by Jim Benton
Thursday 05
Dear Dumb Diary,
At lunch today, Angeline presented some of
her ideas for the Student Awareness Committee’s
Anti-Bullying Campaign.
“Bullying is a huge problem,” Angeline said.
“Why’s that?” Isabella asked, taking a bite
from a sandwich she had recently acquired from a
much smaller classmate.
“How would you like it if you were bullied?”
Angeline asked.
Isabella snorted and I snorted along with her.
We co-snorted.
“Isabella’s mean older brothers are the
biggest bullies in the world,” I said. “Isabella knows
more about being bullied than anybody.”
Angeline’s big pretty blue eyes got bigger and
prettier and bluer, which was revolting.
“You’re perfect for this!” she said in a voice
so high that I stuck my fingers in my ears.
Somewhere, a dog piddled.
“Tell me, Isabella,” Angeline said
breathlessly, “what would you say that people need
to do in order to stop being bullied?”
“So far, Angeline, nothing I’ve tried has
worked,” Isabella said, chewing her sandwich slowly.
Angeline’s face fell like a bag of hammers
with a really nice complexion.
18
Isabella stood up and walked away.
“I knew her brothers were bad,” Angeline
said. “But I had no idea. Poor Isabella.”
I quickly clamped my hand over Angeline’s
mouth.
“Don’t ever say ‘poor Isabella’ again.
Seriously, Angeline, you will be dead before you hit
the ground if she hears anything like pity coming
out your mouth. Her brothers are monsters, but she
doesn’t want anybody’s help.”
Angeline nodded, and I removed my hand and
looked at the film of lip gloss that remained there.
It was a little gross, but I have to give her
mad props on the lip-gloss selection. My palm had
never looked more kissable.
When I got home, Dad was there with some
plans for while Mom’s gone. He doesn’t know how to
work the dishwasher, washing machine, or food. He
has never cleaned anything, and I don’t think he
knows how.
But he believes he has a way to not do
anything sloppy around the house until Mom
gets back.
Mom can’t stand coming home to a messy
house, and neither one of us want to take that heat.
20
FRIDAY 06
Dear Dumb Diary,
This morning, Dad served breakfast standing
up on the front porch so that we wouldn’t get any
crumbs on the floor.
We ate Pop-Tarts, but I was only allowed to
peel back a small section of the wrapper and nibble
tiny sections at a time because he didn’t want to
sweep the front porch, either.
And amazingly, this wasn’t the most
disturbing pastry-related event of the day.
When I got to school, Angeline was in the
front lobby, handing out free cupcakes and trying
to recruit people to sign up for the Student
Awareness Committee.
21
Yeah, that’s right: Signing up the people who
should be rightfully signing up for the Cuisine Club.
Look, I hate getting all presidenty, but it was
the only thing I could do. Besides, I actually do like
it a little bit.
“Hey,” I said presidentially. “Pretty sure you
need the CLUB PRESIDENT’S authorization to
do something like this.” And I said it in all capital
letters, just like that.
“I have it,” she said, and gestured toward
a chimpanzee huddled in the corner eating a pile
of cupcakes.
22
Okay. Not a REAL chimpanzee, but Isabella
can resemble one when she is hunched over and
eating. A girlpanzee.
I walked right over and started to complain,
but Isabella knew what I was going to say.
“Tell that story walking,” she said. “My
brothers ate everything in the house and I didn’t
have anything to eat this morning. I’d authorize
Angeline to have a Unicorn Roast if it meant I
got cupcakes for breakfast.”
“You realize that this means she’s going to
snap up all the kids who have their Wednesdays
free, right?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Isabella said
through a thick clot of frosting.
“And why’s that?”
“Because worrying about things isn’t
something I would do when I have a whole pile of
cupcakes,” she said.
There’s a famous saying that goes, “Fight fire
with fire,” but now that I think about it, you could
also use it to fight hamsters, or tons of other things.
What the saying is supposed to mean is
that you should use the same type of techniques
and strategies your opponent is using. In this case,
my opponent is Angeline and the fire is cupcakes —
delicious, delicious fire.
What Angeline is about to learn is that
cupcakes are like little blank pieces of paper to the
artistic members of the cooking world, and she is no
match for the full concentrated power of
the Cuisine Club.
