“What are you two retards doing over there?” Darren said all of a sudden. And just like that, me and Betsy stopped laughing. That’s when we realized that everybody was staring at us.
Everybody.
“What are you looking at, dummy?” Darren asked me. He said it real mean, like I was the one who’d done something to him, even though he was the one who called me and Betsy bad names.
I looked down at my lunch. Next to me, I could tell Betsy was breathing really hard, like she did when she was trying not to cry.
After Darren and his friends left the lunch table to go outside and our side of the table was mostly empty, Betsy nudged me with her elbow.
“Yeah?” I said.
Then Betsy talked real soft, so only I could hear her.
“If D-D-Darren was a b-b-b-bug,” she said slowly, “I’d st-step on him.”
A smile stretched across my face. I liked that idea. A lot. “Yeah,” I told her. “Me too.”
And after that day at lunch, every time Darren said something mean, or looked at us funny, or cut in front of one of us in line, me and Betsy would turn to each other and, real quiet so no one else could hear, we’d make a little hissssssss. And I wasn’t sure about Betsy, but that always made me feel just a little bit better, like I was squashing Darren Ackleman in my head, even if I couldn’t squash him in real life.
erlan’s
birthday.
Mom said I should have bought Erlan a chess set for his birthday, but I told her he likes lots of things besides just chess. I thought we should get him Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. She also said, “Don’t you think we should get something for Karim and Erik? It’s their birthday too, you know.” I had sort of forgot about it being Karim and Erik’s birthday, but then I figured that made sense, because of how they were triplets. But I didn’t think I needed to get them presents. They weren’t really my friends—just Erlan was. He was the only one of them who came to my birthday party. Mom tried to argue for a while, but then she saw how much Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots cost, and she said she supposed one present would be fine.
On Saturday I wrapped Erlan’s present myself and then walked across the hall right at twelve o’clock, right when it said on the invitation that his party was going to start. I didn’t have to buzz the buzzer because the door was already open. There was a man I’d never seen before with a headset and a clipboard standing in the doorway, and he stared at me the whole time I walked toward him. He looked like he was bored.
I thought the man would say something when I got to the door, but he didn’t, so I figured I had to start. “Um, hi,” I said.
“Name?” he said, like he was asking a question.
“Erlan,” I told him.
He looked down at his list. “Last name?” He said that like it was a question too.
“Kasteev,” I said. I thought he should probably know that already, since he was standing in the Kasteevs’ doorway and working on their TV show, but he asked, so I told him.
The man sighed like he was really annoyed and looked up from his list. “What’s your name, smart guy?” he said. But the way he rolled his eyes, it made it seem like maybe he didn’t really think I was a smart guy at all. I thought I was the one who should be annoyed at him, though, because if he wanted to know my name, that’s what he should have said in the first place.
“Albie Schaffhauser,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to look at the list upside down. “Albin.”
The man made a check on his list with his pen and then pulled a piece of paper out from under the list on his clipboard. “You need a parent or guardian to sign a release form,” he said, handing me the paper.