“Not being cool is cool with me,” Mr. Clifton said. And after that he let us eat in there every day while he worked on lesson plans. The only rule was that we had to listen to one of his math jokes, which meant that I had to sit through two different ones every single day, which sometimes could be tough.
“Why didn’t the quarter roll down the hill with the nickel?” That was the joke he told us on Tuesday.
“Because it had more cents!” That was the answer.
Betsy laughed at that one. She laughed at pretty much all of them.
After we were done eating, the three of us usually went outside to the blacktop. Darissa taught us a new handball game called Butt’s Up, which none of us were very good at, but we liked playing because it had the word butt in it. And while we played, me and Betsy would tell her New York things she needed to know. Well, mostly me, but Betsy helped a little.
“The carriages with the horses are in Central Park,” I told her. “But those aren’t too much fun because the horse always poops a lot, and it smells bad.” Betsy nodded to agree with me. “The better thing to do is to see the penguins in the Central Park Zoo, because they have a moving sidewalk in front of them, and the window steams up real good, so you can draw pictures on the windows for the penguins to see.” I didn’t tell her about the Bronx Zoo, and the python and the pig. I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to keep that one to myself.
Betsy nodded again. “You can wr-write n-notes on the w-window too,” she said.
“Maybe we could go this weekend,” Darissa said. “I’ll have my dads ask your parents.”
“Cool!” I said.
“Cool,” Betsy said.
“And maybe we could ask my friend Erlan to come?” I asked.
“Is that the one who likes Star Trek?” Darissa wondered.
I told her he sure was, and Darissa gave the Vulcan salute. I was pretty sure that meant yes.
wednesday.
On Wednesday, Mr. Clifton told the best joke of all.
“Where’s the best place in New York to learn multiplication?” he said.
And you wouldn’t believe it, but I raised my hand. I’d never heard that joke before, but somehow, I don’t know why, I knew the answer. It just popped into my head. So I raised my hand, good and high in the air.
“Albie?” Mr. Clifton said, calling on me.
Everyone turned to look at me then. No one hardly ever guessed the joke, except when it was a super-easy one we all knew anyway, like “seven ate nine.” I was starting to get real nervous, like maybe I only thought I knew the answer but really I was wrong. But I answered anyway, just in case.
“Times Square?” I said.
And when everyone laughed and Mr. Clifton smiled huge, well, I knew I’d been right.
“That’s a good one!” Jacob hooted.
Mr. Clifton gave me a gold star sticker. Me! A gold star sticker! I wore it all day on my sweatshirt. And when Darren Ackleman saw it and wrinkled up his nose and said, “What, do you think you’re special or something?” I just told him, “Yep,” and walked right on down the hallway.
gummy
bears.
On Monday we got our spelling tests back, and I got eight right, more than I’d ever gotten. That was a B. Which I figured I should’ve felt pretty happy about, because a B was better than a C or even a D, which was what I used to get on spelling tests. And I figured I should probably be pretty proud of myself too, because Betsy and I had studied really hard, and I knew that was why I did so well—the studying.