While I was writing that I screamed it so loud,
my dad burst into my room to see what was going on
and startled Stinker, who bit him. Sorry, Dad.
I explained Angeline’s unwelcome
Cupcakery to Miss Anderson. Like me, and all
the other attractive people of the world, Miss
Anderson is very competitive. She convened a
special emergency meeting of the Cuisine Club for
a few minutes after school, where she gave the
instructions that we are all supposed to bake
cupcakes for a free giveaway Monday morning.
I wish I could ask Isabella to help, but since
we’re both going after the same Wednesday crowd, I
think it’s best that she doesn’t know.
The best thing to do is to keep it a secret.
SATURDAY 07
Dear Dumb Diary,
I explained to Dad what I was doing, and he
offered to take me to the store and buy cupcakes
just so I wouldn’t get anything dirty. I explained
that the store cupcakes aren’t good enough. I’m
representing the Cuisine Club here, so that means I
have to make them.
After his initial panic faded, Dad finally
said okay, if I promised that everything would be
perfectly clean when I finished. And then he said
“PERFECTLY” many many many many many
many times.
I told him that I would get everything loaded
in the dishwasher, cleaned, and put back long
before Mom got home.
He was surprised to hear about this object
called a “dishwasher.”
“What does it do ?” he asked.
26
I got started right away on the cupcakes, and
just as I had everything going, I heard the front
door open.
“Yes, c’mon in,” I heard my dad say. “You can
help her bake cupcakes to give away on Monday in
order to boost the membership of her club.”
Honestly, it was the longest sentence he
has ever spoken to Isabella, and the only time I
have ever told him what I was doing and he got it
straight.
I think Isabella picked up on that, too, and
she sauntered in with a smile.
“Cupcakes, huh?” she said accusingly. “What
have I told you about baking?”
I didn’t want to repeat it, but she slowly
lowered a bowl of batter toward Stinker and
Stinkette, who snapped at it like a pair of small,
obese sharks. She was going to give it to them if I
didn’t comply.
I recited the rule.
“‘If I ever bake anything, or know of something
being baked, I am to call you immediately. If
that’s not possible, I am to grab the baked goods
and run to your house and make sure I’m not
followed.’ Please don’t let Stinker eat that.”
She put the bowl back up on the counter, and
Stinker bit a chair leg. He was angry, but he’s too
smart to bite Isabella after the unpleasantness that
we now simply refer to as Field Goal Stinker.
28
Isabella agreed to help me bake and clean up
if she was allowed to eat as many cupcakes as she
wanted. Since I knew that would only be three
cupcakes at the most, I was fine with that.
Eleven cupcakes later, I realized that the
reason I had the number three in my head was
probably because that’s how many she can fit in her
mouth AT ONE TIME.
I dropped five others on the floor and the
dogs ate four of those and Dad ate one, but that
still gives me twenty that I will complete decorating
tomorrow.
Isabella cleaned up while I wrangled Stinker
and his dogdaughter, Stinkette, out of the house.
They both have well-known cupcake issues and
would probably devise some kind of attack on the
cupcakes if we were both distracted cleaning.
The technique is simple. You just put little
chunks of potato into a couple of those cupcake
papers, smear some vanilla frosting on them, and
throw them outside. The dogs will bolt out the door
after them. I call them cupfakes.
Next time, I’ll let Dad know what I’m doing,
because a few minutes later, I saw him out in the
yard trying to wrestle the cupfakes away from
the dogs.
SUNDAY 08
Dear Dumb Diary,
I had a long day ahead of me putting the final
touches on the cupcakes, and doing it all by myself
was a really good idea . . .
. . . said the pretend girl about something
that never happened.
Isabella was over REALLY EARLY, because
I’m sure that she suspected that there could be
gummy worms or M&M’s involved in the final stages
of cupcake decoration. Let’s face it, the Girl
Knows Me.
I had 20 perfect cupcakes to decorate
flawlessly, which meant that I had 19 perfect
cupcakes after Isabella got one down before I could
stop her.
31
Actually, 18, after Dad (seeing Isabella
eating one) totally forgot why I was making them in
the first place and thought they were up for grabs.
And then Isabella ate another, thinking that
Dad eating one signified that I had lost control of
the cupcakes and she could get away with it.
