Dear Dumb Diary #9: That's What Friends Aren't For

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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

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

  Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored

  in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in

  any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known

  or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the

  publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc.,

  Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  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

 

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