Absolutely Almost (22 page)

S
tudying for spelling tests with Betsy was different from studying with Calista. Usually, we went to her apartment after school, and her mom gave us cookies, the vanilla sandwich kind with chocolate in the middle. I always twisted mine open and ate the chocolate off first, one lick at a time. Betsy nibbled the whole cookie in circles, all the way around slowly, till she got to the final bite in the center.

We didn't make flash cards or draw pictures.

What we did was practice the spelling words, over and over and over. Betsy's mom read them out, and we took turns trying to spell them. I did mine out loud, and Betsy wrote hers on paper. If we got five or more right, we got another cookie. That's why I had to eat mine so slowly, with the licking. But I was starting to get more cookies.

I missed Calista a lot, but it wasn't so bad, studying with Betsy.

H
ow did the elections go this week?” Dad asked me. It was just me and him, since he was working from home after Harriet said she was done watching me and my parents should find a real nanny already. I was pretending to do social studies homework while Dad worked on his laptop. Really, I was doodling superheroes.

“Um,” I said. Elections were a while ago, but I was surprised Dad remembered at all. “I ran for vice president,” I told him. “But I lost.” I clenched my stomach in a knot, waiting for all the disappointment.

“Oh,” Dad said. “Well, that's all right, Albie. You can't win them all.”

I unclenched my stomach just the tiniest bit. “Really?” I said.

“Sure.” Dad clicked at his keyboard. “Only one person gets to be vice president, right? If there are a lot of people running, then you can't take it too much to heart if you don't get it.”

“It was just one other person,” I told him.

I don't know why I said that, really. I should've just let Dad be not disappointed in me, and not said anything at all. It was nice when Dad was not disappointed in me. But I guess I wanted him to be not disappointed in
me,
and not some made-up Albie who did really great in school elections.

Dad looked up from his laptop and frowned. “I bet you got a lot of votes, though,” he said.

“Nope,” I told him.

I was feeling like a pretty disappointing person.

But my dad surprised me. Because he pushed back his laptop on the table and said, “Did you want to be vice president very badly, Albie?” And he looked like he really wanted to know.

So I thought about it. “Yeah,” I said at last. “At first I didn't, but”—I twirled my pencil in my fingers—“then it seemed like it would be fun. It would've been nice to win something.”

Dad shut his laptop.

“Did I ever show you how to make a famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese?” That's what he asked me.

Which seemed like a weird thing to ask.

I shook my head.

It turned out that the famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese was a grilled cheese sandwich that my dad learned how to make from
his
dad and that he said he wanted to teach me to make too.

The famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese was made with sourdough bread, not regular white.

The famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese had three different kinds of cheese in it—Swiss cheese and two other ones with funny-sounding names I couldn't pronounce. We had to walk six whole blocks in the snow to the fancy grocery store to get them all, which you'd think wouldn't be worth it, but Dad said it would be.

The famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese had a secret layer of Dijon mustard.

The famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese had to be made very precisely. First you put all the bread and the mustard and the cheese together. Not too much mustard.

Then you heated up the pan on the stove to exactly the right temperature, without anything even inside it. That part was important.

Then, while you were waiting for the pan to heat up, you spread butter on the outside sides of the sourdough bread. That was important too. Some people thought you melted the butter in the pan first to make grilled cheese,
then
put the sandwich down, but that was wrong because then the butter wouldn't spread even on the bread.

After that you had to stand and wait, patient patient patient, until you heard the Schaffhauser sizzle. That's how you knew to flip the sandwich over. I did it perfectly, exactly right. Dad said I was a natural.

The famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese was the best sandwich I ever ate.

“Can I ask you something, Albie?” Dad said while we chewed. “About the election?”

I looked at my famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese and found the perfect spot to take my next bite. “Sure,” I said.

“Did you really want to be vice president?” Dad asked. “Or did you just want to win?”

