Absolutely Almost

by Lisa Graff

  “It’s the letter they sent right before my parents decided I should go to a new school. Only I think maybe they didn’t really get to decide that.”

  Kicked out. I’d been kicked out. I couldn’t understand all the words on the page, but I knew enough to know that much. I wasn’t smart enough, so they kicked me out.

  I wasn’t even smart enough to read the letter about kicking me out.

  “Oh, Albie,” Calista said. Her voice was quiet like a snowflake too.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, because she sounded so upset. But it wasn’t okay, not really, and I think she knew that too.

  We were quiet a long time. We just sat there, me staring at the fuzzy red letters of the school, and Calista rubbing my back in tiny circles.

  Calista was the one who spoke first.

  “If you could go back to that school,” Calista asked me, “right now, would you?”

  I thought about it, long and careful. There were things I liked about Mountford. Erlan was there, and I missed seeing him in class and having lunch with him. I missed having lunch with anyone.

  But my teachers were nicer now. And math made more sense at this school, because I had Mr. Clifton and math club. And I got to read books I liked, like Captain Underpants, and Mrs. Rouse didn’t care so much.

  And P.S. 183 never sent home a letter about me, saying I wasn’t smart enough to go there.

  “No,” I said. “I guess not.”

  “So maybe,” Calista said slowly, “your old school being a bunch of mean jerks was the nicest thing they could have done for you?” She said it like a question.

  I laughed at that, because it was funny, thinking about my old school being a bunch of mean jerks. They sort of were a bunch of mean jerks. I wiped at my nose. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”

  And then I thought of something Mr. Clifton had said.

  “You can’t get where you’re going without being where you’ve been.”

  Calista raised an eyebrow at me when I said that. “Where did you get a saying like that from?” she asked.

  “Mr. Clifton’s grandma.”

  “I like it,” Calista told me.

  “Me too.”

  • • •

  That night when I went to sleep, nothing really had changed. I still wasn’t cool. I still didn’t have a finished A-10 Thunderbolt in a display case in the living room, or a dad who would help me build one. I still didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch. I still had never got more than seven words right on a spelling test. But things felt a little different. Just a tiny titch of a bit.

  That’s because me and Calista had made a frame out of cardboard, she’d helped me paint it and everything, so it looked just like a fancy one on a museum wall. But hanging inside it wasn’t a piece of art. Hanging inside it, high on the back of my bedroom door where no one could see it but me when I was tucked in bed with the door closed ready for sleep, was my letter from Mountford.

  I looked at the letter from across the room, squeezing Norm the Bear close to my chest, and I noticed that the red letters at the top of the page went from fuzzy to clear to clearer.

  what i could

  have said.

  When my dad walked into my room when I wasn’t expecting and saw me working on the A-10 Thunderbolt, almost completed except for the stickers I never got to putting on the first one so they were a little tricky, he seemed really impressed.

  “Albie!” he said. He squatted down right there on the carpet to look at the airplane close up. “How did you do this so quickly?”

  What I could have said was “I don’t know. I’m just good at putting airplanes together, I guess.”

  What I could have said was “Why? Do you think it looks cool?”

  What I could have said was nothing, just a shrug.

  I could have said any of those things.

  But I didn’t feel like it. I felt like telling the truth.

  What I said was, “I already put one together before, so this one was easy. I already put together the one that we bought when we went to the Sea, Air, and Space Museum a year and a half ago that you said you’d help me with, but then you forgot. And then when you got me this one for my birthday, I threw that one out the window. And I was going to throw this one out the window too, but I didn’t. I put it together instead.” And then I looked up at him, and I shrugged, and I said, “Why? Do you think it looks cool?”

  I think my dad did not know what to say to that.

  I think my dad planned on squatting there forever, with his mouth hanging open, not saying anything.

  I went back to putting on the stickers. It took a little bit to figure out which way they should go, but I looked at the instructions for a long time, and eventually I figured it out.

  “I’m so sorry, Albie.” That’s what my dad said after a long time of not saying anything. I’d sort of forgotten he was there. I looked up. “I’m really sorry,” he said again.

  I just shrugged.

  Dad watched me work on the stickers even longer, and I guess his legs must’ve got tired of squatting, because after a while he scooched down on his stomach, his elbows on the carpet. And he picked up one of the sheets of stickers I hadn’t gotten to yet and peeled one off and said, “Where does this one go, do you think?” And we looked at the directions together.

  I put most of the A-10 Thunderbolt together by myself.

  But my dad did help, at the end.

  one last hint.

  Betsy didn’t really need any more helpful hints. She was smarter than me, for sure. But I decided to leave one last one anyway. Even smart people probably like to get a hint every once in a while.

  I think you’re pretty great how you are.

  That’s what it said.

  It was the truth too.

  a note

  from home.

  Albie?” Mrs. Rouse said on Wednesday. “Do you have a note from home about your absence last week? You never gave me one.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck where Darren had flicked it on the way back from the pencil sharpener.

