more helpful hints. She was smarter than me, for sure. But I decided to leave one last one anyway. Even smart people probably like to get a hint every once in a while.

I think you're pretty great how you are.

That's what it said.

It was the truth too.

A
lbie?” Mrs. Rouse said on Wednesday. “Do you have a note from home about your absence last week? You never gave me one.”

I rubbed the back of my neck where Darren had flicked it on the way back from the pencil sharpener.

“Huh?” I said, still rubbing.

“A note,” Mrs. Rouse said again. “About your absence. I need a note from one of your parents letting me know why you were out.”

My mouth felt dry all of a sudden. I forgot about my neck. “I . . .” But I closed my mouth, because I wasn't sure what I was going to say.

“Just bring it tomorrow, okay?” Mrs. Rouse told me.

I nodded. Because what else was I supposed to do?

T
hat afternoon, while Calista was in the bathroom, I told her I wanted to watch kung fu videos on Mom's laptop, but I didn't. What I did was I found the file on the desktop from when Mom wrote my sick notes, and I opened it. I only had to change a few words.

Dear Mrs. Rouse,
Albin was out sick last week. Please excuse his absence.

Sincerely,

And then under the
Sincerely,
Mom always signed her name, Hannah Schaffhauser. In pen.

Printing it wasn't the hard part.

Hannah Schaffhauser

I practiced Mom's signature over and over, down the sides of a piece of scrap paper and up again.

Hannah Schaffhauser

I'd found an old letter she'd signed in her desk, and I was trying to copy all the letters just right. That's what I was doing instead of sleeping.

Hannah Schaffhauser

I practiced the way the capital
H
crossed back over itself. I practiced the dip in the big
S.
I practiced the way Mom did the double-
f,
which was super different from the way I did it when I signed my own name.

I practiced and practiced and practiced.

Hannah Schaffhauser

It was a long signature, and hard to get just right.

I couldn't get it perfect, no matter how hard I tried. Only almost perfect.

Hannah Schaffhauser

But almost was better than nothing.

I pushed away the piece of scrap paper and looked at the note I'd printed. All ready for me to give to Mrs. Rouse, except for Mom's signature.

If I signed the note and told Mrs. Rouse it was from my mom, then I'd be lying. And if I got caught, I'd get in trouble.

But if I
didn't
sign it and give it to Mrs. Rouse, then Mrs. Rouse would probably call my mom to ask why I was out, and then Mom would know that I didn't go to school, and then
Calista
would get in trouble. And I didn't think Calista should get in trouble, because what she did was a nice thing, giving me a sad day when I needed a sad day. And it did make me feel better, even if Darren Ackleman still called me “dummy” about nine times every day. It made me feel better because I knew that last Monday, while Darren Ackleman was doing social studies worksheets, I'd seen a python eating a pig. And that was worth a million and a half bad names.

I pressed my pen hard into the paper, and I signed it.