Absolutely Almost (5 page)

E
very day at the beginning of math club, Mr. Clifton told us a new joke. He'd wait until we were all in our seats, and then he'd raise his white eyebrows, and smile just a little bit, and say the first part of the joke.

“Why are math books always so sad?”

That was the one from Thursday. I didn't know the answer, but no one else did either, so I didn't feel bad. Pretty much no one ever knew the answer.

You could always tell when Mr. Clifton was about to say the punch line, because he'd clear his throat and look like he was about to say something super serious.

“Because,” he said, his head tilted low so that he was looking at us all from over the tops of his glasses, “they have so many
problems.
”

That one made us all laugh—well, all except Savannah. She hardly laughed at any of the jokes, only the
really
really funny ones. I laughed at almost all of them.

When Mr. Clifton saw that we liked that joke pretty well, he nodded, very serious, and went behind his desk to write something in his notebook. “Use again next year,” he mumbled to himself as he wrote.

The only thing I didn't like about Mr. Clifton's jokes was that they were always about math.

I
studied for the spelling test every Thursday. Calista helped me. Every single Thursday. We went over all the words. Calista even made flash cards sometimes, with pictures on them, so I would remember the words and the way to spell them.
Growth. G-R-O-W-T-H.
That flash card had a flower on it, for
grow
spelled the normal way, like a flower grows, and then after that, there was a boy smiling with all his teeth, for the
th
sound that comes at the end of
teeth.

So how come I could remember that when I was doing flash cards with Calista, but when it came to the test on Friday, I wrote
groth,
because I forgot how to spell
grow
like a flower because I got nervous? Anyway, sometimes
o
makes the
ow
sound even when the
w
's not there, like in
note.
There's no
w
in
note.

There are ten words on the test every Friday. Ten words. No matter how hard I study on Thursday, I never get more than four of them right.

D
arren Ackleman brought in a bug for Science Friday. It was a dead bug, a beetle, he said, even though it sort of looked like a cockroach. It was the biggest bug I'd ever seen, bigger than two giant pink erasers stuck together. It was trapped in a small clear box, and it was black with yellow splotches. Its head was crazy. It looked like it had horns, real horns, sticking right out the top. Lila screamed when Darren held it up, and Josie made fake barfing sounds, and Hillary and two other girls pretended like they were fainting, but all the boys thought it was really cool. Some of them even got out of their desks and rushed to the front of the room to see the bug closer. It got so loud in the classroom that Mrs. Rouse had to say, “Now, now, boys and girls!” in her very stern loud voice, and flash the lights on and off. But even then, it was hard to settle down.

After a minute, the teacher from the classroom next door, Mr. Harrison, poked his head inside and said, “Everything okay in here? It sounds like a stampede of yaks.”

And Mrs. Rouse shook her head and said, real tired, “Nope, only a dead bug.”

At that point Mr. Harrison said, “That must be some bug,” and after he saw it, he asked Mrs. Rouse if he could bring his sixth-graders in from next door to look at it, because he thought they'd really love it too. So then all the sixth-graders came into the room and filed past Darren Ackleman at the front and screamed and hooted and shouted about the bug, until Mrs. Rouse made them sit down in the aisles between our desks so Darren could finish his Science Friday. Darren stood up at the front, grinning like it was his birthday or something while he explained all about the bug, how his dad bought it from a shop that sells bugs and skulls and all sorts of weird stuff that made the girls all shriek again, and how it was real expensive, and how his dad said he trusted Darren to take it to school for Science Friday, because he knew Darren was always really careful.

I did not want to like the bug. I did not want to like the bug because I didn't like Darren. But it was so
cool,
with its horns and everything, and I really wanted to count the yellow spots on its back, so when Mrs. Rouse said if we could all stay calm and remain in our seats, then Darren could come through the aisles and let us look at the bug more closely, I decided I would take a turn looking. I decided I could like the bug and not like Darren.

Betsy liked the bug too, I could tell. She leaned forward in her seat beside me, trying to see better, and when Darren squeezed through her aisle, she peered down to look at it.

“Out of the way, Buh-Buh-Buh-Betsy,” Darren hissed as he stepped over a sixth-grader's legs. I heard him. “I'm trying to get through.” And she didn't get to see the bug at all.

I got to see the bug a pretty long time, because the sixth-grader who was sitting in the aisle next to me grabbed the case right out of Darren's hands and stared at it for a while, and probably because the kid was so big, Darren didn't tell him to give it back. So I got to see, right over the big kid's shoulder.

It was a cool bug.

“Seven,” I told Betsy when we were on our way to lunch. We were walking through the hallways at the back of the lunch line, like usual.

