Absolutely Almost(47)

            “Can we get donuts?” I asked Calista first thing, as soon as Mom closed the door behind her. I was still in my pajamas, but I would change for donuts. I would do almost anything for donuts.

            Calista scrunched up her face, thinking. I didn’t know exactly what was going on in her brain, because that was a thing you could never know 100 percent for sure, but if I had to guess, I’d bet that she was thinking about whether she should let me go get donuts, which were delicious, or if she should make me have a healthy breakfast, which was not delicious.

            I guess the healthy part won, because she pulled the box of Cheerios out of the cupboard.

            “Aw, man,” I said.

            “What?” Calista said, unlatching the dishwasher to find a clean bowl. “I thought you said you wanted donuts. So”—she popped the lid on the box and poured out a bowlful—“donut cereal.”

            I inched my way over to the counter. I knew Calista was being silly, because for one thing I knew the difference between real donuts and Cheerios, and donuts tasted way better. Also, I could tell a trick to force me to eat a healthy breakfast when I saw one. But if I had to eat a healthy breakfast, maybe thinking it was a bowlful of mini donuts wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

            “Thanks,” I told Calista, and I grabbed my bowl of mini-donut cereal and went to the fridge to get the milk.

            While I ate breakfast and Calista sipped her coffee from downstairs, we worked on our superheroes, and I was extra careful not to drip any milk drops on mine. Calista said Donut Man was getting really good, and that time, I could tell she wasn’t being silly.

            “You really do love donuts, don’t you, Albie?” she asked me while I slurped up the last of my milk on my spoon.

            “Yep,” I said, because that was the truth.

            Calista smiled at that. “I think I just figured out what to get you for your birthday,” she said.

            I sat up straight in my chair. “You did?”

            She nodded.

            “Is it a donut?”

            “Not telling.”

            “I bet it’s a donut.”

            Calista laughed. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

            I pushed my bowl to the middle of the table and pulled out a fresh piece of paper. “It’s a donut,” I said again. And I started on another drawing of Donut Man, with his arms reaching high up into the sky. He was going to be holding the world’s biggest donut, I decided. It was going to be my best drawing yet.





nobody.




            On Monday morning I got to school early, so I went to the drinking fountain to play Pokémon, but right when I got there, everyone got up and left.

            I thought that was weird.

            “Hi, Darren!” I said to Darren as he walked away. But he kept walking, didn’t even turn around.

            That was kind of weird too.

            During first recess, I couldn’t find Darren at all. He wasn’t playing tetherball like he normally was. Nobody else was there either.

            That was weirder.

            Then at lunch when I went to sit down at the table, Darren put his hand on the bench, right where I was about to sit, and said, “What do you think you’re doing, dummy?” And he didn’t say “dummy” the way he did before, where it was mean-but-not-really. He said “dummy” the way he had before that, where it was actually mean.

            “I’m, um . . .” I glanced around. Nobody would look at me. “I was going to eat lunch?” I wondered why he was asking. That’s what everybody did at lunchtime—eat lunch.