by Karen Rivers
Cover
Title page
Dedication
A Note to Readers from Tink Aaron-Martin
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Zoinks! My encyclopedia is now an e-book. I mean, of course it is. Everything is e. Pretty soon they’ll just call them books and not e-books and we’ll all be like, “What is that big pile of paper held together with two pieces of cardboard?” The thing is that I like paper books. My dad says that’s because I am a hundred years old on the inside, but really it’s because I just like them. Sometimes there is no explanation for why you like a thing, you just do. But! E-books are also excellent, as you know, because you just bought one. Yay you! And you can totally have thousands of them in one place, unlike real actual books, as you obviously already know.
I thought you might need a little help with the footnotes, though, because not every e-book has them. You see the little X after the question mark at the end of this sentence?X That’s a footnote, and I like to use them because sometimes my thoughts have tiny little extra thoughts (TLETs) attached to them. If you select it, it will take you to my TLETs. You can try it now with that footnote up there. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
You’re back! And that’s all there is to it. I hope you like my book. And my TLETs. Let me know! You can e-mail me at [email protected]. (But only if you are going to say something nice. Please?)
Aa
Some kind of lava.
Almost always the first entry in any encyclopedia.
And, more important, the very first entry in the Encyclopedia of Me, Tink Aaron-Martin. Exclamation point! Ta-daaaaa! Dance for joy! Etc.!
The fact that “aa” is a word at all is the most terrific thing I learned from reading the entire set of encyclopedias.1 I’m sorry, but it’s true. Things that are not true include the sentence, “I read the entire set of encyclopedias.” But I did look at most some of them. They are quite attractive. The edges of all the pages are dipped in gold dust that shimmers like a pop star’s eye makeup.
In my defense, it’s too hot to read.
Likewise, it is also too hot to write. But that won’t stop me! I am an unstoppable force of encyclopedia-writing brilliance! I am . . .
Grounded. Which means that I have a lot more spare time than the average almost-thirteen-year-old.
I expect this book will take a long time to write — a week, if Hortense, our hairless catlike animal, stops bothering me; ten years, if she continues to claw at my legs and head in a desperate attempt to get attention and/or love, which is hard to come by when you look like a shriveled handbag. I don’t mind how long it takes, as I happen to love writing almost as much as I enjoy reading.
There is a chance that this book will become a bestseller and I’ll become rich and famous! Of course, there is also a chance that Prince X will land in my backyard in his own private helicopter and whisk me away to his palace, which is to say, there is no chance at all. Sadness.
So, back to “aa,” which was what I was doing before I had to stop to explain to you about the encyclopedia. “AA” (all caps) is also a battery type and a bra (of no) size and what you shout after a volcano erupts and you are running for your life from the river of jaggedy lava, as in “AAAAH! THE AA!”
That’s not something you’d read in a regular encyclopedia, trust me.
This is not a regular encyclopedia.
It’s better.
Aardvark
Apart from beginning with two As, and thus being as fantabulicious as “aa” and “Aaron-Martin,” the most noteworthy thing about aardvarks is that an aardvark is the mascot of my sad, crumply little school, Cortez Junior High.
I wish I was making a joke, but I’m not. Not about the relative crumpliness of the school itself, and certainly not about the pure, unadulterated sadosity of having an aardvark in your cheering section. It’s very hard to get enthused about a sport when the thing that is cheering you on is a giant, slow-moving, piglike mammal that in real life drags itself on stubby legs through hot sandy deserts, snuffling ants, and hoping to die.2
Inexplicably, it was decided that this creature should also be purple. As you might have guessed, my school places last in most sporting events. In comparison, the mascot of our chief rival, the Prescott School for the Unnaturally Athletic, winners of every sporting event they have ever taken part in, is a large and ferocious, normal-colored lion.
You never want to get a detention on game days. Because then you have to wear the Aardie suit and spend hours running for your life from the (not) hilarious antics of the Prescott Lion. It is like being mauled by a vicious carnivore with paws the size of tennis rackets while entombed in a cocoon of stale sweaty socks and old spitballs as your so-called friends die too young from fits of laughter while occasionally shouting your name and whistling.
