Absolutely Almost (23 page)

A
fter a while, Darren Ackleman mostly ignored me completely, like he didn't know I was alive at all. Not all days. But most days.

Some days, he pushed his shoulder into me while I was getting into my cubby.

Some days, he called me “dummy” or “retard” or worse.

Some days, it bothered me.

Some days, it didn't.

But every day, what I tried to do was to roll the names Darren called me around in my head, over over over, until the edges were smooth and the words weren't so painful.

Sometimes it worked.

Sometimes it didn't.

But still I kept rolling. That was the only thing I had to do.

I
hadn't been to visit Hugo in a long time, because I guess I just wasn't feeling that much like donuts, but Monday after school I decided to go. I told my new babysitter, Nadine, that I wanted to go downstairs to get a snack and that Mom always let me go by myself, and after I said that, she let me go right down the elevator and right out the front door of the building, even though what I'd said about Mom letting me go by myself was a lie.

I figured out that maybe Nadine was not a very good babysitter.

Hugo was super happy to see me. He finished scooping sugar into a customer's coffee cup and waved at me. “Albie!” he said when I walked through the door. “What's new?”

“I got two B's in a row on my spelling tests,” I told him.

“Albie!” he said. “That's great. You've been really studying, huh?”

I shrugged. Then I got to picking out a donut. Hugo didn't say anything else, just went back to straightening things behind the counter.

But then he did say something.

“You know, Calista was here the other day.” That's what he said.

My head shot up. “She was?” My heart felt like it was racing just a little bit in my chest. “Did she say anything?”

Hugo straightened a box of gum packs on the counter. “She said to say hi when I saw you,” he told me. “So, hi.”

“Hi,” I answered. I felt a little bit sunken-in, in my chest, all of a sudden. I wished I could've told Calista about my B's in spelling. She'd be real excited for me, I knew it. “I wish she'd come to see
me,
” I said. But even right when I said it, I knew she couldn't. I knew she couldn't come up to my apartment to see me for the same reason I couldn't call her on the phone anymore, even if I wanted to all the time. Because she wasn't my babysitter anymore, and my mom would be mad. And it wasn't fair to Calista to have people be mad at her, even if it was people who were only trying their best to be good moms.

“I've missed you around here, you know,” Hugo said.

“You have?” I asked. I thought Hugo only liked talking to Calista.

Hugo nodded. “Course I did. Plus, I've got coffee cups up to my eyeballs.” Hugo swept his arm toward the corner where, sure enough, the tower of coffee cups was teetering like it was about to topple. But it wasn't quite up to his eyeballs. I think he was exaggerating about that.

“I guess I better get to work, then,” I said.

“I guess you better.”

I headed over to the coffee corner.

“Albie?” Hugo said. I looked back. “Calista asked if she could check the stock when she was here, and she said she thought there might be something wrong with the newest shipment of coffee sleeves.”

“Something wrong?”

Hugo shrugged. “I don't know. But if I were you, I'd look in the back.” He pointed. “The stack closest to the door, I believe.”

• • •

The first thing I noticed about the pack of coffee sleeves by the door was that the plastic was already open. That was weird.

What was weirder, though, was that two sleeves from the top, when I pulled them out to check, there was a picture. In thin black marker, right on the sleeve, someone had drawn a picture. And I thought I knew who.

Underneath it was another coffee sleeve, with another picture.

Then another one, right under that.

On the next one, the picture of Donut Man looked just how I felt.

And then there was another coffee sleeve with a picture of Art Girl, and then under that, four with mostly just words.

• • •

When Nadine came down to the bodega thirty minutes later, she was mad, because she said she thought I'd run off and been hit by a bus or something, and also she talked to my mom who said that no way was I allowed to leave the apartment by myself, so boy, was I in trouble. But I didn't mind. That's because I had a secret.

Under the sleeves of my sweatshirt, I had two cuffs around my wrists, just like the superheroes sometimes wore in the comics. One had a drawing of a donut on it. And the other one said
KIND
.

And for the first time in maybe forever, I really did feel like I might just have superpowers.

I
took that
B is for Bear
spelling test from a couple weeks before, and I taped it to my door, right underneath my letter from Mountford. I knew what Dad would probably say if he saw it, that even if a B was almost an A, that almost wasn't good enough.

But I knew something else too.

You couldn't get where you were going without knowing where you'd been.

And you couldn't be anywhere at all without having been almost there for a while.