Absolutely Almost (6 page)

M
om thumbed through my homework folder while our dinner whirled in the microwave. I looked at the time. Four minutes thirty-seven seconds to go. My stomach growled.

“Albie,” Mom said slowly, pulling a sheet out of the folder, “is this your reading log?”

I adjusted the napkins on the table so they were perfectly straight against the corners, just the way Dad liked, even though he was working late again, so he wouldn't be there to see it. “Yep,” I said. I tried to wait until Mom started congratulating me on all my good reading to start smiling, but I couldn't help it. A hint of a grin snuck onto my face. We only had to read for fifteen minutes a night, but the past four days I'd read for twenty at least. On Thursday I even read for
forty,
which I never even thought was possible, unless you were Grandpa Park with his newspaper.

But for some reason, Mom didn't seem happy like she should have been. “What is this?” she asked. And for a second, I thought she'd found some sort of mashed-up banana in my backpack or something, that was how disgusted her question sounded. But there wasn't any mashed-up banana. She was still looking at my reading log. She held it out to me.

My eyes scanned down past where Mrs. Rouse had written “Great reading, Albie!” But I didn't see anything that looked mashed-up-banana disgusting.

“What?” I asked.

Mom flicked the paper back to her own eyeballs. “What on earth are these books you've been reading, Albie?” she said. “
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
?
Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets
?
The Invasion of the Potty Snatchers
?”

“Yeah,” I said. I still didn't get why she was mad, and when Mom got like that—confusing mad—it was best to talk slow. “The Captain Underpants books. They're really funny.” The only problem with them was that their titles were so long, it took me forever to write them on my reading log. But it was worth it.

I set the forks down on the table and moved to the backpack. I pulled a book out for her to see.
Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants.
“I've read four already.” Calista had gotten them for me from the library, which I was about to tell my mom, but for some reason at the last minute, I decided not to. “Look at the pictures,” I said instead.

Mom skimmed through the book so fast, I was pretty sure she didn't even notice the flipbooks, which are the funniest parts. “Albie,” she said slowly. Her forehead was wrinkled up like it was at Dad sometimes when they talked about who was supposed to do the grocery shopping, but I still didn't get why. We weren't talking about grocery shopping. “You're way too old for these books.” She flipped the book open again, to a page where Professor Pippy P. Poopypants is getting really mad about everyone making fun of his name. It's funny because he's a scientist, but also he has a really terrible name. Mom held the page up so I could see. “Look at these drawings,” she said. “This is for babies.”

I didn't think the book was for babies at all, because for one thing, babies can't read.

“You're in fifth grade, Albie,” Mom said. “You should be reading books for fifth-graders.”

The timer on the microwave went off then, but Mom didn't pull out our enchilada dinners. Instead she tossed
Captain Underpants
on a pile of mail on the counter and walked off down the hall. I stood at the table, just waiting. I stared at the enchilada dinner sitting inside the dark microwave. I wanted to take it out and start eating, because I wasn't sure where Mom went and my stomach was growling again, but last time I tried to pull a dinner out of the microwave, I got burned by the steam and Mom got mad at me for being careless.

“Here,” Mom said when she finally walked back into the kitchen. She was holding a different book, a new one. She handed it to me.

“
Johnny Tr—
” I tried to sound the title out, but it was tricky looking.

“
Johnny Tremain,
” Mom said. “I read it when I was in fifth grade, and I loved it. Now
there's
a book for kids your age.”

I turned the book over in my hands. It was thick. Long. Too long. I opened it up. The words were tiny, and there weren't any pictures.

It did not look nearly as good as
Captain Underpants.

“I want you to read at least one chapter tonight for your reading log, okay?” Mom said. I must've been frowning on accident, because then she said, “Just try it, Albie. I bet you'll love it.”

I didn't say anything.

“Now, why are we just standing here? Didn't the microwave beep? Let's eat!”

“I was waiting for you to take the food out,” I said.

“What, you can't take food out of the microwave by yourself? You're a big kid, Albie. You need to start acting like it.”

My stomach was still growling when I took my first bite of the enchilada dinner, but somehow it didn't taste nearly as delicious as I remembered.

• • •

I tried to read
Johnny Tremain.
I really did. I read all the words in the first paragraph, and then the second one. Then I started over with the first paragraph.

That book didn't make any sense.

Captain Underpants
was still out on the pile of mail in the kitchen, and that book did make sense. Plus it was funny. But
Captain Underpants
was for babies, and I wasn't a baby.

The next morning, when Mrs. Rouse asked for my reading log, I told her I lost it.

N
o more TV,” Calista said. She was feeling grumpy, I could tell, because some days she'd let me watch for way longer than fifteen minutes, pretending she didn't notice that the timer in the kitchen had gone off. Those days, she'd just stay on the couch, legs tucked underneath her, and doodle in her sketchbook while I watched cartoons. But I guess not today.

“Come on, Albie,” she said. She snapped shut her sketchbook. “Turn off the TV, okay?”

