Absolutely Almost

  helpful hints.

  I still wanted to be friends with Betsy, even if that was hard now. Because of me being cool and her not. I decided the best thing I could do was to do a lot of noticing about exactly what the cool kids did, and then tell Betsy to do those things so she could learn how to be cool too.

  Helpful hints, that was what she needed.

  It was going to be really helpful, actually, because by the end, Betsy would know all the rules for being cool—the ones the cool kids never told you themselves—and who wouldn’t want to know that?

  The only problem was that Betsy didn’t seem to want to talk to me too much anymore. Probably because she was so embarrassed about not being cool. Which made it hard for me to tell her all my helpful hints. But I finally figured out a way to do it. I left a note in Betsy’s desk every morning before school started. A new helpful hint every day.

  Don’t ever be last in the line to go to lunch.

  That was one of my helpful hints. I noticed that was one of the things about being cool, that you always had to get to the lunchroom near the front of the class.

  Sing fake words to the songs during chorus.

  That was another helpful hint. I noticed that one too. Whenever Mrs. Chilcoat came in to do chorus with us, all the cool kids stood in the back and didn’t sing the real words we were supposed to. Some of them were just quiet, no noise at all. But some of the coolest kids, like Sage, made up their own words. Like when Mrs. Chilcoat was teaching us the song “Waltzing Matilda,” Sage kept singing “farting fat Hilda” instead. Which, as far as I could tell, didn’t make any sense, but it must’ve been pretty funny because all the cool kids in the back near us were laughing so hard with their hands over their mouths that they almost got in trouble. So I figured that was a pretty cool thing to do.

  All my notes to Betsy were really helpful hints, I thought. And I left them right where Betsy would be sure to find them, at the very front of her desk, every morning. And I knew Betsy could read them. Betsy was a really good reader.

  Only, for some reason, Betsy never did any of the things that the helpful hints said to do. She kept leaving for lunch at the back of the line, way behind me and all the other cool kids. She kept standing exactly where she always did when Mrs. Chilcoat came in for chorus, and she never sang any fake words.

  I kept leaving the helpful hints, though. A new one in Betsy’s desk every morning. Because if Betsy didn’t figure out how to be cool, then we couldn’t hang out anymore. And I sure did miss hanging out with Betsy.

  second best.

  You should run for vice president of the class, Albie,” Darren told me while we were in line for tetherball. It was Candace and Sage playing. Candace was winning.

  “Really?” I said. My stomach was grumbling from only eating my bagel at lunch, not my kimchi. The week before, Nasim said kimchi smelled, and even though Darren told her to shut up, I didn’t want to eat something that smelled anymore. “How come?”

  “Duh, ’cause it’s only the second-best job you can have in the class,” Darren said.

  “What’s the best one?” I asked.

  “President, dummy.” Darren still called me “dummy” sometimes, even though he was my friend now, only he said it while he was laughing and not laughing at me I didn’t think, so I figured maybe it was okay. Even if I didn’t actually like it a whole lot.

  “What does vice president get to do again?” Lizzy asked. Lizzy and Nasim were making bead bracelets while they waited for tetherball. “Is that the calendar one?”

  “No, secretary makes the birthday calendar,” Sage told her. He jumped up to hit the tetherball but missed and Candace got it instead. Whack! “Vice president switches off the computers at the end of class and makes sure all the lights are turned off when we leave the room. Treasurer takes the hot lunch count to the office, and safety officer carries the first aid kit in fire drills.”

  “The president is the one who takes attendance,” Darren said, stepping up next to play tetherball after Candace whacked Sage out. “That’s the one I’m going to be.”

  That made me confused. “How do you know you’re going to be president if nobody’s voted yet?”

  “Duh,” Darren said as he held up the ball to serve, and Sage snorted as he passed me to go to the back of the line. “Who else do you think would win it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think Aleef would be pretty good at taking attendance, or Grace, or—” I stopped talking because I realized no one was playing tetherball. Instead, Darren and Sage and Candace and Nasim and Lizzy were all looking at me funny. That’s when I realized that Darren hadn’t really been asking me a question. “You’d be a good president,” I said to Darren. That seemed like the right thing to say.

  Darren nodded when I said that, so I knew it was right. He held the tetherball up again to serve. “Thanks. And you’d be an awesome VP.” I smiled at that. “I’ll make sure no one else runs so you’ll win for sure. Then we can be in charge together.” And that time he whacked the tetherball good and hard.

  That made me feel good, and while I waited in line for my turn at tetherball, I started to wonder why I’d been thinking before that turning off the lights was a stupid job. It was going to be a great job. I was going to be awesome at it.

  a note

  in my desk.

  Stop leaving dumb notes in my desk. I don’t want to talk to you.

  That was what the note said that I found in my desk Friday morning.

  I didn’t know who the note was from, or why anybody would think it was me leaving dumb notes in their desk. I only left things in Betsy’s desk, and those were super-helpful hints to help her be cool like me.

  I wanted to leave my helpful hint in Betsy’s desk that morning too: Wear the low kind of socks, not the high ones. But Betsy was already sitting at her desk early, so I couldn’t. I put it in her cubby instead.

  meet

  the kasteevs.

