by Jim Benton
SMILING.
SMILING about electricity shooting down
from the sky and frying you on the sidewalk like an
unsuspecting strip of bacon.
I wanted Mr. Smith to hear this, but just then,
Miss Anderson — my art teacher, who is beautiful
enough to be a lady wrestler but settled for
being a teacher instead — walked by and waved.
This caused Mr. Smith to adjust his wig, tell us to
keep working, and trot out the door, calling to her
about some nonsense he was clearly making up
as an excuse to talk to her.
Teachers are attracted to other teachers. It’s
only natural. They date for a while, get married, buy
a house, and start having little substitute teachers
of their own.
41
After Mr. Smith left, I tried a few more things
on Angeline.
42
“Angeline! Are you some kind of mental case?
Not everything has a bright side,” I said,
probably a bit too loud.
“Not everything has a dark side,” she
retorted.
“Try me,” I said.
“Babies,” she said smugly.
“Are you kidding? DIAPERS, Angeline. Give
me a hard one.”
“Sunny days,” she said.
“Sunburn. C’mon, Angeline. Are you even
trying?”
“Friendship,” she said.
“Don’t answer that,” Isabella
interrupted.
I realized that Isabella had been listening to
us, and listening closely. Fights never get past
Isabella. She’s always ready to either join in, or
watch for loose change that falls out of pockets if
people start to wrestle.
“Why don’t you two piranhas settle this like
adults?” she said softly.
“What are you suggesting?” Angeline asked.
“Well, Angeline seems to like everything.
Jamie seems to dislike everything. Only one of
you can be right,” Isabella said, and for some
weird reason, I felt like Isabella was setting some
sort of giant mousetrap and was slowly edging us
toward the cheese.
“Nobody likes mean, negative people, Jamie,”
Angeline said. “Why do you think everything is so
terrible?”
“It’s better than stumbling around like a fool,
saying that everything is so great all the time,” I
said. “Nobody respects people who are cheerful all
the time. They think they’re dumb.”
“You couldn’t go a month without saying
something mean,” Angeline said.
“Yeah, well, you couldn’t go a month
without saying something nice,” I blasted back.
44
“You wanna bet?” she asked.
“You got it,” I said. I’m pretty sure betting is
against some kind of school rule, but Mr. Smith was
still out of the room.
“Okay,” she said. “The loser has to —”
Isabella interrupted.
“The loser has to play Dare or Worse
Dare with me,” she said quietly.
I lunged to cover Angeline’s mouth. I had to
stop her from agreeing. Angeline had no idea what
Isabella was talking about.
45
Isabella stopped playing regular old Truth or
Dare back in first grade. The problem with regular
Truth or Dare is that the Truth part never really
works. Somebody chooses Truth knowing that they
can just lie, and then the asker has been swindled.
And Isabella can’t deal with being swindled.
So Isabella invented Dare or Worse Dare.
The problem with Dare or Worse Dare is that
nobody, anywhere, ever, should play it with
Isabella.
This is not just my opinion. This is an
ordinance in several counties.
You see, Isabella customizes her dares.
She crafts each one especially for the person being
dared. These are handmade dares, assembled
one at a time, based on the specific weaknesses
of the player.
The last time I played her was in third grade.
She dared me to sneak into the cemetery with her
and lie down for thirty minutes, with my eyes
closed, on the grave of Abner Hogsnetter.
When he was alive, Abner had been a clown.
An old, cranky clown. He called himself “Hoggy.”
I knew him as “Hoggy with the doggy.”
The first time I ever met Abner was at
Shannon Nichol’s birthday party, way back in first
grade. Abner was the entertainment, and he was
twisting balloon animals for all the kids.
I didn’t want to go anywhere near him,
but they made everyone get a balloon animal.
“What’s your name?” he asked in between
coughs.
“Jamie,” I said, looking at his dirty clown
costume.
“That’s a nice name. What kind of animal do
you want, Jenny?”
“I don’t want one,” I said, eyeing the clown
makeup that was beginning to flake off the wrinkly
parts of his face.
“Okay, a nice doggy,” he said, blowing up the
balloon and twisting it into shape.
I took it and ran away as fast as I could.
But I tripped and fell directly on top of my
balloon dog.
And it popped.
