by Jim Benton
“I’m in,” Isabella chirped immediately.
“Wait a second,” I said. “You were just giving
Angeline all kinds of grief about this. You can’t just
change your mind like that.”
Light glinted across Isabella’s glasses in such a
way that I couldn’t see her eyes. That’s always
disconcerting. It’s like talking to a Stormtrooper.
“Jamie,” she said, “money changes things for
me, in the same way that a penguin can change a day
at the beach for a killer whale. It’s what I am. It’s what
I believe in. I’m not going to lie to you, Jamie. There is a
price I would sell you for, and it’s not as high as you
think.”
“Just tell me it’s higher than what a car costs,”
I said.
“It’s more than what many cars cost,” she said,
and patted my hand. I jerked it away.
“Money can’t buy happiness,” I wisely
reminded her in my ultra-wise wisdom.
“We’ve all heard that saying a million times,” she
scoffed. “But we’ve never heard it from somebody who
needed money. If you offer a dollar to a broke person,
they
won’t turn it down. Do you think they’ll ever say,
No, thanks. I’m afraid that buying myself something to
eat with that dollar might not make me happy? Grow
up, Jamie.”
She was right. In a horrible, horrible,
horrible way, she was right. We don’t need all the
money in the world, but we need some of it.
And maybe Angeline really did have a good
idea. I mean, it had to happen sooner or later, right?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE IDEA
Angeline’s bedroom is clean. It’s pink and
small
—
Angeline’s parents are not rich
—
but
everything is neat and organized, and there are a lot of
tiny things neatly arranged.
“How do you keep things so
undestroyed
?”
Isabella asked with genuine curiosity as she looked
around at all the undestroyed items.
There was a tiny glass unicorn on Angeline’s
dresser.
“Look at those frail little glass legs,” Isabella
said with wonder. “I can feel them starting to break
just by staring at them.”
“Let’s not stare at them, then,” Angeline said,
motioning for us to join her on the floor. “Let’s look
at this instead. This is the idea I wanted to tell
you about.”
She slid a box out from under her bed and
opened it with great ceremony, beaming.
“What do you think?” she asked proudly.
It was a paper plate with writing on it.
We heard Isabella opening the front door before
we realized she had stood up and left the room.
She was halfway down the front steps before we caught
up to her.
“You didn’t even let me tell you about it,”
Angeline whined.
“You said this idea was worth money,” Isabella
said. “A paper plate with writing on it? I know a bad
idea when I see one.”
“We came all the way over here. We should at
least let her do her little presentation,” I said.
Isabella dragged her feet as hard as she could,
groaning loudly as she plodded from the front porch all
the way back to Angeline’s room.
She flopped down on the floor as hard as if
somebody had scooped out her insides and replaced
them with barbecue charcoal.
“Let’s hear it, Cupcake,” she moaned.
“So,” Angeline began, cheerfully unaware that
the name “Cupcake” is an insult. (Although as I
write this, I’m not sure why, since they’re delicious and
beautiful and everybody likes them
.
.
.)
“So, you know how obesity is a problem,” she
began, “but people may not always know how to
address it
—”
“You address it like this:
TO FATTYPANTS
,”
Isabella cut in.
Angeline ignored the interruption and Isabella’s
accompanying snorts.
“So, with these specially printed plates, people
are reminded of what they should be eating,” she
went on. “See, it’s like a pie chart, except there’s not
much room for pie.” She giggled, absurdly pleased with
her own lame joke.
Angeline held up a plate and pointed to the
different sections with a long, graceful finger (which
looked like a swan finger, if swans had fingers). There
was a diagram showing how much of each meal should
be protein, how much should be vegetables, and so on.
“How do we make money off this?” Isabella
demanded.
Angeline smiled. “Well, we come up with the
design
—
I know Jamie can do that, she’s so talented
—
and we sell the idea to a company that manufactures
plates. I know that you can do that part, Isabella.
You’re very persuasive. I mean
—
you guys can do
so much.”
She was manipulating us like dough. Like the
sweet, delicious dough that we are. And she was baking
us into the type of delicious cookies you can only get
from dough like us. And she was putting sprinkles of us
on top of us, and
—
forget it. I’m hungry. I want
some cookies. I’ll pick this up in the next chapter,
called
.