Aaron, Baxter (Dad)
My dad, Bax Aaron, is a plumber. Nobody calls Dad “Baxter.” He says that “Baxter” sounds like the name of either a fat orange cat or a manservant on a British comedy, and he is neither, although he’d not-so-secretly have liked to be on a British (or any) comedy. Dad spent his whole life wanting to be an actor on TV. But he’s a plumber because his dad was a plumber and so plumbing was his thing to fall back on. The moral of this semi-tragic story is that you should probably make your “thing to fall back on” a lot more fun than plumbing. (Unless you enjoy plumbing, in which case, you should go for it.)
Dad is completely movie-star good-looking, so why he is not a famous actor is a mystery to most. Everywhere we go, women eyeball Dad like they wish they could capture him and keep him forever, like a piece of art or a hunk of cheese. Dad is generally oblivious and/or is very good at acting oblivious, more evidence of his incredible and overlooked talents.
Dad likes salads featuring tiny cobs of corn, Rollerblading, motorcycles, and reggae. He says reggae is his people’s music, but I am one of his people and I don’t like reggae at all. Frequently, he can be found dancing to the reggae that plays in his head, making him resemble a deranged person with an uncontrollable twitch disorder. He knows how to play a banjo, a guitar, a ukulele, and a strange stringed thing that is called a lute. He is quite brilliant musically, another gift I did not receive in the gene lottery.
Dad is British, and yes, he has an accent. He is African-American,3 except not American. In Britain, they say “African-Caribbean.” Dad would never say “African-Caribbean-American-Jamaican” or whatever. “Black” is an OK thing to say, at least in our family. Other families feel differently, or so I hear. The worst word is “colored.” Don’t ever say that unless you want to get punched directly in the stomach by me. I’d punch your nose, but I likely can’t reach it, especially if you’re tall, unless I stand on a chair, and you’d probably escape before I got properly positioned.
And NEVER say the n word. Not even jokingly. If you’ve ever said it, shut this book right now and get out of here. OUT.
Aaron-Martin, Isadora (Tink)
That’s me.
Tink Aaron-Martin.4
I am an exotic mystery of mixed heritage, half Dad’s and half Mom’s. Obvi. (My mom is a white redhead. She’ll come up later, as Jenna Martin under the Ms. Sorry. I cannot help it if my family is alphabetically inconve
nient. If you are dying to know all her details, you can skip ahead. I don’t mind.)
When people ask me what I am, I usually say, “I’m a human being.” Then when they say, “I mean, what RACE are you?” I say that I am African while fixing them with a patented look that I like to call my Are You a Racist? Face. Then I point out condescendingly that we are all African. I mean, think about it! Cradle of civilization? Look it up if you don’t know what I’m talking about! Use the Internet. I’m sure you have access to it5 and are free to use it with reckless abandon.
More about me: I used to think I was funny. At school whenever you are forced at teacher’s gunpoint to describe yourself in five words, I would always pick easy things like “nice,” “biracial,” “smart,” and “ambidextrous.” And “funny.” Because I thought I was.
But, then, I found out that I wasn’t.
See, I had one joke I liked to tell all the time that usually made people laugh themselves senseless.6 Then I got this note from Freddie Blue Anderson on the magnet board in my locker. The note said: “That joke is embarrassing. I’m sorry. It’s too babyish. I love you. And I’m only telling you this because you are my BFF, so don’t get mad. AND DON’T CRY.”
Freddie Blue is too nice to come right out and say that I’m just not funny at all, but I can read between the lines. I am an expert at reading between the lines. For example, when Mom says, “You have such an unusual face. If you were taller, you could be a model!” What I know she means is, “You are not pretty enough to be a model.” Not that I’d want to be a model. I wouldn’t! I can’t imagine anything more boring or depressing, if you want to know the truth. But I’d like for it to be an option, and it isn’t.
