by Jim Benton
YOUR
PICTURE
HERE.
THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS
AREN'T FOR
THINK YOU CAN HANDLE
JAMIE KELLY’S FIRST YEAR OF DIARIES?
#1 LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED
#2 MY PANTS ARE HAUNTED!
#3 AM I THE PRINCESS OR THE FROG?
#4 NEVER DO ANYTHING, EVER
#5 CAN ADULTS BECOME HUMAN?
#6 THE PROBLEM WITH HERE IS THAT IT'S WHERE I'M FROM
#7 NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOUR DUMBNESS
#8 IT’S NOT MY FAULT I KNOW EVERYTHING
#9 THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS AREN'T FOR
#10 THE WORST THINGS IN LIFE ARE ALSO FREE
#11 OKAY, SO MAYBE I DO HAVE SUPERPOWERS
#12 ME! (JUST LIKE YOU, ONLY BETTER)
AND DON’T MISS YEAR TWO!
YEAR TWO #1: SCHOOL. HASN’T THIS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH?
YEAR TWO #2: THE SUPER-NICE ARE SUPER-ANNOYING
YEAR TWO #3: NOBODY'S PERFECT. I'M AS CLOSE AS IT GETS.
YEAR TWO #4: WHAT I DON’T KNOW MIGHT HURT ME
DE
A
R DUM
B
DIARY,
THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS
AREN'T FOR
SCHOLASTIC INC.
Jim Benton’s Tales from Mackerel Middle School
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-30846-5
Copyright © 2010 by Jim Benton
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks
and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
DEAR DUMB DIARY is a registered trademark of Jim Benton.
First printing, January 2010
For my dad, Robert Daniel Benton
Thanks to my BFFs at Scholastic:
Steve Scott, Cheryl Weisman,
Susan Jeffers Casel, Anna Bloom,
and BBFF Shannon Penney.
And special thanks to BWF Mary K.,
and BNF Kristen Leclerc.
Dear Whoever Is Reading My Dumb Diary,
Are you sure you’re supposed to be
reading somebody else’s diary? I mean,
that’s not very friendly, is it?
Even if you were my friend, that wouldn’t
give you the right to read it. In fact, I
think it would give you even less of a
right, because there are certain rules of
friendfullness that friends are obligated
to follow.
And if you aren’t my friend, reading my
IMPORTANT PERSONAL PRIVATE
stuff isn’t going to make me want you for
a friend.
If you are one of those people that has
automatically become my friend because
of some sort of situation I was involuntarily
put in, you are also AUTOMATICALLY not
allowed to read my diary.
So, let’s review. Here are the Diary
Reading Rules, as far as who is (and who is
NOT ) allowed to read it:
FRIEND: No.
NOT FRIEND: Also no.
AUTOMATIC FRIEND: Automatic no.
PARENT OR OTHER ADULT
CITIZEN: No.
POLICE: OKAY, but anything in here
that’s illegal, I made up.
So, except if you’re a policeman, I do
hereby swear that everything in this diary is
true, or, at least, as true as it needs to be.
Signed,
Sunday 01
Dear Dumb Diary,
You know how in movies when people are in
love they kiss like they’re trying to get something
that’s stuck in each other’s teeth? My dog Stinker
has this toy he likes to kiss passionately like that.
Or maybe he’s chewing it, I don’t know. It’s hard to
tell. There’s a lot of mouth action and some
obvious deep feelings.
Movie people manage to keep the foam to
a minimum during these scenes, a policy that is
not shared by Stinker. It’s probably because those
actors are just pretending to care about each
other. Stinker’s gross devotion is sincere.
1
I call this toy of his Grossnasty. None of
us know what it was when it started out — could
have been a teddy bear, could have been a pair of
undies. But anything that a beagle Loves Up this
much for years and years takes on an appearance
that can’t be understood by the human brain. Such
is the power of Beagle Froth.
Recently, when the wet, slobbery chewing
sound and dog- saliva odor became too much
for me to endure, I decided to throw Grossnasty
away. I walked right up to Stinker with a trash can,
stooped down, and touched the horrid toy by its ear
or waistband or whatever.
