by Jim Benton
84
One nice little word about Uncle Dan out of
her nice little mouth and that would end it all. She
would lose.
“I . . . uh . . .”
Angeline is super-proud of her uncle. She
couldn’t possibly say anything mean.
“I know I wouldn’t want a big picture of me
up in the hallway. It would be about five minutes
before you-know-who drew a mustache on it,”
she said, and thumbed her little thumb at me.
People laughed, and Isabella’s head hit the
desk like a steel bowling ball hitting a sidewalk.
I hate to admit it, Dumb Diary, but Angeline
is every bit as good at avoiding the traps as I am.
85
She proved it again later, in her response to
Isabella’s recycling question on the blog:
Isabella, I read your post about recycling. My opinion
is that people who don't recycle are inconsiderate
slobs.
— Angeline
And, of course, there were 90 likes and many
joyful comments about her post.
She’s good at being good, and she’s good at
being bad. Makes me wonder how she could be so
good at it all. Bad at it all. Whatever.
86
Thursday 19
Dear Dumb Diary,
I had to go down to the school office today. I
got gum in my hair and wanted Aunt Carol to get it
out. Isabella offered, but I knew she would just pull
it until I swore a lot and then I would have lost
the bet. And I wasn’t going down like that.
Aunt Carol is kind of an expert on adult
lady beauty, anyway, so I’m sure she’s read
many fashion magazines featuring tips on gum
removal.
87
She was so excited to see me, because she
was in the middle of making Uncle Dan consider
various coat, tie, and shirt combinations for his big
award photo.
She was having a lot of fun, but he looked like
a cat that knew it was getting a bath soon.
“Why couldn’t we do this at home?” he asked.
“We’re missing lunch, and I’m starving.”
“Because the light here is different than at
home,” she said with a smile. “The light affects
how the photo looks. You always have to decide
on these things using the same light you’ll be
photographed in.”
Uncle Dan made a sound like his soul was
escaping through his nostrils.
“This photo is going to hang in these halls
until the end of time. Everybody will see it every
day. It has to be perfect,” she said.
Evidently he had a little bit of soul left in one
nostril, and it escaped as well.
88
Aunt Carol held up tie after tie, tilting her
head, as if seeing with a tilted head was better than
seeing with a regular upright head.
She asked me what I thought.
I said that I thought I needed the gum out of
my hair before I was late for class.
She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a
huge jar of peanut butter.
“You have peanut butter here?” Uncle Dan said.
She smeared the peanut butter all over the
gum, and it slid right out. Then she got out a jar of
Vaseline and used that to get the peanut butter out
of my hair. Then she used some adhesive-remover to
get the Vaseline out of my hair.
“That’s great stuff for getting out Vaseline,”
I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It gets gum out, too.”
89
Yes. I know. But she was distracted with
the important business of picking out her husband’s
clothes.
I closed the door behind me quietly, pausing
for just long enough to glimpse Uncle Dan eating an
enormous wad of peanut butter off a pen.
90
Friday 20
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella and Angeline came by my locker this
afternoon. Isabella said that she thought our blog
needed a little pizzazz, which I was immediately in
favor of, because at first I thought it had something
to do with pizza.
It turns out that pizzazz, Dumb Diary, means
eye-catching, or fun, or fancy.
Isabella thought maybe we should have a logo.
I told her I would get right on it, but she said
she had it under control. “I know you have a lot to
do what with all that stuff you have going on,” she
added.
“What stuff?” I asked. I didn’t have any
stuff going on except for cleaning my room, helping
my dad get some junk out of the garage, a bunch of
homework, and a stack of thank-you cards I still
owed people from Christmas and my birthday, and
another Christmas and another birthday.
“I’ve got this under control,” Isabella said,
smiling. Then she gave me a nice good-bye shove.
92
When I got home, Dad had picked up Chinese
food, which is how my dad often celebrates things.
He just found out that he’s up for a promotion
and raise at work, and he has a big review next week.
He’s only about halfway sure he’s going to get it. His
boss is a little stuffy, and he says he needs to be on
his best behavior until then.
I made him a handy checklist of how to be
stuffy until he gets the promotion.