This is at least partly because of the Freckles. The Freckles are so dark, they look like a constellation of black holes. I realize it’s hard not to stare, but staring is rude and you should know better.
My eyes are blue like Mom’s. Just regular blue. Not anything anyone will ever compare to a lake or the sky or even a pair of jeans, unless the jeans are faded and drab.
And I’m short. Really short. So short that sometimes, depending on the chair, my legs dangle. The leg dangling is one of the major banes of my existence.
I just asked my dad what else he would tell people about me, if he had to describe me, and he said, “You’re as sharp as a bag of tacks!”
“Dad,” I said. “Be serious.”
He scrunched up his face and scratched his head as though he was about to say something terribly wise. Instead, he said, “I’d tell them that you want a pony.”
“DAD,” I said. “I wanted a pony when I was FOUR.”
“How old are you now?” he said.
“Dad,” I said. “I’m almost thirteen.”
“Oh,” he said. “Do you still want a pony?”
“No,” I sighed. “Forget it.”
“I’m sorry, bunny,” he said. “I would tell them that you don’t want a pony.”
“DAD,” I shouted. “YOU AREN’T HELPING.”
“Don’t go off,” he said. “I’d tell them that you are the Peacemaker.” He hugged me. “And that you always smell like bubble gum.”
I pushed him away. “Great,” I said. “Very helpful. Thanks bunches.”
There is a lot of fighting in the Aaron-Martin household, and I can end it by holding my hands up in the middle of the room and screaming, “STOP IT!”7 over and over again while holding my breath. Sometimes this causes me to fall over as my brain struggles desperately for air. Usually, when I fall, they stop. Which is what Dad means when he says I’m the Peacemaker.
“It’s the Peacemaker,” he says. “We better stop before she dies!”
I hate that my dad calls me this. I do not want to be “the Peacemaker.” I especially don’t want them to think it’s funny. Or cute.8
But mysteriously, sometimes (not always), they stop.
The fights are almost always about Seb. Seb — my brother — is the sun around which this whole family revolves. I’m one of the far distant planets that no one can see, like Uranus or Neptune — I forget which is farther away.
The thing that would probably surprise you most about me is that I love a tree. One specific tree, next door. The people there are away most of the time, so it’s as good as mine. Freddie Blue says that it’s cool to love a tree but that maybe I shouldn’t tell too many people. I don’t know what it is about that tree. I don’t even know what kind it is; it’s an unknown species. A mystery. Sort of like me.
I have twenty-six life goals. I keep them on a list that I have taped to the back of my closet door, so if I ever die horribly by being run over by a bus, you can take a gander at them. I will tell you that number seven on my list has to do with the tree next door.
Number two is “Don’t be weird, dorky, or geeky. At least when anyone is looking. BE NORMAL.”
The most embarrassing one is thirteen: “Get a boyfriend before FB. The Boyfriend Race is on!” Not only is it embarrassing, but Freddie Blue is my BFF! I should be happy if she has a boyfriend first. I shouldn’t even care! But I do. Maybe I’m a kind of terrible person. I seem nice enough on the outside, but it’s possible that deep down inside, I’m all shriveled up like a raisin, dark and chewy.
I hope not.
I’m not going to tell you the rest of the twenty-six. They’re private and I’m already so embarrassed that my face is likely to melt and slide right off my skull, leaving me as blank-headed and terrifying as a horror movie ghoul. And that would be no way to end this entry, would it?
Aaron-Martin, Sasha Alexei (Lex)
Lex Aaron-Martin is my oldest brother, aged fifteen and three-quarters. Mom wanted to give him a Russian name because it reminded her of ballet. We do not call Lex “Sasha” for pretty obvious reasons, i.e., he won’t let us. He was born a full seven minutes before my other brother, Seb, who was stuck.9 Do not start thinking about what this means if you do not want to throw up repeatedly into the back of your own mouth.