2
And Stinker EXPLODED into this snapping,
growling, spitty ball of fury that actually scared
me enough to make me jump up on my dresser. (He
looked just like the werewolf in that one werewolf
movie I totally want to see.)
Fortunately, I maintain a very cluttered
room, and I had numerous knickknacks within reach
to hurl at him until he backed down. If my room had
been as tidy as my mom wants it, there is a very
good chance that I would have been swallowed by
an enraged beagle.
3
In addition to old fat beagle Stinker, we now
also own his dogdaughter, Stinkette, who we
got by means of Stinker’s unapproved marriage to
Angeline’s dog, Stickybuns. (Why am I telling you all
this again, Diary? You remember this, don’t you?)
Back to Stinkette: This morning, Stinkette
stupidly waddled up to Stinker —who was really
going to town on his beloved Grossnasty — and she
chomped down on it and tugged.
I instantly leaped up on my dresser with
a ceramic bear bank aimed directly at Stinker’s
fangs. I was ready for him to launch into fat
werewolf -dog mode, but he did . . . nothing.
In fact, he even wagged his tail a little. (He
never wags his tail, so it cracked like a bunch of old
knuckles.) Then Stinkette pulled Grossnasty away
from him, hopped up on my bed, and started to
grossfully chew on it herself. Stinker actually gave
his dogdaughter the single item he
loved most in the whole world. Something
suddenly became very clear to me:
I really want to
burn that bedspread
now
.
Also:
Stinker is a bigger dope than I thought
.
4
Oops. Just remembered I was supposed to
call Isabella to come over and study math today.
She’s afraid she might fail and have to take
summer school.
It’s not like I can help her very much. I’m just
not very good at math. It always seems so cold and
unemotional to me.
The teacher says that Two plus Three
equals Five, but nobody asked the poor little
number Two if she even wanted to get added
up with Three, and now that Two and Three
equaled Five together, are they supposed to be
lifelong friends or something? Just because some
mathematician said so? And maybe it’s just me, but
Seven always looks like he’s up to no good.
I hate math.
5
Monday 02
Dear Dumb Diary,
We’ve entered that part of the school
year where you begin to wonder if maybe even
the teachers are beginning to lose interest in
education. We study something — like igneous
rocks, or spit molecules, or one of those countries
that looks like where they are going to build a
country one day — we glue- stick a bunch of things
about it to a piece of poster board, they get hung
up in the hallway, and then we never talk about
them again.
So toward the end of the year, just to keep
things interesting, the school has lots of events
like an Art Show, a Talent Show, and Bingo Night,
which features a game that was developed long ago
so that we’d have something to do until fun was
invented.
6
If I ever become a teacher, I’m going to
jazz it up a bit. Maybe I’ll glue -stick the actual
students up in the hallway, and when you walk
up to one, he’ll have to tell you what he knows
about spit molecules or whatever.
Also, I’m going to make it so that if a kid
bothers me, I can legally shoot her out of a cannon.
I really may have psychic powers, because
I think I’ve read the mind of a teacher who was
thinking that exact thing one time when Mike
Pinsetti got almost all of a crayon stuck in his ear.
7
And speaking of shooting somebody out of a
cannon, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this girl
to you before, Diary —her name is Angeline?
First, before we discuss Angeline, let’s
take a moment to discuss AUTOMATIC
FRIENDSHIPS. Automatic Friendships occur like
this: Let’s say you and a person from your school
who you only kind of know both show up at
the same beach one day and there’s nobody else
to hang around with. BAM —you’re Automatic
Friends. Maybe only for a day, but still. It’s just
the Way the Universe Does Things.
8
Or let’s say you go to prison. You committed
some cool crime like stealing the weapon of
somebody who was going to blast an endangered
baby orphan koala in the face. Still, the judge says
that stealing is stealing, and he sends you to
prison for it. And in prison, you meet somebody who
is in for the same kind of crime, but for her it was
like an endangered baby orphan panda or just an
endangered baby orphan. BAZOOM —now you two
are
Automatic
Friends.
Ever since Angeline’s Uncle Dan (my school’s
assistant principal) married my Aunt Carol, and
Angeline’s dog married my dog and they had puppies
together, I’m
automatically
friends with Angeline. No
beach, no orphan koalas, just KABLAM—Automatic
Friends.
