He looked pretty okay.
“See?” Calista said as she got up to put water on for spaghetti. “I told you you could do it.”
I looked down at the paper. You could tell which people were Calista’s and which ones were mine, because Calista’s were better. But mine weren’t awful.
“Do you think I could ever get good enough to be an artist one day?” I asked Calista as she turned the heat on under the pot on the stove.
“I don’t know,” Calista said. “Do you want to be an artist?”
I looked at Donut Man some more. For a long time. “I want to be something I’m good at,” I said.
“Albie.”
Calista walked over and leaned her elbows on the counter by the table. I looked up at her. She looked more serious than normal. “You should do something because you love it, not just because you’re good at it.”
I wrinkled my nose, thinking. “But you’re good at art, and you love it,” I told her.
She nodded. “Did you ever think maybe the love part comes first?” I guess she could tell I was confused, because she kept talking. “Find something you’d want to keep doing forever,” she said, “even if you stink at it. And then if you’re lucky, with lots of practice, then one day you won’t stink so much.”
That sounded good. But . . .
“But what if I’m not lucky?” I asked her. “What if I do find something I love, and then I always just stink at it?”
Calista smiled her thoughtful smile. “Then won’t you be glad you found something you love?” she said.
And I didn’t really get a chance to answer, because then she said, “I’m too hungry to wait for the spaghetti to boil. What do you say we eat cookies first?”
That was one thing I didn’t have to think about too hard. Even if they weren’t nearly as good as donuts, I knew I loved cookies.
the thing
about the cups.
Here’s what I figured out about the coffee cups at the bodega downstairs that I stacked after school for free donuts while Calista was looking at art books with Hugo.
I always ended up with four stacks of them. Always. Every single time. Twenty-five cups in each stack. One, two, three, four.
I looked on the plastic bag once, and it said ONE HUNDRED PAPER CUPS.
That’s how I knew that there were four stacks of twenty-five in one hundred. Every time.
Here’s another thing I figured out. Once I’d counted out three stacks—one, two, three—then I didn’t have to count the last one. Because no matter what, it would be twenty-five in the stack, every single time.
I figured that out by myself. No one told me.
I told that to Mr. Clifton, because he asked me what I liked to do after school, so I told him, and he grinned at me and said, “Albie, I think you accidentally did math.”
“Really?” I asked. I almost didn’t believe it.
He nodded. “Did it hurt?” he said.
I thought about that. Usually math hurt my brain, like a tree crashing down inside it over and over. But this time it didn’t hurt at all.
“Nope,” I said.
Mr. Clifton gave me a high five.
I hoped I could accidentally do math some more. It turned out that was the best way to do it.