There is very little that is interesting to say about Lex, except that he is good-looking according to all sources, if you consider Freddie Blue Anderson and the casting directors of last Christmas’s Gap commercial to be “all sources.” Like most teenage boys, Lex enjoys armpit farts and panting pointlessly after girls too pretty to care about him. He is on most sports teams and has an entire shrine of trophies devoted to his greatness. Needless to say, Lex goes to Prescott.
Lex is a big fan of everything in the world and is often shouting, “OH, MAN, THAT IS SO ______!” Or “Dude, that’s seriously ______!” He doesn’t feel it necessary to fill in the blanks. That is Lex. He has blanks and doesn’t care. Actually, his blanks are kind of his defining characteristic.
If you ever tell him I said this, I will hire a hit man to rid the world of you and your big mouth, but Lex can be awesome. He takes care of Seb when Seb can’t be taken care of. Not that Seb needs to be taken care of, it’s just that Lex does it anyway. He may be dumb as a bucket of beach rocks, but he’s got a heart of gold.
Lex often smells of something bad, such as Axe Body Spray or boy sweat. I cannot decide which is more disgusting.
What else can I say about Lex?
Exactly nothing, that’s what.
Aaron-Martin, Sebastian (Seb)
Seb is Lex’s twin, also aged fifteen and three-quarters, also ostensibly “good-looking,” although much messier than Lex due to his refusal to cut his hair and his tendency to wear his explosive ’fro in a bun, making him look like a telephone pole sporting a large bird’s nest. (It’s a big bun.)
Seb does not have a middle name. (Neither do I, for that matter.) He is not good at sports, and he is autistic. Yes, Seb is autistic.
Gasp!
Twins!
And one is autistic and one is not!
Let’s discuss that, if by “that,” I mean, let’s not discuss it anymore because if I have to hear about it again, I may just be reduced to stabbing myself violently in the eye.
Being around Seb is like being in a soundproof booth, except the opposite of that. You may be under the mistaken impression that people with autism are quiet, but you would be wrong.10 Seb talks so loudly that I sometimes admit that I’ve wished I could slap a muzzle on him, just to make it STOP. I’m sorry if that sounds awful. It’s just that I’m not always in the mood and sometimes I have a headache. It’s not his fault, but it’s as if he can’t hear himself, so he just gets louder and louder in lieu of saying something that people actually want to listen to, meaning he does not stay on topic, ever.
Seb dislikes cameras with a violent tidal wave of “dislike” that borders on “scary rage.” After he and Lex were in the Gap commercial, he suddenly decided that cameras of all kinds were soul-stealing monsters and never again could one be pointed in his direction! (It was very convenient that this change of heart happened AFTER he became semi-famous, and not before.) And so now, if he sees a camera, he releases a meltdown of epic proportions, the likes of which the world has never seen.
When Seb is talking to you, his eyes ping-pong around the room like those tiny rubber balls that will continue to ricochet off walls for ten minutes after you throw them really hard at the ceiling. Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. If Seb had a sound track, it would have a lot of pings. He’s like an orchestra of pings. He pings in ways you can’t even imagine! He is a conflagration of unique PINGS! Ping! He does art! Ping! He remembers everything! Ping! He is unpredictable! Ping! He’s awesome! Ping! He sucks! Ping! He’s my brother! Ping! Ping! Ping!
Seb is really hard to explain to people, and I get tired of trying.11 He is just my brother and as much of a pain in my side as Lex, who is not autistic, something I don’t think about much either. I wouldn’t think about autism at all if Mom and Dad were ever able to stop arguing about Seb’s “treatments.” Which is not actually Seb’s fault, if you think about it.
Seb frequently smells as bad as Lex, but different. This is mostly because he staunchly refuses to shower more than three times in a week. If you are ever not sure which twin you are dealing with, breathe deeply. If your senses are kickboxed into an eye-watering stupor by the stinging stench of cheap cologne, it’s Lex. If they curl up and die due to the overwhelmingly hideous moldy pong of sweat, combined with the antiseptic, lemony zing of hand sanitizer, it’s Seb. Easy, see?