I thought about that. Back before the elections, I would've said I wanted to be vice president more than anything. But really, who wanted to turn the classroom lights off?

“Maybe just winning,” I said.

Dad nodded when I said that. “I think the hard thing for you, Albie,” he told me, wiping his fingers off on a napkin, “is not going to be getting what you want in life, but figuring out what that is. Once you know what you want—really, truly—I know you'll get it.”

I looked up at Dad while he took another bite of his famous Schaffhauser grilled cheese. There was a funny thing about Dad, I thought. Because sometimes he didn't understand me at all. And sometimes, he understood me more than anyone else.

“Thanks,” I said. And I took another bite of my own.

I
stopped sitting at the lunch table with Darren and Candace and Lizzy and everyone. And reading
Captain Underpants
on the bench by myself. Now me and Betsy and Darissa ate our lunch in Mr. Clifton's room, which Mr. Clifton said was okay, even though Betsy wasn't actually in math club.

“We want to eat in here because we're not cool,” I told him. Darissa wasn't cool either. She told me that right away, I think because she could tell I was worried she might be. But she didn't seem too upset about it. Darissa was friendly and funny and weird. She even knew how to do the Vulcan salute. She knew more about TV than any girl I'd ever met.

“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.

O
n 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.

O
n 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.

But actually I wasn't as happy as I probably should've been. Or as proud either. Because maybe it was silly, but I guess I thought just once I would get an A. And I guess maybe I thought it would happen that time.

I wondered what getting an A would feel like. The best feeling in the world, probably. Like going to a Yankees game with your dad and eating three hot dogs with extra everything.

But I didn't get an A. I got a B. Getting a B didn't feel like the best feeling in the world. It felt
almost
good.
Almost
happy.
Almost
proud. But not as good as an A.

I guess Betsy could tell I was feeling a little bit sad about the B, because when I was up at the front of the room sharpening my pencil, Betsy turned over the paper on my desk so you could see the grade, and right after the spot where Mrs. Rouse had written the B with her big red marker, Betsy wrote two other words, so that it said

B is for

And then after the
for,
Betsy had placed a gummy bear, right at the top of the test. A red one.

“B is for Bear,” I said, reading. And I popped the gummy bear in my mouth. Betsy smiled at me, and right then, I felt really glad about getting a B. I could tell Betsy was proud of me.

“You should get a gummy bear too,” I told her, looking at her test. “You should get a bunch, since you got an A.” An A was way better than a B, so it only made sense that you would get more gummy bears for that.

Betsy shook her head, and before I could ask her why, Mrs. Rouse shushed us for talking during silent reading, so she wouldn't've been able to talk anyway. Instead she wrote a note on the corner of her notebook, and twisted it so I could see.

A isn't for Bear.
That's what the note said.
Only B is.

I thought about that, and then I wrote a note on the corner of my own notebook.

What's A for?

That's what my note said. Usually I always thought
A
was for Albie, but that didn't make sense this time.

Betsy just shrugged, and when Mrs. Rouse got up to get something from the closet, Betsy wrote me a new note.

Anchovies?

It took me a long time to sound out the word, but when I finally did, when I figured out that Betsy meant those tiny smelly fish that no one
ever
wants on pizza, I laughed so hard I almost got both of us in trouble again.

If
A
was for anchovies, then I was glad I got a
B
.

• • •

I thought about it a lot that whole afternoon, and finally I decided that I didn't think
A
was for anchovies after all. I worked really hard on my plan all night, and the next morning I gave Betsy the card.

A is for Art!

That's what it said on the front. And on the inside, it was full of all the best drawings that Calista had taught me how to do—superheroes and unicorns and donuts and all my favorite stuff to draw. It said
Good job, Betsy!
in huge blue letters.

I could tell that Betsy liked it, because she tucked it carefully into her folder, and then she looked up at me and said, “Thanks, Albie.” And Betsy only said something when she really meant it.