by Jim Benton
because I suspect that learning about ants is only
about half as boring as being one:
Ant 1: So, uh, do you ever worry that your itsy
little neck is just going to snap under the weight of
your head?
Ant 2 : Stop asking me that. You ask me that, like,
every five minutes.
Ant 1: Sometimes I notice my antennae out of the
corner of my eye and I’m all, like: AHH! Something is
on me! Get it off! Get it off!
Ant 2: Yeah. The antennae again. Listen, I just
remembered, I have to go wander around
aimlessly now.
Today at school I saw Hudson Rivers (still
the eighth cutest boy in my grade), and I attempted
to sense what he was feeling with my superpowers. I
may have unintentionally struck a bit of a Sensing
Pose, because he walked right over and asked me
what the heck I was doing.
I was pretty embarrassed that Hudson
caught me sensing him. I’m not sure what the
rules are for using your superpowers, but sensing
somebody right out there in public might be
kind of rude.
“Nothing,” I said, which is what you say when
you mean “something,” which is pretty stupid,
I guess. Everybody knows that’s exactly what
“nothing” means.
Hudson looked at me and grinned. I tried to
sense him secretly, but Pinsetti walked past,
publicly scratching himself with an enthusiasm and
lack of modesty that you rarely see outside of the
zoo. The image was so horrific that I could think
of nothing other than washing my eyeballs.
I can’t lose that bet.
By the time I came to my senses again it was
time to go to class, and Hudson had walked away.
In science, Mrs. Maple told us more about
ants and how strong they are. They can lift twenty
times their own body weight. If I was as strong as an
ant, I suppose that means I could lift a piano.
If I could do that, I would only do it so that I
could drop it on the rest of the ants in my colony,
because the one thing I’m really learning about ants
is that I don’t like them.
Isabella took notes again, but this time, she
took them in class, which is the fourth weirdest
thing I’ve ever seen her do in class.
Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella made Angeline go with her to watch
basketball practice after school today. Angeline
begged me to go along, and Emmily couldn’t
remember which bus she was supposed to ride
home, so she went, too.
Isabella and I had never been to a basketball
game at our school, much less a practice. It turns
out that basketball is this sport that involves a lot
of running and jumping and throwing. The most you
can hope for per shot is three points, although it is
usually just two. Frankly, I would find two points a
little insulting after all that effort.
But my superpowers told me that the boys
were actually quite thrilled with their measly two
points. This was both adorable and sad, like when a
baby is thrilled if you give it half a cracker that’s
been on the floor.
Isabella watched the practice very carefully,
and I thought I saw her taking notes, but that had
to have been my imagination. Every once in a while
she would tell Angeline to stand up and cheer, and
when she did, the boys would play extra hard. I
realized (thanks, superpowers) it was
because they wanted to impress Angeline.
Angeline didn’t really seem impressed. I’m
sure she was just doing it to make Isabella happy.
But the whole thing was really entertaining Emmily,
who had to be asked three times to give back the
ball and stay off the court.
My mom gave everybody a ride home. Just
before Isabella got out of the car, she said that
she had some posters I had to help her make. She
gave me the rough draft she had scribbled on a
piece of paper:
She explained that all she needed me to do
was make a couple posters . . .
. . . and get Angeline to come. And come up
with some kind of prize. And try to be cute on
Friday. (Isabella had observed that girl cuteness
seemed to make the basketball players try harder.)
“Or at least, be cuter,” she added, to nicely
take some of the pressure off. You see, World?
Isabella can be nice when she wants to be.
Emmily wanted to help with the posters —
she’s understandably amazed by my glitter
abilities — but I told her this looked like a rush job,
and I wouldn’t be able to train her correctly under
this sort of pressure.
Later on, after something that Mom referred
to as “dinner,” I told my dad about the basketball
practice.
He was very interested and even said he’d
take me to a real professional game if I wanted to
go. ( I didn’t.) He put his arm around me and we
watched some other sport on TV together, maybe
soccer or baseball? It had some guys running
around doing something and some other guys trying
to keep them from doing it. That’s football, right?
Or is that all of them?
I concentrated, and I think I very nearly
understood why dudes want to watch this stuff so
much. My powers are increasing, but I still couldn’t
quite get it.