47
I suppose that a great deal has already been
written about what the inside of a clown’s lungs
smells like, but until you’ve really been smothered
in it, wallowed in it, and inhaled it yourself, it’s
really quite hard to describe.
It’s like a combination of wet raw chicken,
cigar smoke, cotton candy, and socks. With hints of
makeup and a kind of sad bitterness.
The experience was made worse by everybody’s
insistence that Hoggy make me a replacement
balloon dog right away, which I carried around for
the remainder of the party like a grenade that
could go off at any second.
When we got home, I made Dad bury it.
48
After that, we crossed paths several more
times — at parties, or if a store had a big sale and
they’d hired Hoggy to stand out front and attract
customers. That clown worked for cheap, I guess, so
he was always the one you’d see.
Hoggy remembered me as that little girl
(Jenny, Janey, and one time, Fred) who was so
upset when her balloon dog popped.
“How about a new doggy?” he’d call to me
every time, as I hid behind somebody. Eventually,
when I got invited to birthday parties, my parents
had to ask ahead of time if Hoggy was going to
be there.
The truth is, Hoggy is the reason I’m so
creeped out by clowns.
So after Isabella dared me to lie down on his
grave, I asked her what the Worse Dare was. She
wouldn’t tell me, but she said it involved a shovel.
I didn’t demand details.
And so I lay there. Trembling. Every seven
or eight minutes, Isabella would scream something
like, “It’s him! It’s Hoggy the clown! Run, Jamie!”
If I opened my eyes or got up, I would have to
start my thirty-minute dare all over again.
I had to restart so many times that eventually
Isabella didn’t find it funny anymore and we went
home, where I took an hour-long shower to wash off
the clowngrave dirt.
50
And now back to Angeline’s dumbness —
“Deal,” Angeline said boldly.
I couldn’t very well let Angeline be braver
than me.
“Deal,” I said quietly. I sensed that deep in
the earth, a pair of decaying, bony fingers was
slowly pulling a rotting balloon out of a baggy,
checkered pants pocket.
“How about a new doggy, Jeanie?” Hoggy
cackled.
51
Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
I didn’t see any reason to waste time. There
was no way that I was going to lie down on Abner
Hogsnetter’s grave again. So before school, I
posted something on our blog to end this thing
before it even begins. My post was brief and
brilliant:
I'd just like to congratulate Hudson Rivers and his
soccer team on a fine victory in last week's game
against Wodehouse Middle School. I think everybody
here at the Student Awareness Committee is a big
fan of soccer, although I'm not sure about Angeline.
Angeline, what do you think of soccer?
— Jamie
Pretty clever, huh? Let’s see you not say
something nice about this, Ang.
I didn’t have to wait long.
She struck back in Mrs. Curie’s science class
this morning.
52
I’m pretty sure Mrs. Curie has a crush on
diseases. All teachers are probably fascinated with
them. A disease is like a test that nature gives your
body. You want to get an A, but you’ll be happy if
you just don’t fail.
Today she wanted to talk about gum disease,
which is the most common complaint on Earth,
unless you count the complaints of kids having to
learn about it.
One of the main contributing factors is not
brushing and flossing regularly. You need to brush
your teeth at least twice a day and pretend to floss
every day, but at the very least do it before you go
to the dentist, because it’s super embarrassing
when you tell him you floss all the time and he pulls
a little chunk of coconut out from between your teeth.
“Hey, where did THAT come from? I haven’t
had coconut in weeks!” you’ll say, immediately
realizing what an idiot I sounded like you sound like.
53
Mrs. Curie was showing gruesome pictures
of gum disease up on her big monitor. When one
came up that was particularly nasty, Angeline
pounced.
“Hey, Jamie, what do you think of that guy?”
she asked, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Isabella folded her arms and waited for my
answer. A small smile curled on her lips. She clearly
thought I’d have to say something mean. But I
wasn’t ready to lose this bet.
“I think that guy is, uh, pretty brave to be
photographed like that, just to teach people about
gum disease,” I said, and the other kids in the class
nodded in agreement.
Isabella angrily slouched in her chair and
Angeline gave me her ugliest scowl, which —
just being honest here — is still a fairly
attractive scowl.
You aren’t the only one who can fake this
positive garbage, Angeline.
