Absolutely Almost(48)

            “Not here you’re not,” Darren told me. “We don’t want liars here.”

            “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” Even though I was sort of confused about what he was talking about. Because I was pretty sure he meant me. And I was not a liar.

            “Why did you tell everyone that kid Erlan was your best friend?” Candace said, slapping her panda lunch box on the table. “Just so people would think you were cool?”

            “Erlan is my best friend,” I said. I was just standing, because even though Darren had moved his hand, I didn’t think I was allowed to sit down yet. I didn’t know what to do. I was confused about the rules again. “We’ve been best friends since we were four. He lives down the hall.”

            “Liar,” Candace said. She flipped the tabs on her lunch box. “I watched the show on Friday, and you weren’t in it.”

            “I was,” I said.

            “No you weren’t,” Lizzy said. “Candace told us. They had a birthday party with all their friends, and you weren’t there. You’re such a liar. Go sit over there.”

            I looked at Darren. “But . . . ,” I said. Darren was my friend. He said I was cool.

            “Go sit over there, dummy,” Darren said. He didn’t even look up at me.

            • • •

            I ate lunch at the far end of the table, with nobody even near me. They were all scooched over tight on the other side, like I might give them some disease or something.

            I was a nobody all day.

            I was a nobody the next day too.

            And the day after that.

            I wished Betsy was there. I guessed I wasn’t cool anymore, just like her.

            I wished I’d never been cool at all.





not funny.




            What did the calculator say to the student?”

            That was Mr. Clifton’s joke during math club.

            But when he peered at us over his glasses and cleared his throat and said, “You can count on me!” I didn’t laugh.

            I didn’t laugh harder than Savannah, even.

            I just sat at my desk with my arms crossed over my chest, grumpy, and said, “You don’t count on a calculator. You add.”

            I didn’t even raise my hand to say it either.

            Behind me, Jacob whispered, “Whoa.”

            The past couple days, Mr. Clifton’s jokes haven’t been very funny.





words.




            Wednesday at school, Darren Ackleman got in trouble for saying “retard.”

            “We don’t call anyone retarded,” Mrs. Chilcoat, the chorus teacher, said, while I did my best to shrink into my chair. “Retard is a bad word.” She told Darren and everybody that they weren’t allowed to use it. Principal Jim even talked about it the next day on the morning announcements, so I guess Mrs. Chilcoat told him about it too.

            “From here on out,” Principal Jim’s voice boomed from the intercom, “the word retard is outlawed at P.S. 183.” Everyone in Mrs. Rouse’s class stared at me the whole time, and I wished there was a secret trapdoor in my seat that would open up, and down below there’d be a lion who would swallow me in one gulp.

            But Darren Ackleman doesn’t call me “retard” anymore.

            Moron.