93
Saturday 21
Dear Dumb Diary,
So today Dad lost the tie that my mom made
him. He woke up early to get us donuts, and he
decided to wear his tie to the donut shop. And when
he was getting back into the car, he scratched
himself really, really, really, really badly
and had to keep himself from bleeding to death, so
he used his tie to stop the bleeding.
And on the way home, he had his arm out the
window and the tie blew off. He would have
stopped, but it was right on that bridge down by
Lincoln Road, so the tie fell in the river and it’s long
gone by now. Many people have reported seeing
bears down near that spot, anyway.
And it’s a good thing that Dad tried this
HUGE DUMB LIE out on me first, because Mom
would have seen right through it.
94
“Just for starters, Dad, you’re wearing a
T-shirt. Who wears a tie with a T-shirt? You go for
donuts on Sunday, not Saturday, Lincoln Road isn’t
on the way, and you don’t have a scratch on your
arm. Not even a little one.”
He shrugged and pulled his monkeyvomit tie
out of his pocket.
“Did you believe the bear part?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Why can’t you just keep
taking the tie off on your way to work?”
“Because it’s wrong to keep lying. It’s
deceitful and wrong, Jamie.”
“You were just getting ready to tell a huge
lie about bleeding to death,” I pointed out.
He looked at me and knew I was right.
“You’re grounded for that,” he said. “You’re
grounded for suggesting that terrible plan. Sometimes
your mom pops in unexpectedly for lunch, and your
plan would get me busted. So I’m grounding you for
giving me that very terrible plan.”
95
“You’re not grounding me,” I said. “You’re
just frustrated. We’ll figure this out, Dad.”
He nodded. He knew he couldn’t ground me.
And besides, if you can’t count on a middle school
kid for a reliable lie, who can you count on?
96
Sunday 22
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella called me and Angeline today about
having an emergency meeting of the Student
Awareness Committee at her house. She had never
called for an emergency meeting before.
Isabella rarely uses the word “emergency,”
so there were just a few questions I wanted to ask
first.
1.) Is there an enormous fire that you need help
putting out?
2.) Is there any kind of “thing” that you need
help burying?
3.) Is there an enormous fire that you need help
starting?
After she answered “no” to these three
things, and I confirmed that there was nothing that
would involve running from police or guard dogs, my
mom drove me over to her house.
97
I might have preferred the guard dogs.
Angeline was already there when I arrived. So was
Dicky Flartsnutt, who was holding a poster board
and dancing up and down, due to either excitement
or a trip to the bathroom that was super incredibly
overdue.
Isabella sat us down.
“I asked Dicky to design a logo,” she began.
“You know, for the Student Awareness Committee.
I love it, of course, but I told him that we all had
to agree.”
I knew this wasn’t going to go well.
“Dicky, could you please turn your drawing
around? Let’s get their opinions.”
With a squeal of delighted
anticipation, Dicky showed us his drawing.
“It’s a clown,” he said. “Isabella thought
a clown would be a good idea, because they’re so
colorful and everybody likes them.”
I wheezed.
Angeline squinted. “Hey, that looks a little
like . . .”
“It is!” Isabella said with a grin. “It’s our dear
departed Hoggy the clown. Do you remember Hoggy,
Jamie? He was a very popular local celebrity before
he passed away. This will be a great tribute to
him, don’t you think?”
More wheezing.
“What do you think of Dicky’s artwork?”
Isabella asked Angeline. “He worked on it for hours,
so be honest.”
Isabella had thought this through. She knew
that I couldn’t deal nicely with a clown, and that
Angeline wouldn’t be able to hurt Dicky’s feelings.
Somebody had to crack.
99
“I love the idea of a logo,” I said.
“Yes,” Isabella said. “But THIS logo. What
do you think of this CLOWN logo?”
“You shouldn’t have made Dicky draw a
clown,” Angeline said. “You should have let him
choose whatever he wanted. The logo doesn’t even
have to be a drawing.”
Ah. Very smooth, Angeline. Nothing nice,
but nothing directed at Dicky.
“Angeline’s right,” I said. “Dicky’s creative,
and he could easily come up with his own idea for
the logo.” Nice, right? Nothing mean there.
100
“FINE,” Isabella said through her gnashing
teeth. She turned to Dicky, her glasses gleaming.