Wednesday 11
Dear Dumb Diary,
Oh. Some of the ants in our jar found
themselves so boring that they died from it. I didn’t
want to try to take the dead ones out, because they
all seem pretty grouchy and I think if I don’t draw
attention to the dead ones, maybe the live ones
won’t notice, since the dead ones don’t really look
any different.
It’s probably a source of great
embarrassment in the ant world when you’re
talking to a friend for a while and then you notice
they’re dead, and all the other ants start laughing
at you.
Before I left for school, I fed the ants some
leaves and Cap’n Crunch, but they didn’t seem as
interested in eating the stuff as they were in
dodging it as it crashed down around them.
I suppose this would be like somebody
dropping a sugar- frosted van on me from an
airplane, and I made a note for our report about
what an unpleasant breakfast experience this
would be.
Before I left, I put the ants in front of the TV,
hoping they would enjoy that more than the radio,
and I gently encouraged them to die less.
Emmily helped me and Isabella put up the
arm- wrestling posters in the hallway at school.
When Angeline saw them, she was really, really
angry that Isabella had used her name on the
poster without asking her first. I’m telling you, the
gorgeous of t
he world can actually look pretty
intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-
white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw.
There’s just no way to really prepare for that.
Besides the crime of being prettier than those
that deserve prettiness more than she does, it’s
true that we’ve never actually seen Angeline do
anything mean. But like I said, you’re never
prepared for the chain-saw swan, and Isabella’s
natural, perfectly normal response to being blamed
for something (which is to fist-fight) was
replaced by the response she usually reserves for
times when the other person is much bigger, or
a policeman.
She just lied.
Emmily is obviously the least able to defend
herself, so Isabella blamed Emmily.
Emmily was somewhat surprised to learn that
the Arm-Wrestling Championship had all been her
idea, and she started freaking out and squealing
saying that it was going to be so much fun, and that
it was the best idea she ever had.
I’m pretty sure I saw a little smile try to
squirm out from underneath Angeline’s chain saw–
swan scowl.
Freaking out is exhausting, even for
full- time freaks, and eventually Emmily ran out of
energy. But by then, her enthusiasm had us all
looking forward to Isabella’s arm-wrestling
competition, even Angeline.
Thursday 12
Dear Dumb Diary,
I don’t think any more of the ants died, but I
can’t be sure because I forgot to count them, and
when they’re all moving around it gets pretty
difficult to tell which ants I’ve already counted.
I had the great idea of using markers to
gently color the ants so I could tell them apart, but
I learned that this is exactly like somebody trying to
gently color on you with a thirty- story building.
Without dwelling on tragedy, I’d just like to say that
I’m deeply sorry to Mr. Purple and the surviving
Purple family.
I made a note of this in the report, although I
did skip over the details of flicking Mr. Purple off
the tip of the marker, you know, because it seemed
a bit undignified.
I actually heard people talking about the
arm- wrestling event this morning, and it was hard
to believe that my posters had done such a great job
of getting people psyched about something so weird.
It was like I was one of those tremendously
talented people that make great commercials
for awful movies.
But by lunch, when we were ready to begin the
competition, I realized that it had not been my
posters that did the job. It was Emmily that had
everybody all wound up.
This wasn’t hard to figure out. First, Emmily
had given everybody the impression that arm
wrestling was an Olympic event. (Emmily loves
the Olympics. The rings remind her of pancakes,
another favorite of hers.) And second, somewhere
along the line, Emmily determined that first prize
was a horse.
Emmily’s mistakes didn’t hinder Isabella at
all. (Few things can. I’ve seen her hindered, like,
twice in her life.) Isabella started setting up the
arm wrestlers. She ran the competitions two at a
time, with the winner from each competition arm
wrestling the winner from the other.
I made sure to watch cutely and cheer.
Angeline did, too, although she only had her cute
turned up to about a three. (It goes up to eleven.)
I have to admit that Angeline did a good
job getting this whole thing approved by the
principal, which is something Isabella almost never
remembers /cares to do.