  “Huh?” I said, still rubbing.

  “A note,” Mrs. Rouse said again. “About your absence. I need a note from one of your parents letting me know why you were out.”

  My mouth felt dry all of a sudden. I forgot about my neck. “I . . .” But I closed my mouth, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to say.

  “Just bring it tomorrow, okay?” Mrs. Rouse told me.

  I nodded. Because what else was I supposed to do?

  hannah

  schaffhauser.

  That afternoon, while Calista was in the bathroom, I told her I wanted to watch kung fu videos on Mom’s laptop, but I didn’t. What I did was I found the file on the desktop from when Mom wrote my sick notes, and I opened it. I only had to change a few words.

  Dear Mrs. Rouse,

  Albin was out sick last week. Please excuse his absence.

  Sincerely,

  And then under the Sincerely, Mom always signed her name, Hannah Schaffhauser. In pen.

  Printing it wasn’t the hard part.

  Hannah Schaffhauser

  I practiced Mom’s signature over and over, down the sides of a piece of scrap paper and up again.

  Hannah Schaffhauser

  I’d found an old letter she’d signed in her desk, and I was trying to copy all the letters just right. That’s what I was doing instead of sleeping.

  Hannah Schaffhauser

  I practiced the way the capital H crossed back over itself. I practiced the dip in the big S. I practiced the way Mom did the double-f, which was super different from the way I did it when I signed my own name.

  I practiced and practiced and practiced.

  Hannah Schaffhauser

  It was a long signature, and hard to get just right.

/>   I couldn’t get it perfect, no matter how hard I tried. Only almost perfect.

  Hannah Schaffhauser

  But almost was better than nothing.

  I pushed away the piece of scrap paper and looked at the note I’d printed. All ready for me to give to Mrs. Rouse, except for Mom’s signature.

  If I signed the note and told Mrs. Rouse it was from my mom, then I’d be lying. And if I got caught, I’d get in trouble.

  But if I didn’t sign it and give it to Mrs. Rouse, then Mrs. Rouse would probably call my mom to ask why I was out, and then Mom would know that I didn’t go to school, and then Calista would get in trouble. And I didn’t think Calista should get in trouble, because what she did was a nice thing, giving me a sad day when I needed a sad day. And it did make me feel better, even if Darren Ackleman still called me “dummy” about nine times every day. It made me feel better because I knew that last Monday, while Darren Ackleman was doing social studies worksheets, I’d seen a python eating a pig. And that was worth a million and a half bad names.

  I pressed my pen hard into the paper, and I signed it.

  worrying.

  When I gave the note to Mrs. Rouse the next morning, all that happened was she read it, and she looked at me, and then she looked back at the note, and she said, “Thank you, Albie. You can sit down now.”

  That was it.

  I don’t know what I was so worried about. I didn’t get in trouble at all.

  the worst

  worst thing.

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

  “Where’s Calista?” I asked when my mom picked me up on the blacktop after school that day. Mom never picked me up. It was always Calista.

  “Albie,” Mom said. She reached her hand out to take my backpack from me, but I didn’t want to give it to her. I didn’t like the way she said “Albie.” It was the way to say it that had bad news after it. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Where’s Calista?” I said. We followed the other kids and their nannies and parents out to the sidewalk, and Mom still didn’t answer. “Where’s Calista?” I asked again, because I thought maybe she didn’t hear me. “Is she sick?”

  “Albie.”

  We were on the corner, next to a garbage can overflowing with garbage, and Mom knelt down to look at me while we waited for the light. She looked like she didn’t want to say what she was about to say. I felt hot all of a sudden inside my puffy jacket, like I was coming down with a fever.

  “Calista isn’t going to be your babysitter anymore,” my mom said.

  I couldn’t breathe when she said that. I couldn’t blink.

  “Albie, sweetie. Look at me.”

  “Did she get hurt?” I asked. “Did she move?” I couldn’t believe Calista would just decide not to be my babysitter without even telling me. She taught me how to draw superheroes. She took me for donut days.

  She said I was smart.

  “Calista . . .” My mom’s eyes darted across the street. The cars were stopped at the light, and she wanted to cross, I could tell, but I wasn’t moving. I’d forgotten how. “Calista lied, Albie,” my mom said, turning back to me. “I don’t feel safe having someone take care of you who I can’t trust, so I had to let her go.”

  “She lied?” I asked. That didn’t sound like Calista. Calista wasn’t a liar.

  Mom sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me she’d taken you to the zoo last week instead of going to school, Albie? I didn’t even find out about it until your teacher called me at work this morning to ask about a suspicious note.”

  My stomach had a rock in it, a real rock, hard and round and heavy.

