Absolutely Almost(66)

            “Yeah?” I said.

            “Th-thanks,” she told me.

            I smiled, and Betsy smiled back. She held out her hand. Inside was a whole bag of gummy bears.

            I’m not totally sure, but I think maybe me and Betsy are friends again.





lucky.




            That night we all ate dinner at home, at the table, because Grandpa Park was visiting. It was real dinner too—steak and potatoes and even a salad with homemade dressing, not from a bottle or anything. Mom made it, and Dad set the table, which was usually my job. When I told Dad that, he said I could be in charge of loading the dishwasher instead, and that made me grouchy, because I hate loading the dishwasher. But I tried not to look grouchy in front of Grandpa Park. Grandpa Park doesn’t like it when you’re grouchy.

            “So,” Grandpa Park said after he bit into his steak. “Albie.” He was talking with his mouth full, which I thought was something that was rude. But I guess when you’re a grandpa, you can do whatever you want. I cut my own steak and tried not to look at the chewed-up food in his mouth. “How’s Mountford?”

            My eyeballs shot up from my plate. But Mom answered before I could say anything.

            “Albie doesn’t go to Mountford anymore, Appa,” she told him. “You know that.” Appa is what she calls Grandpa Park, because that’s Korean for “Dad.” I asked him once if I should call him harabuji, because that’s what I thought Mom said the Korean word was for “grandfather.” But Grandpa Park just swirled his glass with a clink of ice and said, “Not with that accent.” So I stick to “grandpa.”

            “I most certainly did not know that,” Grandpa Park said, stabbing at a piece of steak with his knife. He didn’t even bother with the fork, just lifted the piece to his mouth and ate it right off the tip of the knife. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have asked about it. So.” He turned to look straight at me, and I shifted my stare down to my salad, which suddenly I didn’t want at all. “You’re no longer going to the fancy private school your parents have been struggling so hard to pay for for the last six years. Why the hell not?”

            Mom’s eyes went big. “Appa!” she said.

            But Grandpa Park kept staring at me. I could tell he was staring at me, even though I was still looking at my salad, not at him. I could feel his eyeballs boring into my brain.

            “Well?” Grandpa Park said.

            “Mom, next time can you put tomatoes in the salad?” I asked. “I really like tomatoes.”

            Mom put a hand on my arm. “Of course, honey,” she said. “I’ll be sure to remember.”

            Across the table, Dad set down his glass of wine. “We thought Albie would benefit more from going to a new school,” he told Grandpa Park. “Mountford wasn’t meeting his needs.”

            Grandpa Park snorted. “He got kicked out,” he said. And the way he said it, it was like he knew it was a fact, like he knew it would happen all along, and he wasn’t surprised at all. He maybe even thought it was sort of funny.

            “I don’t want to go to that stupid school anyway!” I said. Because I didn’t. But then I slapped my hand over my mouth, because I was pretty sure I’d just yelled at Grandpa Park. And that was definitely something I was not supposed to do.

            “Albie, sweetie,” Mom said, her hand still on my arm, “why don’t you go do your reading for your reading log?”

            “I’m still eating,” I told her.

            “For your information,” Dad told Grandpa Park—and he was glaring now, the kind of glaring I’d only seen him do when he was on the phone yelling at the cable guy—“P.S. 183 is an excellent school with a progressive philosophy on student—”