17 cupcakes.
Actually, 16, after Stinker managed to get
up on the counter and get one.
32
I managed to decorate 16 cupcakes. They
were so flawlessly regal with gummy worms, M&M’s,
and an extra layer of frosting that I kept thinking
that the reporters from Cupcake Monthly
Magazine might pull up any moment to
photograph them for the cover.
That’s silly. I know that there’s no such
magazine as Cupcake Monthly.
But maybe there’s a Gummy Worm Monthly,
and they would be interested.
33
Isabella doesn’t care at all how food looks.
She got so bored watching me prepare things
that she couldn’t eat, she eventually just went
and watched TV with my dad. She doesn’t really like
watching sports much, but she does like violence,
and sports have just enough to hold her
interest. Not that she hasn’t shared ideas about
how to make sports better.
At one point I felt a little bad for Isabella’s
dad, who was probably at home at that very
instant, wishing that she were there watching TV
with him.
But those brothers are hard to deal with.
Isabella stayed for dinner and we ordered
a pizza. Dad took out scissors and cut the lid of the
pizza box into crude cardboard circles for us to use
as plates so we didn’t get anything dirty. He also
cut out some cardboard forks, and even a
cardboard centerpiece.
After dinner, he used Stinker like a living
vacuum cleaner and dragged him around to
eat any little crumbs that might have fallen on the
floor, and he also ate a paper napkin, but he’s done
that before. At some point tomorrow it will start to
pass through, and he’ll look like a Hershey’s Kiss.
Stinker, I mean.
35
MONDAY 09
Dear Dumb Diary,
Dad gave me a ride to school with my 16 15
cupcakes. (He wanted one for giving me a ride.)
I set them up on a table in the front lobby
with a few other members of the Cuisine Club. Miss
Anderson was there, too, wearing an adorable little
chef outfit like one you might see when you go
shopping for Halloween costumes in the part of the
store Mom guides you away from.
My fellow Cuisine Clubbers had also done their
best to provide beautiful cupcakes, but let’s be
honest here, there are Baked Goods and there
are Baked Not-So-Goods.
Angeline had also set up a little table, but
there was nothing on hers — nice work, bonehead —
and Isabella dragged a table into the lobby just as
we finished assembling our glorious offerings.
The kids started rolling in, and I was suddenly
aware of the fact that lots of these kids wouldn’t be
joining our club. They were just there to slobber up
some free eats.
When Miss Anderson noticed that I was
politely jabbing some of them away from the table,
she rushed over, as much as somebody can rush in
adorable chef high heels.
“You can’t decide who can have them, Jamie,”
she whisperyelled. “I know some of these kids won’t
sign up for the club. That’s just how it goes.”
And she clicky-clacked back over to her
position, where she handed out information on the
club and tried to avoid makin
g eye contact with
that one custodian who was staring at her like he
was really, really into cooking.
It was all a big success. There were lots of
kids standing around the table, gobbling down the
jumbo cupcakes with the extra layers of frosting. I
was going through the crowds with my clipboard,
getting a kid here and there to join the Cuisine Club,
when I suddenly noticed that the crowd was starting
to migrate over to Angeline’s table.
That phrase came back to me: Fight fire
with fire.
And I realized: You don’t fight fire with fire.
You fight fire with water.
Angeline had pitchers of ice-cold water and
little cups that, it turns out, you want
DESPERATELY when you are gobbling jumbo
cupcakes with an extra layer of frosting.
As the kids were washing down my elaborate
cupcakes with her FREE TAP WATER, Angeline
kept yapping about the Student Awareness
Committee.
MY KIDS. MY WEDNESDAY KIDS.
ONCE THEY ATE THE CUPCAKES, WHICH
WERE MY PERSONAL PROPERTY, THESE
KIDS BECAME MY PERSONAL PROPERTY.
I stared complaining to Miss Anderson, but
before she could do anything about it, the crowd
was migrating again, this time over to Isabella’s
table. Isabella had set up a TV and a video game
that I guess won’t even be released for another
month. The crowd was into it.
“I guess your brothers don’t know you have
that game?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“You’re never going to get girls to sign up this
way,” I said. “Girls don’t like video games.”
“Some do,” she said. “And besides, do the