by Jim Benton
Mrs. Avon, but she read them over my shoulder.
STUDENT WRITES HEADLINE.
ALSO THAT LITTLE SENTENCE UNDER THE HEADLINE.
NOTHING HAPPENS ANYWHERE.
JOURNALISTS TAKE THE DAY OFF.
MEAT LOAF. NOBODY LIKES IT.
WHY IS IT SERVED?
BLONDS EVOLVED FROM SPIDERS.
“NOT SURPRISED,” SAY ALL SCIENTISTS EVERY WHERE.
She said she really liked it, and I told her that
I had made it up. Science isn’t certain that blonds
evolved from spiders. It could have been scorpions
or ticks.
Turns out that it was the meat loaf story
that she liked.
“It asks a very simple but interesting
question, Jamie. I think I would read that article. Go
with it,” she said with a big grin, and I leaned back a
bit to avoid being overexposed to gums.
84
After school, Isabella met me at my locker
and we went to sign up for the Camera Club.
When we got there, everybody was showing
each other their pictures on their computers, but
since it’s the Camera Club, you can guess what
happens when new people walk in.
You would think that they would have torn up
our applications right then and there, but they said
Isabella will give them awesome practice if they
decide to become paparazzi and they have to deal
with mentally disturbed celebrities.
Isabella offered to hang around and punch a
few more of them, but we had to make our next
stop, the Cuisine Club.
85
The Cuisine Club was just the Cooking Club
last year, but they changed the name to sound
better. Sort of like how the Student Fitness
Club used to be called Gosh We’re Fat.
The Cuisine Club gets to use the cafeteria
kitchen and, to tell you the truth, I think I might
have actually liked being in this club except for
how we’re not actually being in any of the clubs
we join.
My very beautiful art teacher, Miss Anderson,
is the supervisor for this one. That makes a lot of
sense, because a big part of food is the presentation,
and that’s why the most delicious foods in the world
are so nice to look at.
Except maybe pizza, which looks like a
manhole cover with a massive, unhealing wound.
Or spaghetti, which looks like a plateful of
worms that were thrown through a fan.
Or chocolate —
You know, let’s just change the subject.
When we got there, Miss Anderson was telling
the group about how you have to budget a menu
carefully. You need to think about what things cost.
If you spend all your money on one thing, you won’t
have enough money for anything else.
I felt bad signing up and then leaving. We told
Miss Anderson, like we tell all the rest of the club
supervisors, that we’d be back next week, but we
won’t. We’re just doing this to make our
Permanent Records look better.
It’s probably just like when a momma sea
turtle buries her eggs in the sand. “I’ll be right
back,” she says. “What? No, I wouldn’t leave my
babies all alone to crawl out into the ocean and try
to learn to swim. That would be so super- lame.”
I really wanted to confess to Miss Anderson. I
wanted to admit what we were doing, but Isabella
has us in too deep now.
Too deep.
I can honestly say that I’ve never felt turtlier.
Thursday 19
Dear Dumb Diary,
Hudson looked at me hesitantly at lunch.
“I didn’t have any coffee. I don’t smell,” I
reassured him.
He sat down across from me.
“I didn’t know it bothered you so much,” I
said. “I thought everybody liked the smell of
coffee.”
He shrugged. “Not everybody. I know the
teachers are all crazy about it. But I can’t stand it.”
Isabella and Angeline carried their trays
over and sat down with us. Hudson pointed at their
meat loaf.
“Got any more science to share with us on
this stuff?” he asked me.
They all laughed.
88
Great. I’d become the Meat Loaf Master.
“Mrs. Avon wants me to write a story about it now. I
never should have mentioned it.”
“Let me help you out with that, Jamie,”
Isabella volunteered, waving Bruntford over to our
table before I knew what was happening.
“Hey, why do they serve this when they know
we don’t like it?” she asked Bruntford bluntly.
“What kind of question is that?” Bruntford
asked.
“The kind people answer,” Isabella said.
“It’s, um, it’s good for you,” Bruntford
said. She started sweating a little. I could tell,
because it smelled like a lot of people sweating.
“Not if we don’t eat it,” Isabella said.
“It’s delicious,” Bruntford said. “Kids like it.
Like cake.”