You’ll notice that it’s not because I like her.
It’s just how things work. It’s like math: Poor little
Two got plussed with Three.
9
So now I’m friends with Angeline. This is an
Automatic Friendship, and I have to just
accept it and make the best of things.
See, if I objected, then Aunt Carol might
divorce Angeline’s uncle, sending both of them
tumbling into a deep pit of depression for the rest
of their lives, and
Angeline could wind up feeling so
guilty that she would have to go be locked up in an
old dirty insane asylum for years and years, and
Stinker’s puppies would grow up not knowing both
their parents — and I couldn’t live with myself for
doing something like that to a puppy.
I’ve talked to Isabella about the Angeline
thing, since she’s my BFF. That’s what best friends
are for, after all. But she seems to think that we
should be friends with Angeline, and that if I’m
having a problem with Angeline, we should just hug
it out.
You know, maybe that would help. When
you think about it, choking is just a hug that your
hands give to a throat.
10
Isabella says that Angeline thinks of the
three of us like BFFs. I could have pointed out
to Isabella that, last time I counted, there are
only two Fs in BFF. And there’s a reason for that.
If you get too many Fs, it doesn’t look like Best
Friends Forever anymore. It looks like you’re
trying to spell the sound a fart makes. Observe:
BFFFFFFFFFFFF.
But I didn’t say that, because we’re all
automatically such terribly good friends now.
Terribly, terribly good friends. Terribly,
terribly.
11
Tuesday 03
Dear Dumb Diary,
When I got to school today, Angeline was
standing at Isabella’s locker and the two of them
were talking about something that was making
Angeline laugh and laugh. This would have bothered
somebody who is not friends with Angeline but since
we’re all terribly good pals now, I guess it was really
great. Or whatever the word is for something that is
supposed to be great.
Sure, morning locker time USED to be a
Jamie- Isabella thing, where we’d take a moment
to quietly look at the Whole Wide World and decide
which things in it were wonderful and beautiful
and which things should be dragged by their blond
hair behind a cement mixer for five miles. But
that was way back before Angeline and I became
Automatic Friends. Terribly good friends.
12
Okay. We’re friends now. Remember how I
said that already? How many times do I have to
say it?
Back to the lockers: As I got a little
closer, I could see what they were laughing at.
Way off in the distance, six lockers down, Hudson
Rivers (eighth cutest boy in my grade) was trying
to secretly get a look at Isabella through the odor
vents of another kid’s locker. It’s romantic, of
course, but the vents are angled and it’s hard to see
> through them. Plus, he wasn’t really doing a very
good job of hiding.
We recently learned that Hudson has some
sort of ridiculous crush on Isabella instead of
the ridiculous one he used to have on
Angeline or the
meaningful one he had on me. So I guess it was
pretty funny, although it’s kind of tragic in a way,
since Isabella wouldn’t give him the time of day.
I’m not kidding: The other day, he asked her
what time it was and she said, “I won’t tell you.”
13
I helped Isabella laugh at Hudson (I mean,
what are friends for?) , and I was even friendly to
Angeline by saying a really friendly sentence like,
“Hello.”
Long ago, I might have thought of using a
sentence with the term “donkey butt” in it. But
not anymore. That is really quite friendly of me.
I do wonder how
Angeline feels now that
Hudson is all gaga over Isabella. Poor Angeline just
can’t bring the cute the way she used to. I guess
maybe cute- bringing takes its toll.
14
The rest of today went pretty much like all
Tuesdays go: The thrill of the weekend is behind
you, but the crushing resentment of Wednesday has
not begun.
Tuesdays are how I imagine being an adult
will feel every day. Except when I get to be as old
as my parents. Then I think it will always feel like
Monday morning. In February. And it’s snowing polar
bears. And they have rabies.
Oh —I got a new reading assignment today.
We’re supposed to select a “classic” book to read,
and by “classic,” they mean “old.”
I love to read, but I don’t want a book with
a bunch of “thees” and “thous” and “thines” in
it. Can you imagine how excited the old-timey
people were when somebody invented “you” and