.
.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OKAY, I HAD COOKIES AND CAN WRITE AGAIN
Isabella and I discussed how much better
Angeline’s plate idea could be, if it wasn’t drawn so
badly by Angeline, and if it was pitched by somebody
better at pitching than Angeline.
“I’m right here, guys,” Angeline said. “I
can hear you.”
I patted her hand softly. “Angeline, it’s
important that you realize that we know that.”
“What would somebody pay for plates like this?”
Isabella asked, getting to the point. That’s how she
likes her points: gotten to.
“Maybe only a little bit more than they’re
already paying for plates,” Angeline said. “But if the
manufacturers pay us a little for each one, it could
add up.”
Angeline watched Isabella stand up and move
slowly toward the door.
“
AND Mr. Henzy will give us extra credit for
this,” she added, batting her eyelashes out of habit
before remembering that her eyelash batting doesn’t
work on us. “He’d love to see us do a project that would
increase our real-life personal finances.”
“Do you think it could bring my grade up to a D?”
Isabella asked hopefully.
“It might. What’s your grade now?”
“It’s a pretty bad grade,” Isabella said. “It’s like
&n
bsp; if you concentrated your hardest on intentionally
forgetting everything you were ever taught.”
“Like an F?” Angeline asked. “Like you’re
failing?”
“It’s a little lower than that,” Isabella said.
“I didn’t know there was anything lower than
failing,” Angeline said, blinking her wide, innocent eyes.
Isabella chuckled.
“There’s an entire WORLD of grades below
what you surface dwellers know,” Isabella said. “While
you’re floating around up here in the clouds, among
the A’s and B’s, you have no idea what’s going on down
in the G’s and H’s.”
“Isabella got a J once in math. Basically, that
means that she couldn’t count to one,” I explained.
“I totally could,” Isabella said. “I just didn’t
want to.”
“So, what do you say, Angeline?” I asked. “Will
this get her up to a D?”
“It might,” she said with a shrug.
“I like this,” Isabella said, waggling the plate at
Angeline. “It’s a little bit like stealing, but also a
little bit like cheating.”
Of course it was nothing like either of those
things, but when Isabella is in a good mood, sometimes
it’s best to just let it go without an argument.
And so, without any more preparation, we
plunged into The Big Weird Thing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE PRICE WE HAVE TO PAY
I never really know what to expect when I drag
my tail into math class. It might be boring, but on
the other hand, it could be terrible.
This time it was terrible. Again.
Mr. Henzy made us guess at the cost of a college
education. Again, we had to take our papers home and
get our parents to sign them.
Isabella said she wasn’t going to fall for it this
time, so her plan was to just ask her parents what it
would cost, write down a number a little higher than
that, and have them sign it. She had not yet decided if
she would be stomping on her dad’s foot anyway.
That sounded like a good idea to me
—
not the
stomping part, just the asking part
—
so I gave it a
shot at dinner.
“What’s it going to cost you two to put me
through college?” I asked just as my dad was trying to
squeeze down a bite of one of my mom’s casserole-
shaped objects. “And let’s make it someplace good,
like a really good college. Something deluxe. One where
they grow ivy on the buildings.”
A lot of people credit Dr. Heimlich with the
brilliance of his maneuver
—
you know, the one where
your mom gets behind your dad and squashes his guts
with one big sudden squeeze. And the good doctor
deserves a lot of credit. Think how many lives that
move has saved.
What they never give him enough credit for is the
hilarious
popping sound a clump of casserole
makes when it’s forced out your dad’s trachea at
eighty miles an hour.
It should be called Heimlich’s Hysterical
Champagne Bottle of Comedy.
After Dad recovered from being maneuvered, he
made it clear why he had choked.
“Jamie, parents can’t always afford college for
their kids. Sometimes kids have to get loans to afford
college,” he said, and his voice had a sad, serious
tone to it.
“And scholarships,” Mom added. “Students
often try to get scholarship money from the college,
based on good grades or special abilities.”
“So
.
.
.
how much is it going to cost?” I
asked again.