Isabella looked around, and Bruntford’s eyes
scanned the cafeteria with her. It was a scene of
total disgust.
“Do they?” Isabella asked.
“It’s, um . . .” Bruntford began.
“Yes?”
“Don’t be so selfish,” Bruntford oinked at us,
and stormed off.
“There’s the answer,” I said.
“What? What’s the answer?” Hudson said.
I put on my smartest face. “If somebody
won’t tell you the reason, the reason is even worse
than refusing to give you the reason.”
Angeline smiled and nodded. She would never
admit it in a million years, but I know that she knew
that was kind of smart.
“That’s kind of smart,” she said, ahead of
schedule by about a million years.
90
Friday 20
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today in science, we talked about something
called commensalism. It’s when one species
benefits from a relationship that doesn’t harm the
other. Like, when cows graze, they stir up bugs that
birds eat. It helps the birds, and the cows are
unaffected.
Then there’s mutualism, where both
species benefit, like how clown fish eat little
critters that hurt sea anemones, and the sea
anemone’s stingers protect the clown fish from
predators.
And there’s parasitism, where only one
species benefits and the other is harmed, like a flea
living on a dog. (Stinker has had some fleas, but out
of embarrassment, they always lie to the other
fleas about where they live.)
91
Mrs. Curie decided to ask me to see if I could
summarize the lesson, because she thought I wasn’t
paying attention.
For the record, making a jillion of those little
transparent cube things on your notebook doesn’t
necessarily mean that you aren’t paying attention.
&n
bsp; 92
I said that, evidently, nature is always
coming up with a new way for somebody to get
messed with, and that’s the main thing I think
we need to understand about these relationships.
She said that nobody gets messed with in
commensalism or mutualism, and I said that I
thought the bugs that the birds eat might
disagree with her. And the sea anemones are
keeping some other animal from enjoying a nice
clown fish dinner. And the clown fish is keeping
other critters from helping themselves to some
delicious anemone. (I just assume they’re delicious
because they look so much like gummy worms.)
93
“Nope,” I said. “All of nature is designed so
that we’re all messing with each other. All the time.
And no matter how perfectly an animal adapts,
something is right there to mess with them.”
Nobody said anything, so I went on. “You
might think, when you look out there at all the trees
and flowers and squirrels, that they’re in perfect
harmony, but they’re not. They’re locked in a battle
that none of them seems to be able to win. They all
want what they want, and they don’t much care
what they have to do to get it.” I was on a roll now.
Take that, smartness. “Those beautiful
flowers get water and nutrients from the soil,
and they use the sun to create energy, but if they
had little mouths and claws, those flowers would
eat us.”
I had been pointing and looking out the
window as I spoke, and I suddenly realized that the
room had become silent.
94
Mrs. Curie was just staring at me. She seemed
to really be processing what I had said.
In fact, everybody was just staring at me.
Yolanda looked like she might cry. (Nature is no
place for the dainty.)
Finally, Isabella broke the silence.
“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT, GIRLFREN,”
she said loudly, dropping the D on girlfriend because
it sounds cooler that way.
“Class dismissed,” said Mrs. Curie quietly.
95
Saturday 21
Dear Dumb Diary,
I worked on my news story for Mrs. Avon
today, and even asked Dad for help.
I don’t really like asking for help, because it’s
sort of like admitting I can’t do something, but
lately I’ve been thinking that if I have to pound a
nail, I don’t use my fist, I call upon Mr. Hammer for
help. It’s easier for me to ask for help when I think
of my dad as a giant tool.
I told him about the meat loaf questions and
how now I had to write about meat loaf for
Language Arts.
96
“Hmmm, I don’t know, Jamie. Ask your mom.
As you know, she occasionally commits a meat
loaf. Maybe she’ll tell you exactly what’s going on
there,” Dad said, effectively reminding me that
sometimes Mr. Hammer bends the nail you’ve asked
him to help you with, and you have to call on Mrs.
Pliers to help you pull it out.
Mom was in the kitchen, trying to get Stinker
and Stinkette to eat leftovers from last night. (Not
a chance.)
I told her all about my story, and she picked
up her purse.
“Get in the car.”
97
The next thing I knew, we were in the
supermarket.
“Here,” Mom said, handing me some cash.
“Pick out what we’re having for dinner.”