And as cute as Angeline and I were, Emmily
might have been the cutest of all, even though she’s
usually not terribly cute. (In her defense:
Shirts really look their best when you don’t wear
them backward, and Emmily says dressing in the
mirror gets her all confused about left and right
and inside out.)
Something about her enthusiasm just gets
to people.
The final match came down to Mike Pinsetti
and Jake Baker. Jake is in our grade, but he’s easily
the biggest kid in our school. He’s about as wide as
he is tall.
Everybody always assumes that big, strong
guys like Jake are dumb, but if you thought that
about Jake, you’d be wrong. Jake could go to college
for ten years and he still wouldn’t be smart enough
to be classified as “dumb.”
Pinsetti’s hand disappeared inside the fleshy
folds of Jake’s. Emmily, unable to contain herself,
let out this ear-piercing cheer that brought a
peculiar dumb smile to Jake’s dumb face.
Isabella said, “Go,” Jake slammed Pinsetti’s
hand to the table, and everybody cheered — except
for Pinsetti, who was making this thin, wheezy pain
whine as he stood up and stumbled to the nurse’s
office to see if somebody there could reassemble
the bones in his hand.
Isabella patted Jake on the back and smiled
broadly until he turned to her and asked, in a
voice that sounded like a garbage disposal full
of raw meat:
“Where’s my prize? Where’s my
horse?”
But Jake was just asking a place in the air
where Isabella used to be.
Isabella knew the same thing about
psychotic- maniac- vampire- cannibals that I did. In
fact, Isabella probably taught me. You don’t have
to be able to outrun them, you just have to be
able to outrun whoever you’re with.
And Isabella was with us.
Angeline quickly turned her cute up to about
a seven, causing anybody directly in front of her
face to feel a mild, but pleasant, burning sensation.
She smiled at Jake and said, “Yeah. You see, about
that horse . . .”
But Jake wasn’t affected. “Where’s my
horse?” he said again.
Angeline turned it up to a nine, but he was
unaffected. It was like he was throwing Kryptonite
all over Angeline’s cuteness. He stood up and
started looking around for Isabella, like how you
might imagine a Tyrannosaurus would look around
for a caramel- covered lamb.
And my superpower tingled. That’s what
they do, right? Or do they jingle? My superpower
wiggled. I don’t know. But I felt something.
“You haven’t beaten everybody yet,” I said.
Angeline looked over at me and gritted
her teeth.
I steered Emmily to the seat opposite Jake.
“You still have to beat Emmily,” I said.
“Yay!” Emmily cheered, unaware that there
was a real chance she could be going home with her
detached arm in a cooler full of ice.
Emmily put her teeny hand up, and Jake
grasped it. As he did, Jake�
��s face became softer and
pinker, and he giggled. He giggled like a puppy
being tickled by a kitten wearing a duckling
costume.
I said, “Go!” and Emmily strained against his
giant ham of an arm. Jake started giggling so hard
he began to shake. This made Emmily giggle, and he
let her slowly push his hand down to the table.
“Emmily wins!” Angeline shouted, and
everybody clapped — nobody harder than Jake. I
was proud of myself for sensing that Jake’s anger
would be calmed by Emmily’s Emmilishness.
But I had neglected to consider one thing.
It was that thing where guys will work way
harder to win a prize for a girl than they ever would
for themselves.
“WHERE’S HER HORSE?” Jake shouted,
now a million times louder and angrier than before.
This time, his shouts were directed at the place
where Angeline used to be standing.
Now that Isabella and Angeline had both
bailed, there was only one victim left. Jake stared
at me and snorted and my superpowers told me that
there was a chance that somebody was going to get
punched in half at any moment.
And that’s when Angeline dragged Bruntford
up to the table. She slid a plate of cafeteria meat
loaf in front of Emmily.
“There’s your horse,” Bruntford said.
We all went silent. We had always suspected
that the meat loaf was made of something like that,
but was she telling the truth? Or was Bruntford just
saying it to quiet everyone down?
“Horsey!” Emmily said and took a big bite.
She offered the next one to Jake. who took it with a
dumb, sweet smile.
Everybody walked away, and left the two
adorable dopes to enjoy their repulsive lunch
in peace.
On the way out, I thanked Bruntford and
asked her if it was really horse.
