My stomach was still growling when I took my first bite of the enchilada dinner, but somehow it didn’t taste nearly as delicious as I remembered.
• • •
I tried to read Johnny Tremain. I really did. I read all the words in the first paragraph, and then the second one. Then I started over with the first paragraph.
That book didn’t make any sense.
Captain Underpants was still out on the pile of mail in the kitchen, and that book did make sense. Plus it was funny. But Captain Underpants was for babies, and I wasn’t a baby.
The next morning, when Mrs. Rouse asked for my reading log, I told her I lost it.
east 59th
street tv.
No more TV,” Calista said. She was feeling grumpy, I could tell, because some days she’d let me watch for way longer than fifteen minutes, pretending she didn’t notice that the timer in the kitchen had gone off. Those days, she’d just stay on the couch, legs tucked underneath her, and doodle in her sketchbook while I watched cartoons. But I guess not today.
“Come on, Albie,” she said. She snapped shut her sketchbook. “Turn off the TV, okay?”
“Aww,” I whined. “But I’m watching something.”
“Your show ended two minutes ago,” Calista told me, getting up to grab the remote. “Right now you’re watching a commercial for shower cleaner.”
“But it’s interesting,” I argued.
Calista zapped the TV off.
“Can I play Xbox?” I asked her.
“That’s a screen,” she replied. Which meant no.
I slumped my shoulders down and sunk onto the floor.
“Want to see if Erlan’s home?” Calista said. “Maybe he wants to hang out.”
“They’re taping a big family meeting today, so I can’t come over.”
Calista thought for a while. “Want to do an art project?”
“No.”
“Bake cookies?”
“No.”
“Ride bikes?”
“It’s eight thirty,” I told her. “I’m not allowed on my bike after dark. Plus, only half an hour till stupid bedtime.” I shouldn’t have told her that. Maybe she would’ve forgotten.
“We must be able to think up something to do.” Calista tapped her finger on her lip the way she did when she was about to be silly. “Want to have a contest to see who can stand on their head the longest? I’ll let you win.”
I did not laugh. “No,” I said.
“Want to eat all the old pickles in the fridge and see if we throw up?”
I did not laugh harder. “No.”
“Want to build a cockroach obstacle course?”
That time I laughed a tiny bit. “We don’t have cockroaches,” I told Calista.
She nodded at that, very thoughtful. “Well, maybe if we build them an obstacle course, we can get them to show up.”
I liked Calista. She could be funny when she wanted to be. But I was not in a funny mood. “What I want to do,” I told her, “is watch TV.”
“I’ve got it!” she shouted suddenly. Then she raced to the kitchen.