  “Calista didn’t write that note!” I shouted. I saw Sage Moore staring at me as he walked by with his older sister, but I didn’t care. This was worth yelling about. “I wrote that note. Calista didn’t lie about anything. Call her back and tell her you want her to be my babysitter again.” I tugged at my mom’s purse, trying to find her phone. “You have to.” I tugged and tugged.

  “Albie, stop it!” Mom said. She straightened up to standing.

  “But you have to!” I was crying then, and more kids were staring. Laughing too. But I didn’t care about them either. I couldn’t believe this was all my fault. I couldn’t believe my mom fired Calista and it was all because of me, because I signed my mom’s name on a stupid piece of paper. I should’ve signed it better. If I was better at signing, this never would’ve happened.

  “Mom, you have to!”

  “I’m sorry, Albie.”

  That was all she said.

  voice mail.

  After my mom had to race back to work, I found Calista’s phone number on the list of emergency contacts on the bulletin board in the kitchen. I knew I probably shouldn’t call it.

  I called it.

  “This is Calista.” It was her voice mail. “I can’t answer the phone right now, so please leave a message.”

  I left a message.

  “It’s Albie,” I said. “I was just calling because . . .” I stopped talking. Because actually, I wasn’t so sure what I wanted to say. I’d never called Calista’s phone before, and it was weird.

  I looked at the fruit in the bowl on the counter. I knew I should finish talking and hang up, because any minute Harriet the cleaning lady was going to be done vacuuming in my parents’ room and come out to the kitchen and be mad at me for being on the phone, because it wasn’t in her job description to watch children, and it wasn’t worth the extra cash.

  “It was my fault, about the note,” I said into the phone. “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t think of anything. That was all there was to say.

  I hung up the phone.

  mad.

  That night at bedtime, Mom knocked on my bedroom door, because it was closed.

  “Time for bed, Albie,” she said, even though I was already under the covers. Mom sat down on the edge of my bed. I was reading a new Captain Underpants book, and it didn’t even have the fake Johnny Treeface title on it, but Mom didn’t say anything about that. She tucked the covers up around my armpits, even though I was way too old for tucking. She leaned over and kissed my forehead.

  “I love you, Albie,” she said.

  “You do?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.

  “Yes.” She smoothed back my hair. “You are caring and thoughtful and good.” She blinked at me, and that’s when I started to wonder if maybe she’d been crying earlier.

  “I do the best I can,” she told me. She said each word real slow. “At being your mother. I don’t always know how, but . . . I try.”

  I thought that was a weird thing to say. Because I never thought before about being a mom as something you had to try at, like math or spelling. Being a mom was just something you were.

  “I only want you to be safe,” she said, still talking slow. “That’s all I want for you. Safe and happy.”

  I wanted to be mad at her. I wanted to be so, so mad.

  “I know,” I said. I wriggled my arms out from under the covers and set them on top. “But maybe you don’t have to worry about me so much all the time.”

  “Oh, Albie,” Mom said, leaning over close for another kiss on my forehead. “Of course I do. I’m your mother.”

  new kid.

  There was a new kid in school. Darissa, that was her name. I knew because even though she had a different teacher, she was in math club, like me.

  “Albie,” Mr. Clifton said when he was introducing her to the class, “would you like to be Darissa’s buddy this week?”

  “Buddy?” I said.

  “Sure.” He showed Darissa to her seat, the one right next to mine. “Make sure she knows where the nurse’s office is, maybe hang out with her during recess, that sort of thing.”
r />   “Okay,” I said. “I guess.”

  “She’s new to the city too, so maybe you can give her some helpful pointers.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that. I had loads of helpful pointers.

  Darissa smiled a friendly smile at me as she scooched into her desk.

  “Don’t worry,” Mr. Clifton told her before he walked back to the front of the room. “You’re in good hands with Albie.”

  I smiled back at the new girl. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” I said.

  what got

  into me.

  On Science Friday, it was Betsy’s turn to bring something in. She brought in a bug she found hiding under a bench in her apartment lobby. It was a “boxelder bug,” she said. She’d looked it up. It was big and mostly black with some bright red marks, and awesome gross red eyes. It was still alive, in a big empty pickle jar. Betsy had poked holes in the lid, and she had some twigs in there and grass, for it to eat, I guess.

  It was pretty cool. Maybe not as cool as Darren’s dad’s bug that he brought in, but it was still alive, which was way better. She went through the aisles so we could all look at it, and when she got to Darren and Sage, they tried to pretend like they weren’t interested, but you could tell they really were.

  She skipped right past my desk. I think it was probably on purpose, since Betsy seemed like she was still mad at me.

  When it was time for questions, I kept raising my hand, but Betsy didn’t call on me, only Tasha in the front row. Darren kept laughing every time Betsy answered a question, and making fake stuttering noises to Sage. He was sort of quiet so Mrs. Rouse couldn’t hear, but I heard it. I think Betsy did too.

  I wish she would’ve called on me when I had my hand up. I wanted to tell her I thought her bug was the coolest one I ever saw.