Absolutely Almost(12)
I guess I didn’t have much choice, now, did I?
The one good thing about math club was that it took place during my regular math time, so I only had to do math once a day instead of twice, like I was worried about. The club leader’s name was Mr. Clifton, and there were five other kids in fourth-period math club, from all different grades.
The first thing I noticed about Mr. Clifton was that he smiled a lot. There were basketball posters all over the walls, that was the next thing I noticed. Which I thought was good, because I was worried that a teacher who was in charge of math club might only like math and nothing else, and that would be terrible. I didn’t know a whole lot about basketball, but it seemed way better than math anyway, so I figured Mr. Clifton was probably all right.
What happened in math club the first day was that Mr. Clifton gave us all one goldfish cracker and then asked us how many we had altogether. Which was easy. Even I knew that one. It was six. That wasn’t math, it was counting. Then Mr. Clifton gave us all another goldfish cracker, and asked us again. He kept giving us more and more goldfish crackers, and then we all put our piles together in the middle of the table and helped each other count them. Savannah was the fastest counter, and this boy Jacob was the slowest. I was second-slowest, but no one seemed to care.
All the kids were nice.
When math club was over, Mr. Clifton let us eat the crackers.
“You guys eat like sharks!” Mr. Clifton said as we gobbled up the last of the crackers. “You sure you all got enough breakfast?”
I got back to Mrs. Rouse’s room just in time for recess, and she said that as long as I went to math club every single day, I didn’t have to do math homework with the rest of the class. That’s when I told Mrs. Rouse that math club maybe wasn’t so bad after all and I wasn’t mad at her for signing me up for it.
“Thanks, Albie,” she said. “I appreciate you telling me that.”
“They should change the name, though,” I said.
“Oh?” Mrs. Rouse asked.
“Yeah. Instead of ‘math club’ they should call it ‘cracker club,’ because we didn’t do any math at all.”
Mrs. Rouse just smiled.
an empty
tin can.
Calista could make friends with an empty tin can—that’s what she told me her boyfriend said about her. I don’t know why her boyfriend thought Calista would want to be friends with an empty tin can, but anyway, he was probably right. I figured that out after we stopped at the bodega downstairs on our way home from school one day and she started talking to Hugo, the old man who owns the store.
Also, I didn’t know Calista had a boyfriend. Why hadn’t she ever told me before that she had a boyfriend?
“You wouldn’t happen to have any bottle caps, would you?” Calista asked Hugo while I studied the donut case on the counter to decide which one I wanted most. Mom said my limit was one donut per week, but I think she forgot to tell Calista that, because Calista let me have one almost every day, as long as I spent my own allowance on it.
“Bottle caps?” Hugo asked. He had a thick accent, but I couldn’t tell from where. He had lots of curly gray hair and a big wide nose, and he was very friendly. I was glad he was our bodega owner and not the guy who worked at the one on 62nd Street. Erlan and I went in there once to see if they had Smarties, and that guy yelled at us, “No parents? Get out!” Even though Erlan’s mom was right outside on her cell phone.
“Yeah,” Calista told Hugo. “I’m collecting bottle caps for an art project.”
I pressed my nose close to the plastic case and studied the jelly donut and the twist with chocolate frosting. I was feeling more like a jelly donut, but the twist looked fresher. While I was thinking, Calista tried to explain to Hugo about her art project. By the time I settled on a plain glazed, Calista was behind the counter, showing him pictures of her “work in progress” on her phone.