“Suh-seven w-what?” Betsy asked.

“That's how many yellow dots there were on the bug's back,” I told her. “I counted. I thought you might be wondering.”

Betsy didn't say anything about that—Betsy didn't usually say much of anything, so I was used to it. But she smiled at me, so I could tell she was happy about the spots. And at lunch she gave me three red gummy bears.

“Did you know there's a kind of cockroach that hisses?” I told Betsy while we ate. Some girls would be grossed out talking about bugs during lunch, but not Betsy. I could tell she thought it was cool, because her eyebrows went up on her face as soon as I said that about the hissing. “I saw it on TV,” I told her. “Whenever you touch one spot on their back, they hiss real loud, just like this.” And I made a hissing noise, just like the cockroach I saw on TV, right through my teeth. And Betsy giggled, so I hissed louder. Then she poked me in the back, like I was a cockroach, and I hissed. Every time she poked me, I hissed, and soon we were both laughing so hard we were almost crying, and I could barely get the hisses out. Betsy snorted and slapped her hand over her mouth, embarrassed, but that just made us laugh harder.

“What are you two retards
doing
over there?” Darren said all of a sudden. And just like that, me and Betsy stopped laughing. That's when we realized that everybody was staring at us.

Everybody.

“What are you looking at, dummy?” Darren asked me. He said it real mean, like I was the one who'd done something to him, even though he was the one who called me and Betsy bad names.

I looked down at my lunch. Next to me, I could tell Betsy was breathing really hard, like she did when she was trying not to cry.

After Darren and his friends left the lunch table to go outside and our side of the table was mostly empty, Betsy nudged me with her elbow.

“Yeah?” I said.

Then Betsy talked real soft, so only I could hear her.

“If D-D-Darren was a b-b-b-bug,” she said slowly, “I'd st-step on him.”

A smile stretched across my face. I liked that idea. A lot. “Yeah,” I told her. “Me too.”

And after that day at lunch, every time Darren said something mean, or looked at us funny, or cut in front of one of us in line, me and Betsy would turn to each other and, real quiet so no one else could hear, we'd make a little
hissssssss.
And I wasn't sure about Betsy, but that always made me feel just a little bit better, like I was squashing Darren Ackleman in my head, even if I couldn't squash him in real life.

M
om said I should have bought Erlan a chess set for his birthday, but I told her he likes lots of things besides just chess. I thought we should get him Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. She also said, “Don't you think we should get something for Karim and Erik? It's their birthday too, you know.” I had sort of forgot about it being Karim and Erik's birthday, but then I figured that made sense, because of how they were triplets. But I didn't think I needed to get them presents. They weren't really my friends—just Erlan was. He was the only one of them who came to
my
birthday party. Mom tried to argue for a while, but then she saw how much Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots cost, and she said she supposed one present would be fine.

On Saturday I wrapped Erlan's present myself and then walked across the hall right at twelve o'clock, right when it said on the invitation that his party was going to start. I didn't have to buzz the buzzer because the door was already open. There was a man I'd never seen before with a headset and a clipboard standing in the doorway, and he stared at me the whole time I walked toward him. He looked like he was bored.

I thought the man would say something when I got to the door, but he didn't, so I figured I had to start. “Um, hi,” I said.

“Name?” he said, like he was asking a question.

“Erlan,” I told him.

He looked down at his list. “Last name?” He said that like it was a question too.

“Kasteev,” I said. I thought he should probably know that already, since he was standing in the Kasteevs' doorway and working on their TV show, but he asked, so I told him.

The man sighed like he was really annoyed and looked up from his list. “What's
your
name, smart guy?” he said. But the way he rolled his eyes, it made it seem like maybe he didn't really think I was a smart guy at all. I thought I was the one who should be annoyed at him, though, because if he wanted to know
my
name, that's what he should have said in the first place.

“Albie Schaffhauser,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to look at the list upside down. “Albin.”

The man made a check on his list with his pen and then pulled a piece of paper out from under the list on his clipboard. “You need a parent or guardian to sign a release form,” he said, handing me the paper.

I stared at it for a while, confused, then I looked up at the door again. Inside Erlan's apartment, there were tons of people walking around, setting food on tables, moving furniture, turning on great big light stands. I saw a couple kids I knew from Mountford, but most were grown-ups I'd never met before.

I didn't see Erlan anywhere.

“I'm just here for Erlan's birthday party,” I told the man. I never needed to sign a piece of paper to get in Erlan's apartment before.

“Sorry, kid,” the man told me. He didn't really sound very sorry, though. “I can't let anyone in without a release form. If your face ends up on camera and a parent hasn't signed off, the company could get sued.”

