Absolutely Almost(35)

            I don’t know the capital of Arkansas, and I don’t care. Arkansas should go learn its own capital.

            I don’t know the best way to make a model volcano, or what it feels like to get your Science Fair project picked to go to the gym for Parents’ Night.

            I don’t know how anybody could like Johnny Tremain.

            I don’t know how to make my dad smile when he looks at my report card, instead of clenching his jaw tight.

            I don’t know how to make Mom stop worrying so much about me, even though she says she doesn’t.

            I don’t know why I’m always screwing up at everything, even when I try so hard, all the time, not to. I’d do better if I could, I really would. But I don’t know how.

            There are a lot of things I don’t know.





donut

days.




            Thursday night, me and Calista studied and studied with the flash cards.

            Five, that was the most words I could get right at once.

            Five was not perfect.

            After I took a shower and was in my pajamas, I told Calista I was coming down with the flu, but I could tell she didn’t believe me.

            “You didn’t have the flu thirty minutes ago, when we were eating dinner.”

            “It came on all of a sudden,” I explained.

            “Mmm-hmm.” She crinkled her mouth up and peeled the Johnny Tremain title off the old Captain Underpants I already finished and stuck it to the new one. “This flu wouldn’t have anything to do with your spelling test tomorrow, would it?”

            I shook my head. “I feel really sick,” I said. Which was true. Every time I thought about that spelling test and not getting all ten words 100 percent perfect, I felt sick, right in my stomach. It would be better if I just stayed home.

            She put her hand on my forehead. “You’re not warm,” she said slowly. She studied my face carefully. “Well, I guess we’ll know if you’re really sick if you start to feel sharp pains on the left side in your ribs. That’s usually the first sign of the flu.”

            I was just moving my hand over to see if I had sharp pains there, where Calista said, when I saw the look on her face, and I stopped. “Is that really true?” I asked her.

            She rolled her eyes. “No,” she told me.

            I moved my hand away. “Then my ribs don’t hurt at all.”

            “Albie.” Calista sat down on the bed and patted the bedspread for me to sit down next to her. I sat. She looked at me for a long time, but she didn’t say anything. Which was weird. Then she got up and left the room. I stayed put. I didn’t know what else to do.

            When Calista came back, she was carrying her blue backpack. She sat back down and pulled out a handful of papers, all sorts. Some on thick paper and some that looked like they were ripped out of her sketchbook, because they had crinkled edges on the side. She looked through them and then handed me one.

            I looked at it carefully. It was covered in drawings, all of them done with a pencil. They were all of people—some sitting up, some standing, some lying down. They looked realistic, not like the cartoon people she was helping me draw. Lots of them were just parts, elbows floating next to a pair of crossed legs and, next to that, three pairs of feet. Hands were everywhere—open, holding pencils, scrunched up like a fist. Some of the pictures were scribbled over, like they were started and then given up halfway through.

            “You did these?” I asked Calista.

            She nodded, but she was still flipping through her mess of papers. “For my figure drawing class,” she said. She glanced over at the paper in my hands. “Look,” she told me. “Right there.” She tapped a bright blue sticky note stuck to the top of the paper. “That’s from my teacher, Professor Milton.”