  We went over to Erlan’s apartment to watch the very first episode of their television show on Friday night, me and Mom and Dad. A pilot, that’s what the TV show was called, like it was going to fly an airplane or something.

  Television is weird.

  Erlan’s brothers and sisters all had friends over too, and there were a couple extra adults, so there wasn’t much room. Erlan’s parents brought out folding chairs, but there still weren’t enough for everybody, so a bunch of us kids ended up sitting on the floor. We had popcorn and soda, which normally I wasn’t allowed to drink after dinnertime, but Mom said it was okay just this once. The grown-ups ate veggie sticks.

  “Aren’t you excited?” I asked Erlan. “You’re going to be on TV!”

  He shrugged. He didn’t seem too excited.

  Anyway, I was excited.

  When the show came on, everyone shushed to watch it. At the very beginning, after the title Meet the Kasteevs, they showed Erlan’s parents, really big on the screen, then all the kids, one by one.

  “Alma!” a voice on the screen said. And then there was a shot of Erlan’s big sister Alma cuddling a kitten. It wasn’t the Kasteevs’ kitten, so I didn’t know where it came from, but when I tried to ask, I got shushed.

  “Ainyr!” the voice said. There was Ainyr, putting on lipstick in her mirror. I didn’t even know she wore lipstick.

  Then there was “Roza!” and “Erik!” and “Karim!” and they all did things too, so you could get to know which kid was which, I guess. “Erlan!” was last, and what he did when he was on-screen was give the Vulcan salute. “Hey!” I said, and laughed, because that made me happy.

  When that happened, I looked next to me, and I could tell that even Erlan was smiling. Just a little bit.

  It was a good show. It turned out the first episode was Erlan and his brothers’ birthday party, so that was fun to watch because I’d been there in real life. They even showed me on came
ra once, when we were playing musical plates, except my face was blurred out, so you couldn’t tell it was me if you didn’t know. “No release!” Erlan and I both screamed at once, and giggled.

  We got shushed again, but it was worth it.

  After the show, Erlan came over to my apartment for a sleepover. “You can have the good sleeping bag if you want,” I told him while we were setting up in the living room. “Since you’re a big famous TV star.”

  Erlan threw a pillow at my head. “Shut up,” he said. “Just treat me normal, okay? You always have to treat me normal.”

  I thought about that. And then I picked up the pillow, and I whacked him with it. “Like that?” I said, laughing.

  Erlan laughed too. He picked up my pillow. “Exactly,” he said, and he whacked me back.

  We had a very normal pillow fight.

  I guess it wasn’t too bad, having a big famous TV star for a best friend.

  donut cereal.

  Calista didn’t usually come over on the weekends, only sometimes. She didn’t usually come over in the mornings either, but Dad had a big project coming up and Mom had moved her Pilates schedule, so they said that might happen more. I didn’t mind.

  “Can we get donuts?” I asked Calista first thing, as soon as Mom closed the door behind her. I was still in my pajamas, but I would change for donuts. I would do almost anything for donuts.

  Calista scrunched up her face, thinking. I didn’t know exactly what was going on in her brain, because that was a thing you could never know 100 percent for sure, but if I had to guess, I’d bet that she was thinking about whether she should let me go get donuts, which were delicious, or if she should make me have a healthy breakfast, which was not delicious.

  I guess the healthy part won, because she pulled the box of Cheerios out of the cupboard.

  “Aw, man,” I said.

  “What?” Calista said, unlatching the dishwasher to find a clean bowl. “I thought you said you wanted donuts. So”—she popped the lid on the box and poured out a bowlful—“donut cereal.”

  I inched my way over to the counter. I knew Calista was being silly, because for one thing I knew the difference between real donuts and Cheerios, and donuts tasted way better. Also, I could tell a trick to force me to eat a healthy breakfast when I saw one. But if I had to eat a healthy breakfast, maybe thinking it was a bowlful of mini donuts wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

  “Thanks,” I told Calista, and I grabbed my bowl of mini-donut cereal and went to the fridge to get the milk.

  While I ate breakfast and Calista sipped her coffee from downstairs, we worked on our superheroes, and I was extra careful not to drip any milk drops on mine. Calista said Donut Man was getting really good, and that time, I could tell she wasn’t being silly.

  “You really do love donuts, don’t you, Albie?” she asked me while I slurped up the last of my milk on my spoon.

  “Yep,” I said, because that was the truth.

  Calista smiled at that. “I think I just figured out what to get you for your birthday,” she said.

  I sat up straight in my chair. “You did?”

  She nodded.

  “Is it a donut?”

  “Not telling.”

  “I bet it’s a donut.”

  Calista laughed. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  I pushed my bowl to the middle of the table and pulled out a fresh piece of paper. “It’s a donut,” I said again. And I started on another drawing of Donut Man, with his arms reaching high up into the sky. He was going to be holding the world’s biggest donut, I decided. It was going to be my best drawing yet.

  nobody.