Dad stared down at his casserole, and it
probably stared back. It’s always possible that Mom
baked something’s eye into dinner.
“Jamie, we’re going to make it work for you,” he
said, and he stood up and walked away from the table.
I looked at Mom, and she faked a smile. I have
no idea why people try that. There’s nothing more
obvious than a faked smile.
In the corner of the room, Stinker ate the thing
Dad had coughed up.
Then I watched him eat it a couple more times,
and it struck me that he was doing a pretty good job of
dramatizing just how I felt.
I went up to my room and worked on Angeline’s
plates. There’s something about the smell of pencil
shavings and glitter that always makes me feel
better. I came up with a few ideas:
I showed them to Angeline and Isabella the next
day at lunch.
“Is this all you’ve got?” Isabella asked,
which is the perfect question to ask somebody if your
goal is to destroy their self-confidence. This never
works on me, however, because Isabella destroyed
whatever I had left of that years ago, and in its place I
grew a hard, turtle-ish shell.
“I think they’re great,” Angeline said, her eyes
shimmering annoyingly with excitement.
“So how do we test them?” I asked.
Isabella grabbed Dicky Flartsnutt by the collar
and pulled him over to our table. Dicky, you might
recall, Dumb Diary, is our very good friend who we love
and who is a dork.
Isabella had him look at the plates, which he did
with the enthusiasm that only dorks have for things
like paper plates and that rainbow you sometimes get
with a garden hose.
“They’re plates,” he said, getting right to
the heart of it.
“If you had to eat off these, would it make you
want to be less fat?” Isabella asked.
Angeline interrupted.
“No. No. Hang on. That’s not the right question.
Dicky, first tell us, do you like the look of these
plates?” she asked gently.
“Yes. Jamie drew on them. I can tell.”
“That’s right. But what if Jamie hadn’t drawn
on them?”
“Then I guess they’d be blank.”
I interrupted.
“Dicky, we want to sell plates like these to
people like your mom. Do you think she’d buy these?
You know, to set up balanced meals for you?”
“Yes,” he said, and Isabella released him with
a little shove.
“They’re a hit!” Angeline squealed, making
tiny rapid claps directly in front of her face.
“AHIT?” Isabella scoffed. “Because Dicky
likes them? Dicky likes the sound of the Velcro on his
shoes, too.”
“They’re not a hit exactly, Angeline,” I said.
“Not yet. We have some work to do.”
In the weeks that followed, we tried to figure out
how to really make the plates a genuine hit. Angeline
started researching companies that made paper
plates, and I worked on improving the designs.
Isabella watched a lot of Netflix movies about
companies or jobs or something
> —
she never really
explained exactly how that was helping, but I’m sure
she was learning important stuff.
I must have redrawn the designs for the plates a
million times, after learning what proportions of
protein, grains, vegetables, and other stuff the experts
recommended.
There was only one thing left to do. We had to
actually make some plates and test them out.
First, we needed a way to get the images on the
plates. It turned out that running them through
the copier at school was just about the simplest,
easiest way to jam it forever and make it catch
on fire.
We explained to Assistant Principal Devon (my
Uncle Dan) what we were doing with the plates as he
was vacuuming up the copier toner that the firemen
had spilled all over the floor.
He said that maybe Miss Anderson (my art
teacher) could make it an art project and have all the
kids decorate their plates themselves with
nonpoisonous markers and try them out at lunch.
(Assistant principals are always really interested in
not poisoning kids.)
Using my designs, each kid would draw the
proportions on their plate, and then the cafeteria
workers would put the food on the plates based on
the design.
And that’s what happened.
I make it sound like this all happened fast, but it
actually took a while to get everything together.
Miss Anderson didn’t really want to interrupt her
class schedule with the plates because she had very
big, very important plans for her students to
create some spectacular masterpieces featuring
macaroni glued to something. You know, just like the
great works of art you see in museums.
But Uncle Dan talked her into it, possibly
because I think she has an adult crush on him, which is
illegal because he’s married to my Aunt Carol, but I’m
not going to say anything because we ARE getting our
plates after all.
Sorry, Aunt Carol, you’re on your own with this
one. Hope there’s not a big awful divorce coming up.
