Absolutely Almost

by Lisa Graff

  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.

  east 59th

  street tv.

  No 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 esca
pe, 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.

  tuesday.

  What 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.

  caring &

  thoughtful

  & good.

  Most nights Calista was the one who was there for bedtime. She always made sure I had my book and Norm the Bear, even though I didn’t need a teddy bear. But I could tell she knew I liked having him anyway. Then she would say good night and close the door and go out to the living room to draw in her sketchbook.

  That’s what Calista always did at bedtime.

  But when Mom was there for bedtime, she tucked me in, even though I was way too old for tucking. She almost always forgot about Norm the Bear, but that was okay. I didn’t need a teddy bear anyway. But the thing she never forgot, not once, was that she would lean over and kiss my forehead and say, “I love you, Albie.”

  “You do?” I would ask, every time, even though I knew the answer.

  “Yep,” she’d say. “I do. You are caring and thoughtful and good.”

  Caring and thoughtful and good.

  I liked when Mom was there for bedtime.

  johnny

  treeface.

  Albie.”

  When I looked up, Calista was holding my reading log from school. The way she’d said my name wasn’t happy. More like the disappointed way of saying “Albie.”

  I think I liked that way to say my name the least of any of them.

  “What?” I asked, like I didn’t know what she was about to say next, even though I was pretty sure I did.

  “Why is your reading log empty this week?” Which, yep, was pretty much exactly what I’d thought she was going to say. “You told me you’ve been reading at bedtime. Did you forget to mark it down?”

  I didn’t even look at the paper. I already knew what was on there. Pretty much nothing, that’s what was on there. Same as last week’s—all blank, except at the top, where Mrs. Rouse had written, “What happened to all your great reading?”

  “Albie . . . ,” Calista said slowly. Which I guess was supposed to make me want to start talking, but it didn’t. “What’s going on? Did you run out of Captain Underpants already? Should we go to the library again?”

  I shook my head. “Captain Underpants is for babies,” I said at last.

  Calista raised an eyebrow at that. “I thought you liked Captain Underpants,” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “And last I checked,” she went on, “you’re not a baby. Or . . .” She tapped her chin. “Wait, did you start wearing a diaper without telling me?” She stuck her nose down near the seat of the chair I was sitting in and pretended to take a big sniff. “Do you need to be changed, Albie?”

  I scooched my chair away from Calista’s nose. Dad was right. That girl was off her rocker.

  “I’m not wearing a diaper,” I told her.

  “So you’re definitely not a baby, then,” she said like she was thinking things through. “And you do like Captain Underpants.” She tapped her chin again. “So one can only logically conclude”—tap, tap, tap—“that Captain Underpants is not for babies.”

  I sighed and reached for my backpack. “Mom wants me to read this book,” I said, pulling out the stupid, long, boring book she’d given me. “But I tried, and the words don’t make any sense.”

  “Ah,” Calista said. She took the book and turned it over to look at the back. After a minute of reading, she said, “This looks awful.”

  “It is,” I told her.

  Calista thought while I buried my face on the table. I could tell she was thinking, because when she was done, she said, “Would your mom know if you didn’t read this book? Why can’t you go back to reading Captain Underpants? At least you like those books.”

  That surprised me when Calista said that, because it sounded like she was saying I should be sneaky and not tell my mom about Captain Underpants. Which is what I wanted to do anyway, but I was surprised about a grown-up saying it. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to be sneaky.

  “She’d see it on my reading log,” I said. “And then she’d be mad all over again.” I pressed my face harder into the table. Mrs. Rouse was getting mad about the reading log, so I knew I had to start reading something. But if I tried to read Johnny Treeface again, it would probably kill me. And I definitely didn’t want to be dead from a book.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  “It’ll be all right, Albie,” Calista said. “We’ll figure something out. Now, why don’t you go watch some TV?”

  “But . . .” My fifteen minutes were already up. I was pretty sure Calista knew that, because she’d set the timer on the microwave herself.

  “Albie,” Calista said, and her voice was very serious, “I insist that you watch fifteen more minutes of television right this very second. Unless . . .” She tapped her chin again. “Did I hear you say you wanted to clean the toilet?”

  “TV!” I said, laughing. “I pick TV!” And I raced for the couch before Calista could realize she was off her rocker again.

  • • •

  As soon as the timer on the microwave went off, Calista walked into the living room. I snapped off the TV. Calista was holding something behind her back, and I could tell she was up to something. I just couldn’t tell what it was.

  “What’s that?” I asked, trying to peek.

  Calista didn’t answer. “You know,” she said, “I started reading Johnny Tremain, and it turns out it’s actually not so awful. Maybe you should try it again.”

  I wrinkled my nose. Is that what she was being sneaky about? “No, thanks,” I said.

  “All right,” she said with a shrug. “It’s up to you. But I think you might want to give it a shot. It looks like there are cartoons in it.” And she tossed the book next to me on the couch and went back to the kitchen.

  My head shot up. Cartoons? How come I hadn’t noticed before that Johnny Treeface had cartoons in it? I turned to look at the book on the couch.

  It wasn’t Johnny Treeface. It was Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, the same one I’d been reading before. Only Calista had made a new title for it, with construction paper and markers, and taped it to the front.

  JOHNNY TREMAIN

  by Esther Forbes

  That’s what it said on the front.

  “Calista?” I called into the kitchen. I was staring at the book. “How come—?”

  “After you’re done reading,” she called back, “be sure you spell the title right in your reading log, okay, Albie? Johnny Tremain. Just the one e.”

  I looked down at the book.

  Johnny Tremain, that’s what it said.

  I smiled.

  Then I opened the book, and I started to read.

  being where

  you’ve been.

  Normally we didn’t have quizzes in math club, because it was a club not a class, but on Monda
y we had one. Mr. Clifton called it a “whiz quiz,” to try to trick us into thinking it might be more fun than a regular quiz, I bet, but I was not tricked. It was all about multiplication, and I got almost all the answers wrong.

  After math club was over, I stayed behind to tell Mr. Clifton something when nobody else was in the room.

  “I don’t think I should be in math club anymore,” I told him.

  Mr. Clifton set down the stack of papers he was holding. “Albie?” he said, like my name was a question. “Why would you want to drop out?”

  “I just . . .” I scuffed my foot along the carpet. “I’m not very good at math. I think I . . .” I scuffed my foot some more, harder. “I don’t think I should do any math anymore.”

  “Albie.” That time my name was not a question.

  Mr. Clifton didn’t say anything after that, and I figured maybe he was waiting for me to look at him instead of at my shoes. So finally I did. Even though my shoes were more interesting.

  “I want to show you something.” That’s what he said.

  Mr. Clifton walked around behind his desk and pointed to something on the wall—a small blue piece of paper in a square black frame. I followed him so I could look at it more closely. I stood on my tiptoes and stuck my nose right close to the glass.

  It was a report card.

  NAME:

  Daniel Clifton

  GRADE:

  4th

  SCORES

  SCIENCE:

  A

  SOC. STUDIES:

  B+

  ART:

  A-

  READING:

  A