Absolutely Almost: "Absolutely Almost" by Lisa Graff

“Hey, Albie,” she said from the doorway. She waved one hand. The other was wrapped around a cup of takeout coffee from the bodega downstairs.

“I’m Calista.”
I didn’t want to look up to meet her, but finally I did. It was better than the supplemental reading packets Mom had gotten for me, anyway.

I asked my parents why we couldn’t have a reality show about us, and Dad said, “Because your mother and I didn’t have the foresight to have two sets of triplets. Now eat your spinach.”

And so, on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I taught Calista everything there was to know about New York—the streets and the avenues, express subways, bus stops. It was easy stuff, but maybe not for her, I guess, being from somewhere else. I even told her about all the different boroughs. Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

Darren glared at me the whole time, like it was my fault he threw a potato chip at me and got in trouble, and the whole other side of the lunch table glared too.

The boys started snickering, and her face turned bright red, and her voice got really quiet, so quiet you could hardly hear her, until finally Mrs. Rouse said, “Thank you, Betsy. That was wonderful.”

I set the forks down on the table and moved to the backpack. I pulled a book out for her to see. Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants. “I’ve read four already.”

“You’re in fifth grade, Albie,” Mom said. “You should be reading books for fifth-graders.”
The timer on the microwave went off then, but Mom didn’t pull out our enchilada dinners. Instead she tossed Captain Underpants on a pile of mail on the counter and walked off down the hall.

“Mr. Clifton,” I told him, very seriously, “you should probably take that down. Because otherwise someone might find out that you got an F in math.”
Mr. Clifton just laughed at that, a real guffaw. “I keep it there on purpose,” he said.

That’s when I noticed her eyes darting down to my desk, where my copy of Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedge Woman, with Calista’s fake cover, was sticking out. My stomach went hot, and I pushed the book in just a centimeter, but when I looked up at Mrs. Rouse, she was still smiling.

I always liked when new pieces of the plane were glued on permanently, because then I could start to see what it was going to look like. A real A-10 Thunderbolt. I must’ve been super bad at patience, because I did that a lot—gluing on pieces to see what they’d look like. Only sometimes. Only every now and then. When I got antsy pants waiting for Dad to help me.

Because Calista was telling the truth, and I knew it—my Donut Man drawing was awful.
“It’s horrible!” I said, still laughing.
“Wretched!” Calista added.
“Gross!”
“Putrid!”
“Terrible!”
“An abomination!”

Because Calista was telling the truth, and I knew it—my Donut Man drawing was awful.
“It’s horrible!” I said, still laughing.
“Wretched!” Calista added.
“Gross!”
“Putrid!”
“Terrible!”
“An abomination!”

Gus could’ve been the valedictorian of their school, because he was so smart.

“It’s not bad,” she went on. Which made me let out a little breath I didn’t know I was holding. “It’s...,” she said. But then she paused for a second, searching through all the teas in the cupboard—picking them up and then setting them down in different stacks. “You don’t have dyslexia,” she said at last.

I read what was on the sticky note.
Lacks perspective
I didn’t know what that meant, but I could tell by the way Calista had her mouth scrunched up while she looked at it that it wasn’t a good thing.

Calista raised her eyebrows at me like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. She just hoisted the backpack onto her shoulder.

I was all right at tetherball, even if I did flinch once when I thought the ball was going to whack me in the head, and Candace Sims laughed at me.

I hoped Dad would say, “Hey, Albie, I just remembered I already bought you an A-10 Thunderbolt a year and a half ago. Where is it? I’m ready to help you finish it now.” Then I could say, “I threw it out the window. It’s nothing but smithereens now.” And then I could see the look on his face.

When it rains in New York, everyone is happy that the building at 59th and Lex is under construction, when just the day before they said the scaffolding made their eyes sore.

Calista and her boyfriend broke up. For real. She didn’t tell me at first, but I knew she was sad. Somehow I just knew. And when I asked her about it, she started crying, right there on the couch. Not grown-up crying either, but big, blubbery kid sobs.

“Who did this?” Mrs. Rouse hollered at us. “Who would do such a thing? This is unacceptable.”
We filed into the classroom slowly, one at a time, all staring at Darren and his desk. He was seething angry. Everyone was staring at Darren, shouting by his desk. “What the heck? What the heck?”

“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—”
Grandpa Park snorted again. “A public school?” he said. “You’re sending my grandson to a public school?”

I nodded. And I waited for her to tell me the stuff she usually told me when Grandpa Park came over, about him not really meaning all the stuff he said sometimes. And about him loving me so much, and that was why he could be so hard on me. And about him having a hard life growing up and so that was why he was gruff.

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.