I was still confused. “I'm here for Erlan's birthday,” I said again. Last year we played laser tag in the park. That was better than this already.

“Sorry.” He still wasn't sorry. “Call your folks and get them to come sign the form. Or a guardian. Then you can go inside.”

I didn't have to call my parents because they were just down the hall. Well, my mom wasn't home. It was only my dad, and he didn't like when I bothered him when he was on his treadmill, but I didn't really have a choice.

“What?” he kept shouting while he ran, every time I tried to show him the paper and explain. “What?” Finally he snapped off the TV and shut down the treadmill and glared at me. “Albie, you know I only get five minutes to myself a day,” he said, super angry, even though I didn't do anything—it was the man with the clipboard. Dad took a long glug of water.

“I know,” I said. “But”—I held out the form again—“the man at the door wouldn't let me in.”

Dad snatched the form out of my hand, still angry. But then while he was reading the paper, I started to think maybe he was mad at the form.

“Come with me,” he said, and he jumped off the treadmill and stormed out the door. I grabbed the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots even tighter and followed him.

I stood outside Erlan's door for ten whole minutes while Dad argued with the man in the headset. I could see the sweat on the back of my dad's T-shirt from running before. He waved the paper in the man's face while he shouted at him.

“Well, I
don't
give my consent for my son to be on camera!” Dad hollered. I could tell he was extra angry, because the angrier he got, the more spit flew out of his mouth when he yelled, and there was a
lot
of spit coming out at the man with the headset. “I'm his
father,
and that means protecting my kid. And my kid will
not
participate in this reality circus!” A bunch of people from inside came to the door to see what was happening, and a few kids I knew from Mountford who got off the elevator had to wait behind us in the hallway until my dad was done being mad. “You can't stop my son from going to this birthday party,” he said. “He and Erlan have been friends for eight years, and I'm not going to let some idiotic television show get in the way of that.” Erlan and I had only been friends for six years, and Dad kept saying
ER-lan
instead of
Er-LAN,
which is the way you're supposed to say it. But I didn't think that part mattered so much.

Finally the man with the headset said he had to talk to his producer, and he was gone for a long time. But when he came back, he told me I could come inside.

“And you're giving me your word you will not film my son?” my dad asked.

“You couldn't pay me to,” the man said, rolling his eyes as he checked the forms of the kids who'd come up behind us in the hallway.

“I have a good lawyer, you know,” my dad said.

“I'm sure you do,” the man told him.

Dad hugged my shoulder and told me to have a good time. Even though he was still sweaty, I let him hug me anyway.

“Thanks,” I said, because I was glad he was protecting me, like he said, even if I didn't really get how he was doing that. Also I wondered why all the other kids' dads didn't seem to care so much about protecting
their
kids. But I figured that was just one of those things I didn't understand.

I went inside.

• • •

I didn't even know Erlan and his brothers had so many friends. Practically everyone I'd ever met at Mountford was there, plus their parents. There was hardly enough room for everyone, with the TV cameras and the lights and everything, so all the parents were crammed against the walls while the kids played games sitting on the living room floor. We played musical chairs, but instead of chairs, you had to sit on paper plates, because there weren't enough chairs, and it was super hard to run because you had to dodge the two camera guys, who didn't even seem to care that they were getting in the way. I did pretty good at musical plates, though. I got out third from last. Every time the camera came near me, the red-haired lady who seemed like she was in charge would shout out “No release!” and then whoever had the camera would zoom toward a different kid. Which was fine with me because it made running a whole lot easier.

Ainyr won the game.

It seemed like everybody was dressed nicer than usual, even Erlan. Normally he wore shorts and T-shirts, but today he had on a shirt with buttons all down it, and a tie even. “Mom made me,” he said when I asked about it. “I said I just wanted to look like myself.”

The camera people made Erlan and his brothers blow out the candles on their birthday cake three times, because they said they couldn't get the angle right. Just before they were about to blow them out the second time, the red-haired lady pointed to me, right by Erlan's shoulder, and shouted, “No release!” And then they made me move across the room. Gretchen from Mountford said she felt sorry for me about that, but I didn't care so long as I got cake and ice cream. That part was taking forever.

I wondered if you blew your birthday candles out three times, did that mean you got three wishes?

When it was time for presents, Erlan got ten new chess sets.

After the party was over and most of the kids had gone home, Erlan and I hung out in the quilt fort in his bedroom and played Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Erlan kept shouting “No release!” right before he attacked me with the red bot, and then I'd holler “No release!” even louder and attack him right back with my blue one. I knocked his block clean off eight times.

It was the best part of the party.