Absolutely Almost(37)

            The spelling test went okay. I wouldn’t find out my grade until Monday, but I thought I got more than four. Maybe I even got perfect.

            Calista let me get a chocolate donut and a jelly-filled from the bakery on 78th Street. They were good. Almost worth having a spelling test for.

            Almost.





monday.




            On Monday Mr. Clifton’s joke was “Who’s the king of the pencil case?” And the answer was “The ruler!”

            No one laughed at that one.

            “You can do better than that, Mr. Clifton,” Savannah told him.

            And that made Mr. Clifton laugh.

            I guess he won’t be using that one again next year.





six words.




            I got six words right on my spelling test. Six whole words. That was more than I ever got before. I even got especially. E-S-P-E-C-I-A-L-L-Y.

            Language. That was one I missed, because I mixed up the u and the a. “That’s a tough one,” Calista told me after she high-fived me for my six whole words. “I even spell that one wrong sometimes.” Which I knew was probably a lie, but I let her say it anyway.

            Soccer. That was another one I didn’t get. Soccer was supposed to be an easy one, but I forgot about the -er not -re at the end. I got confused and screwed up. “Sometimes it’s the easy ones that get you,” Calista said.

            Calista took me to the bodega and told Hugo about my six words, and he was so impressed with me he gave me a giant bear claw that I didn’t even have to stack cups for. I stacked cups anyway, though. I stacked a whole bunch of cardboard coffee sleeves too.

            Hugo and Calista were talking awhile.

            I couldn’t decide if I was happy about the six words or not. Because for one thing, six words was good. I’d never gotten six whole words before. But for the other thing, six words wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even almost. And Dad said I better get perfect.

            My stomach was tied up like knots on a rope waiting for Dad to get home, to see what he’d say about the six words when I told him. But when he got home, he didn’t ask about my spelling test. So I didn’t tell him. He didn’t ask the whole rest of the week either. I think maybe he forgot.

            I couldn’t decide if I was happy about that or not.





crying.




            Calista was acting funny when she picked me up from school. Quiet. Sniffly. And she forgot which street I lived on too, and I knew she knew that one.

            “You were crying,” I told her once I figured it out. “Before you picked me up.”

            “No, I wasn’t,” she said. But I knew what crying looked like.

            I knew what it sounded like too. I heard her when she went into the bathroom when we got home. She said she had to pee, but that was a lie too, because I heard her on the phone. She was trying to whisper, I think, but if that was true, then she wasn’t doing a very good job. I couldn’t hear any words, just angry talking, but then all of a sudden, I did hear some words. Five of them.

            “Gus, just listen all right?”

            So that’s how I figured out she was talking to Gus.

            “You’re being a real idiot.”

            That was five more words I heard.

            It sounded like it got angrier after that, the talking, but I didn’t try to hear any more of the words. I went and sat on the couch in the living room.

            I didn’t know anything about that Gus, but I did know that if Calista was yelling-whispering at him in the bathroom when she said she had to pee, then he probably wasn’t very nice. Nice people didn’t make other people yell-whisper instead of pee.