Absolutely Almost(17)
Dad hugged my shoulder and told me to have a good time. Even though he was still sweaty, I let him hug me anyway.
“Thanks,” I said, because I was glad he was protecting me, like he said, even if I didn’t really get how he was doing that. Also I wondered why all the other kids’ dads didn’t seem to care so much about protecting their kids. But I figured that was just one of those things I didn’t understand.
I went inside.
• • •
I didn’t even know Erlan and his brothers had so many friends. Practically everyone I’d ever met at Mountford was there, plus their parents. There was hardly enough room for everyone, with the TV cameras and the lights and everything, so all the parents were crammed against the walls while the kids played games sitting on the living room floor. We played musical chairs, but instead of chairs, you had to sit on paper plates, because there weren’t enough chairs, and it was super hard to run because you had to dodge the two camera guys, who didn’t even seem to care that they were getting in the way. I did pretty good at musical plates, though. I got out third from last. Every time the camera came near me, the red-haired lady who seemed like she was in charge would shout out “No release!” and then whoever had the camera would zoom toward a different kid. Which was fine with me because it made running a whole lot easier.
Ainyr won the game.
It seemed like everybody was dressed nicer than usual, even Erlan. Normally he wore shorts and T-shirts, but today he had on a shirt with buttons all down it, and a tie even. “Mom made me,” he said when I asked about it. “I said I just wanted to look like myself.”
The camera people made Erlan and his brothers blow out the candles on their birthday cake three times, because they said they couldn’t get the angle right. Just before they were about to blow them out the second time, the red-haired lady pointed to me, right by Erlan’s shoulder, and shouted, “No release!” And then they made me move across the room. Gretchen from Mountford said she felt sorry for me about that, but I didn’t care so long as I got cake and ice cream. That part was taking forever.
I wondered if you blew your birthday candles out three times, did that mean you got three wishes?
When it was time for presents, Erlan got ten new chess sets.
After the party was over and most of the kids had gone home, Erlan and I hung out in the quilt fort in his bedroom and played Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. Erlan kept shouting “No release!” right before he attacked me with the red bot, and then I’d holler “No release!” even louder and attack him right back with my blue one. I knocked his block clean off eight times.
It was the best part of the party.
reading
log.
Mom thumbed through my homework folder while our dinner whirled in the microwave. I looked at the time. Four minutes thirty-seven seconds to go. My stomach growled.
“Albie,” Mom said slowly, pulling a sheet out of the folder, “is this your reading log?”
I adjusted the napkins on the table so they were perfectly straight against the corners, just the way Dad liked, even though he was working late again, so he wouldn’t be there to see it. “Yep,” I said. I tried to wait until Mom started congratulating me on all my good reading to start smiling, but I couldn’t help it. A hint of a grin snuck onto my face. We only had to read for fifteen minutes a night, but the past four days I’d read for twenty at least. On Thursday I even read for forty, which I never even thought was possible, unless you were Grandpa Park with his newspaper.
But for some reason, Mom didn’t seem happy like she should have been. “What is this?” she asked. And for a second, I thought she’d found some sort of mashed-up banana in my backpack or something, that was how disgusted her question sounded. But there wasn’t any mashed-up banana. She was still looking at my reading log. She held it out to me.