Absolutely Almost(59)

            Dummy.

            Dummy.

            But about halfway down the hall, a funny thing started to happen.

            The more I rolled that word around in my head, the sillier it sounded.

            Dummy rhymes with mummy.

            I rolled it around some more.

            Dummy like a dumbbell.

            I rolled it again.

            Crash test dummy.

            Ventriloquist dummy.

            Dummy gummy funny sunny.

            By the time I got to Mrs. Rouse’s room, I’d rolled that word around so much, I thought I might just have rolled its sharp edges a tiny bit smoother.





getting where

you’re going.




            I barely talked to Calista the whole way home from school that day. And when we got home, I didn’t even wait for her to make my snack. I went straight to my room and closed the door. Then I sat on the carpet, right in front of my dresser, and opened the bottom drawer.

            Under all of my pairs of swim trunks that were too small for me to wear anymore, that’s where it was. The letter. I pulled it out.

            “Albie?” Calista was knocking on the door. “Albie, you okay in there? What’s wrong?”

            I unfolded the letter and pressed out the creases, one, two.

            Dear Mr. and Mrs. Schaffhauser,

            That part was easy to read. The rest was harder.

            I’m writing in regards to the academic progress of your son, Albin Schaffhauser, which, as you both know, has been a matter of much concern for some time now.

            “Albie?”

            I didn’t have a lock on the door. I guess that was how Calista got in.

            “What are you reading?” she asked. She sat down on the carpet, right beside me. “What is that?”

            I set the letter down in my lap, and I think my eyes must’ve been blurry from reading too hard or tears or something, because all I could see was the name of the school in big red letters at the top of the page. MOUNTFORD PREPARATORY SCHOOL. I couldn’t read any of the other words.

            Not like I’d understand them anyway.

            “It’s from my old school,” I told Calista.

            She must’ve guessed I was upset, maybe by the way I was talking, quiet like a snowflake, because she started rubbing my back in slow little circles. And she didn’t say anything, just nodded.

            “It’s the letter they sent right before my parents decided I should go to a new school. Only I think maybe they didn’t really get to decide that.”

            Kicked out. I’d been kicked out. I couldn’t understand all the words on the page, but I knew enough to know that much. I wasn’t smart enough, so they kicked me out.

            I wasn’t even smart enough to read the letter about kicking me out.

            “Oh, Albie,” Calista said. Her voice was quiet like a snowflake too.

            “It’s okay,” I told her, because she sounded so upset. But it wasn’t okay, not really, and I think she knew that too.

            We were quiet a long time. We just sat there, me staring at the fuzzy red letters of the school, and Calista rubbing my back in tiny circles.

            Calista was the one who spoke first.

            “If you could go back to that school,” Calista asked me, “right now, would you?”