“Aww,” I whined. “But I'm
watching
something.”

“Your show ended two minutes ago,” Calista told me, getting up to grab the remote. “Right now you're watching a commercial for shower cleaner.”

“But it's
interesting,
” I argued.

Calista zapped the TV off.

“Can I play Xbox?” I asked her.

“That's a screen,” she replied. Which meant no.

I slumped my shoulders down and sunk onto the floor.

“Want to see if Erlan's home?” Calista said. “Maybe he wants to hang out.”

“They're taping a big family meeting today, so I can't come over.”

Calista thought for a while. “Want to do an art project?”

“No.”

“Bake cookies?”

“No.”

“Ride bikes?”

“It's eight thirty,” I told her. “I'm not allowed on my bike after dark. Plus, only half an hour till stupid bedtime.” I shouldn't have told her that. Maybe she would've forgotten.

“We must be able to think up
something
to do.” Calista tapped her finger on her lip the way she did when she was about to be silly. “Want to have a contest to see who can stand on their head the longest? I'll let you win.”

I did not laugh. “No,” I said.

“Want to eat all the old pickles in the fridge and see if we throw up?”

I did not laugh harder. “No.”

“Want to build a cockroach obstacle course?”

That time I laughed a tiny bit. “We don't have cockroaches,” I told Calista.

She nodded at that, very thoughtful. “Well, maybe if we build them an obstacle course, we can get them to show up.”

I liked Calista. She could be funny when she wanted to be. But I was not in a funny mood. “What I
want
to do,” I told her, “is watch TV.”

“I've got it!” she shouted suddenly. Then she raced to the kitchen.

I followed her. “I don't want to bake cookies,” I reminded her.

“Don't worry, it's not cookies. I wouldn't
dream
of giving you cookies, Albie.”

“Good.”

She was pulling flattened-up cardboard boxes out from behind the door of the pantry, where Mom keeps them until Dad finally bundles them so I can take them for recycling downstairs. “Perfect,” Calista said at last. She pulled out the biggest box, from Mom's last grocery order, and walked past me down the hall.

I followed her some more. She turned into my room and started digging through my desk drawers.

“I said no art projects,” I told her when she yanked out a pair of scissors and a black permanent marker.

“Good,” she said. “Me neither. I hate art.”

That time I knew Calista was lying, because she already told me before that she moved to New York to go to graduate school to study art. And that probably meant she liked it.

But I decided not to tell her I knew she was lying, because by then she was already cutting up the cardboard box, and I sort of wanted to find out why.

• • •

“Isn't this better than regular TV?” Calista asked me. We were lying on our stomachs sideways across my bed, squished up next to each other with our feet hanging off because “No Shoes on the Bedspread, Albie” is one of Mom's top ten most serious rules. Calista handed me the remote. “Here, you pick the channel.”

It wasn't a real remote control. Calista had made it out of cut-up cardboard and markers. But it turned out she was pretty good at art after all, because the way she decorated it, it looked almost real. I aimed it at the cardboard TV frame she'd taped around my window and pretended to push one of the fake remote control buttons.

“Ooh!” Calista squealed like I'd really done something. “I love this channel!” She pointed out the window.

Our apartment isn't super high, only the eighth floor, but from my window, you sure can see a lot. Two high-rises just across the street, with an even taller one behind that. And if you crane your neck to the left, a view of Park Avenue. Straight below, you could see all the people leaving the bodega downstairs, and the Laundromat next door.

I guess we did get a lot of channels.

I looked where Calista was pointing. Lots of people had their curtains closed, but not everybody. Right across the street was a blond lady in a blue shirt, standing by the window, stirring something in a bowl in her kitchen. She bounced a little bald baby on her shoulder.

“What do you think she's making?” Calista asked.

I squinted my eyes. “Spaghetti?”

“Quiche?” Calista guessed.

“Brownies?”

“Mmm.” She leaned forward. “Maybe she'll let us have some.”

I laughed and changed the channel. This time we found an old couple, sitting on the couch. We could tell they were watching TV by the way the light flickered off their faces. We guessed what show it might be until they turned off their TV two minutes later, and then we changed the channel again.

We watched a teenager sitting outside on her fire escape, talking on her cell phone, her feet dangling over the edge to the street below.

We watched a father helping his son brush his teeth at the bathroom sink.

We watched a man hang a bicycle on hooks high on his living room wall.

We watched two women arguing across a dinner table. One of them was crying.

We watched three different people typing at laptops, right in their windows, and not one of them ever looked up to catch us spying.

We even watched a lady give a boy a haircut.

When it was time to get ready for bed, Calista told me she'd help me take the cardboard TV to the recycling, but I said I wanted to keep it up a little longer.

It was sort of nice, to be able to change the channel whenever I wanted.

W
hat kind of insect is good at math?”

That's the joke Mr. Clifton said on Tuesday. No one knew the answer.

“An account-
ant
!” he told us.

That was a good one. We told Mr. Clifton to use it for the math club kids next year for sure.