I haven’t been given this opportunity since
The Great Chocolate - Chip Soup scandal of three
years ago.
After looking around a little, I came back to
the cart.
“This isn’t enough money,” I said. “I can’t get
what I want with this.”
Mom laughed.
“Welcome to the world,” she said.
I knew that I was supposed to learn
something, so I popped my eyes open wide and
nodded as I pointed at Mom and laughed a little.
I have no idea how the grocery -store trip was
supposed to help me with Language Arts, but I knew
how to make it come to an end.
98
Sunday 22
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella and I got calls from both the Camera
Club and the Running Club to bring in something for
the fund-raising bake sales they’re doing tomorrow.
I told her that I’m afraid if we don’t
participate, they’ll start asking questions about our
commitment and this will lead to us being kicked
out of the clubs. Pretty soon, questions will be
asked about all of these clubs we joined and the
next thing you know, my future will be destroyed
and Isabella will be still living with her mean older
brothers when she’s 75.
It was that last part that got through to
Isabella.
“Just bring some money and a paper plate,”
she said.
Monday 23
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today, I gave Isabella my money and she
bought a whole plate of brownies from the Camera
Club bake sale. She put half of them on the paper
plate, and we walked down the hall to where they
were having the Running Club bake sale.
“Here’s our contribution,” she said with a
big lying smile.
Then we went around the corner, where she
took out the bag of coffee and sprinkled some on
the brownies we had kept.
“Let’s go,” she said, and I tagged along
cluelessly as she started knocking on classroom
doors.
“Anybody interested in some coffee- flavored
brownies?” she asked. “Mocha -java brownies!
Fund-raiser for the Camera Club!” she crowed.
That was all the teachers had to hear in order
to pull out their wallets and happily give us four
times what we’d paid for the brownies in the first
place.
Then we walked back to the Running Club
bake sale with the money and bought a plate of
cookies. We took those back to the Camera Club
bake sale.
“Here’s our contribution,” Isabella said with
another big lying smile, and we walked away.
Isabella turned to me. “That’s how we do it.”
“Great,” I said. “But it still cost me money.”
“No, it didn’t,” she said. “We have some cash
left over.” She handed me what we had left. I
actually made a dollar on the deal.
I think it’s now pretty clear what Isabella
is going to be when she grows up.
I used to think she was going to be the Devil.
Now I think she’s going to be the Devil’s mean boss
who he complains about to Mrs. Devil every evening
after work.
101
On the way out of school, we signed up for the
Dance Club, and watched them dance for a few
minutes.
I think we were considering actually attending
this one, but the way that they
dance really isn’t
compatible with the way Isabella dances, what with
them all dancing to the beat and being good at
dancing.
We signed up anyway, and now with eight
extracurricular clubs, plus the one we created, plus
soccer, I can feel the colleges just begging me to
attend them now.
102
Tuesday 24
Dear Dumb Diary,
Mrs. Curie seemed rattled in class today. She
almost fell asleep at her desk.
On the way out, I asked her if every thing was
okay, and she said she had been thinking about
what I said about nature messing with people.
She said that those animals didn’t think
about the results of their actions.
“Maybe the clown fish never thought about
the little critters she was eating,” she whispered.
“Maybe the clown fish didn’t think that her actions
might result in them eating meat loaf.”
103
“Oh my gosh,” I said. Mrs. Curie looked more
upset than she should be by clown fish.
I tried my best to make her feel better.
“There’s a pretty good chance that you are
insane,” I said sweetly. “Let’s go down to the
office and see if they have one of those cold things
to put on your head.”
We walked down to the office together. You
remember, Dumb Diary, that my Aunt Carol works
there, which is good because she’s super- nice and I
suspect that the insane find that comforting.
“Aunt Carol,” I said in a very nurse-like way,
“ could you please talk to Mrs. Curie here? She’s not
feeling well. She may have lost her mind, but I
don’t feel that I’m fully qualified to diagnose that.”
I left the office feeling pretty good, and I’m
confident that if I wanted to, I could be a doctor
when I grow up, or a person that handles sweet old
donkeys that have gone bonkers.
I have to go now, DD, and finish my Language
Arts homework.
104
Wednesday 25
Dear Dumb Diary,
I stopped by the office today to ask Aunt