  On Monday morning I got to school early, so I went to the drinking fountain to play Pokémon, but right when I got there, everyone got up and left.

  I thought that was weird.

  “Hi, Darren!” I said to Darren as he walked away. But he kept walking, didn’t even turn around.

  That was kind of weird too.

  During first recess, I couldn’t find Darren at all. He wasn’t playing tetherball like he normally was. Nobody else was there either.

  That was weirder.

  Then at lunch when I went to sit down at the table, Darren put his hand on the bench, right where I was about to sit, and said, “What do you think you’re doing, dummy?” And he didn’t say “dummy” the way he did before, where it was mean-but-not-really. He said “dummy” the way he had before that, where it was actually mean.

  “I’m, um . . .” I glanced around. Nobody would look at me. “I was going to eat lunch?” I wondered why he was asking. That’s what everybody did at lunchtime—eat lunch.

  “Not here you’re not,” Darren told me. “We don’t want liars here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” Even though I was sort of confused about what he was talking about. Because I was pretty sure he meant me. And I was not a liar.

  “Why did you tell everyone that kid Erlan was your best friend?” Candace said, slapping her panda lunch box on the table. “Just so people would think you were cool?”

  “Erlan is my best friend,” I said. I was just standing, because even though Darren had moved his hand, I didn’t think I was allowed to sit down yet. I didn’t know what to do. I was confused about the rules again. “We’ve been best friends since we were four. He lives down the hall.”

  “Liar,” Candace said. She flipped the tabs on her lunch box. “I watched the show on Friday, and you weren’t in it.”

  “I was,” I said.

  “No you weren’t,” Lizzy said. “Candace told us. They had a birthday party with all their friends, and you weren’t there. You’re such a liar. Go sit over there.”

  I looked at Darren. “But . . . ,” I said. Darren was my friend. He said I was cool.

  “Go sit over there, dummy,” Darren said. He didn’t even look up at me.

  • • •

  I ate lunch at the far end of the table, with nobody even near me. They were all scooched over tight on the other side, like I might give them some disease or something.

  I was a nobody all day.

  I was a nobody the next day too.

  And the day after that.

  I wished Betsy was there. I guessed I wasn’t cool anymore, just like her.

  I wished I’d never been cool at all.

  not funny.

  What did the calculator say to the student?”

  That was Mr. Clifton’s joke during math club.

  But when he peered at us over his glasses and cleared his throat and said, “You can count on me!” I didn’t laugh.

  I didn’t laugh harder than Savannah, even.

  I just sat at my desk with my arms crossed over my chest, grumpy, and said, “You don’t count on a calculator. You add.”

  I didn’t even raise my hand to say it either.

  Behind me, Jacob whispered, “Whoa.”

  The past couple days, Mr. Clifton’s jokes haven’t been very funny.

  words.

  Wednesday at school, Darren Ackleman got in trouble for saying “retard.”

  “We don’t call anyone retarded,” Mrs. Chilcoat, the chorus teacher, said, while I did my best to shrink into my chair. “Retard is a bad word.” She told Darren and everybody that they weren’t allowed to use it. Principal Jim even talked about it the next day on the morning announcements, so I guess Mrs. Chilcoat told him about it too.

  “From here on out,” Principal Jim’s voice boomed from the intercom, “the word retard is outlawed at P.S. 183.” Everyone in Mrs. Rouse’s class stared at me the whole time, and I wished there was a secret trapdoor in my seat that would open up, and down below there’d be a lion who would swallow me in one gulp.

  But Darren Ackleman doesn’t call me “retard” anymore.

  Moron.

/>   That’s what he called me on Thursday.

  Moron. Numbskull. Bozo. Idiot.

  Stupid little rat.

  Marblehead. Freak. Dum-dum. Hopeless. Lamebrain. Crybaby. F-minus.

  Dummy.

  That’s what he called me on Friday, and every day since.

  Dummy.

  Dummy.

  Dummy.

  Darren Ackleman doesn’t call me “retard” anymore.

  But I think maybe it’s not words that need to be outlawed.

  no more

  helping.

  I stopped leaving helpful hints in Betsy’s desk. Not because I didn’t want to hang out with her anymore. I did. Almost more than anything else. I still missed hanging out with Betsy. A whole lot.

  I stopped leaving helpful hints because I decided I didn’t want to make Betsy cool anymore. I liked Betsy the way she was, and if she was cool, I didn’t think I’d like her as much.

  So I stopped leaving helpful hints.

  But I kept hoping that one of these days Betsy would figure out that she liked me again. Because I was pretty sure that she wasn’t just embarrassed anymore. I was pretty sure she was mad. And if I could have turned into a whole different person to make her like me again, I would’ve. But I couldn’t. I was just me.

  So all I could do was hope.

  the worst

  thing ever.

  The worst thing that happens is always the one thing you thought would never, ever happen.

  “We’re moving,” Erlan told me on Saturday. “We’re getting a bigger apartment. On the Upper West Side.”

  After he said that, I felt like I got whacked in the chest with a rock. Hard. I couldn’t talk. Not for a whole minute.