Mercifully, Dicky couldn’t see the fire that burned
inside her eyes behind the glare on the lenses.
“Dicky,” she said, continuing to talk through
her teeth, “what would you like to use for a logo?”
Dicky had no power to resist her.
“A clown,” he said meekly.
Isabella smiled.
101
“You two warts happy now?” she asked us.
“Now what do you guys say to the clown?”
“I’m not sure,” Angeline said.
I echoed her. “I’m not sure, either.”
Not negative, not positive, not nice, not
mean. It was the perfect way to respond if you don’t
care that it makes you sound very, very dumb.
I don’t know why I never thought of it before. Since
Angeline is a blond, it’s possible that she’s just
more fluent in dumb.
Isabella started to muscle the three of us to
the door.
“Fine. A clown it is. Time to go home,
everybody. Meeting over.”
102
Outside on the porch, as we all waited in
the rain for our rides, I considered asking Angeline
rapid-fire questions about what she thought of
Dicky’s rubber shoes, or his strange pants, or his
shirt with a design that was clearly meant for a
much younger wearer. But I had the feeling that she
might be able to dodge every question.
I noticed that Dicky was holding his drawing
behind his back, so he didn’t realize that the paint
was washing off the poster board and down Isabella’s
steps. I thought about how proud he was of the logo,
and how hard he had worked on it, and how now it
would never get used.
I nearly told him, but then I thought about
how Isabella’s mom would probably make her
clean it up, so I didn’t say anything.
Good-bye, Hoggy.
103
Monday 23
Dear Dumb Diary,
Today when I opened my locker, I found a
little gift-wrapped box with a note on it that said:
Let’s end this bet.
Signed, Angeline
It was in her pretty lacy handwriting, and it
smelled of her delicious strawberry scent, which she
secretes naturally the way normal people secrete
sweat. I kind of knew she wouldn’t be able to take
the pressure, so I wasn’t surprised at her little gift
offering.
I opened it happily, and 100 spiders
crawled out.
104
You can’t climb the air. I’ve seen
others try, I tried it today, and it can’t be done. As
hard as you pretend that there’s an invisible ladder
for you to go up, it won’t be there, and you’ll end up
just standing in place, flapping and screaming.
After I calmed down, I realized what
Angeline’s little note meant. She was planning on
ending the bet when I went nuts on her for leaving
me the spiders.
I picked up the empty box (spiders are,
evidently, afraid of girl screams so they ran away),
and marched down the hall with it toward Angeline’s
locker.
When I got there, she was smiling and holding
a box almost identical to mine.
105
It had a little note on it that said:
It looked like my handwriting, and it even had
glitter all over it, which is my thing. Totally my th
ing.
It was full of chocolates.
“Did you put this here for me?” she asked.
“Because I was thinking that if you had, I should
come and say something nice.”
“No. Did you leave a box of spiders in my
locker?” I said. “Because if you had, I probably
would have said something really mean.”
“One of us would have lost,” Angeline said
with a frown. “Isabella did this. What a dirty trick.
I’m going to find her right now.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
106
When we found Isabella, Angeline started to
yell at her.
“This is low, even for you, Isabella. Of all the
rotten ways to make us lose this bet . . .” She turned
to me, giving me the chance to take a crack at her.
I opened my mouth to say something, but
then I hesitated. Gift wrap and glitter costs money.
Those chocolates were expensive, and not a single
one was missing from the box.
“Very clever, Angeline,” I said sweetly.
“You almost had me. But Isabella would never spend
the cash, and she would have never been able to part
with the chocolate. You sent me the box, and you
made one for yourself in order to frame Isabella.”
“Well, aren’t you a smart little goatface,”
Angeline said, dropping the box and walking away.
“Did she really come up with that?” Isabella
asked through a mouthful of floor chocolate.
“That’s pretty diabolical.”
Tuesday 24
Dear Dumb Diary,
Mrs. Curie is still all about the diseases. We
talked about antibiotics in science today, and I
remembered seeing something on a yogurt
container saying it was full of probiotics.
“Mrs. Curie, are we antibiotic or probiotic?” I
asked, feeling that maybe we were sending mixed