54
Wednesday 11
Dear Dumb Diary,
Dad burst into my room this morning before
my alarm clock went off.
(Alarm clocks have horrible lives. They do
one of the most important jobs in the house, and
everybody hates them for it.)
“Don’t ask questions,” he said, pushing
a shopping bag toward me. “Don’t ask
questions.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, totally not
following instructions.
“Jamie? Are you up yet?” my mom said from
the hallway.
Dad tore open the bag and, in a panic,
pushed a shirt into my hands.
“Say, ‘Oh my gosh, thanks, Dad,’” he
whispered urgently. “You say that. Say it now.”
55
“Oh. My. Gosh. Thanks. Dad,” I said flatly,
just as Mom walked in, holding an animal that she
had recently run over with her car, and then backed
over for good measure, and then sewed buttons on.
Except that it wasn’t an animal. It was
another shirt she had made for me.
“Oh, wow!” Dad said with this kind of
fakey enthusiasm. “Two shirts! Two new shirts for
Jamie. Look, honey, I got her one, too. Such an odd
coincidence. Well, I guess she should wear the one I
got her first since I gave it to her first well good-bye
you two have a nice day! I was first.”
Dad was down the stairs and out the front
door in three steps.
56
Mom looked confused and then shrugged.
“I made you another shirt, Jamie,” she said.
“But it looks like Dad already . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “This is kind of a new thing for
Dad, huh?”
I said that since this IS kind of a brave new
attempt for Dad, buying me clothes and all, that we
shouldn’t discourage him. And even though I really
loved the new monkeyvomit shirt she made me, we
should probably not hurt Dad’s feelings.
Mom nodded in agreement, and I dodged the
monkeyvomit for another day.
I totally owe Dad a favor.
57
And when I got to school, I learned why I owed
him a BIG favor: Today was picture day. I wonder
if Dad knew and wanted to save me from being
photographed in monkeyvomit.
58
Thursday 12
Dear Dumb Diary,
Dad DID know. After dinner last night, I was
doing homework at the kitchen table and he leaned
in and quietly proved it.
“How do you think that shirt I gave you is
going to look in your picture?”
I told him how glad I was, and that I owed
him one.
“ONE?” He laughed. “You owe me a lot
more than one for that, kid. Can you imagine having
to look at that photo the rest of our lives?”
59
After dinner, I checked the Student
Awareness Committee blog. Angeline had posted her
response to my soccer post. Remember, I wrote:
I'd just like to congratulate Hudson Rivers and his
soccer team on a fine victory in last week's game
against Wodehouse Middle School. I think everybody
here at the Student Awareness Committee is a big
fan of soccer, although I'm not sure about Angeline.
Angeline, what do you think of soccer?
— Jamie
And she responded:
&nb
sp; Those little turds at Wodehouse Middle School got
the beating they deserved.
— Angeline
60
Holy smokes, Angeline, how brutal can you
get? A BEATING? Nice sportsmanship.
And everybody always thought you were so
sweet. I can’t wait to see how revolted they all are
by their precious little Angeline now that they see
she’s in favor of BEATINGS.
61
FRIDAY 13
Dear Dumb Diary,
The soccer team was so revolted with
Angeline’s bad sportsmanship that, out of pure
disgust, they got to school early and decorated her
locker with ribbons and balloons.
They put a sign saying ANGELINE:
NUMBER ONE FAN in big cutout letters on her
locker door, and used gold and silver glitter to
signify how disappointed they were in her post.
I’m sure the letter jacket they gave her was
also supposed to let her know just how deeply
sickened they were by her post.
As I stood there, staring, Isabella slid up
beside me silently, in the way only an anaconda or
Isabella can do.
“What do you think of all this?” she asked me.
I snorted. “I hope Angeline takes that jacket,
and . . .”
I knew that if I said something unpleasant,
I’d lose the bet.
62
“. . . I hope she takes that jacket and wears
it with pride. It’s really nice of them to honor her
that way,” I finished.
Isabella made that sound that spiders make
when a fly avoids their web instead of plowing right
into it.
I don’t know what that sound is.
Somebody knows. Spider scientists know.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Isabella said. “Angeline
says something mean and people love her for it. It’s
like she’s stealing your essence.”
