by Jim Benton
pretty and popular as Angeline, there is a very short
list of places you cannot sit to eat your lunch.
18
19
I thought she was thinking about joining us,
but she must have just stopped for a second to
let a wedgie self-correct or something like that.
(Isabella says that super-attractive people don’t
get the sort of wedgies that require you to go in
after them like a rescue team saving a puppy stuck
in a cave. They have the ability to gracefully flex
their heinies in such a way that their butt, like,
spits out the underpants—which sounds horrible
and magnificent at the same time.)
20
After lunch, we stopped by the office to see
Aunt Carol and listen to her blabber on about her
wedding dress and shoes and veil and all that junk.
Isabella mentioned that the wedding was coming
up so fast that she would be surprised if everything
was ready in time.
I think this freaked out Aunt Carol a little,
because she grabbed a calendar and showed it to
Isabella and told her that she had plenty of time.
Then she told Isabella again that she had
plenty of time and then she told me. She told us
both a couple more times and then she actually
told the calendar that she had plenty of time, but
it almost sounded more like she was begging the
calendar instead of telling it.
Nice one, Isabella. Seriously, what were you
thinking?
Friday 06
Dear Dumb Diary,
Beautiful glorious news! Today they
told us that something went stinkfully wrong with
the heating or ventilation system or something over
at Wodehouse Middle School. Supposedly it’s some
kind of horrible odor, maybe even poisonous. Since
they think it’s going to take weeks to repair, they’re
busing the kids to different nearby schools, and
Mackerel Middle School is one of them.
I’m THRILLED that foreigners are coming.
I love people who aren’t from here! And I’ll bet
they’re all pretty excited that they’re not from here,
too. I know that if I was not from here, I’d be pretty
excited.
I mean, the only problem with here is that it’s
where I’m from. And they’re not from here, so I know
I already like that about them.
They’re only a few miles away, but I wonder
if they’ll have accents. England is only a few inches
from France, and they have different accents.
22
Isabella is suspicious of the Wodehouse kids,
and thinks that they will probably take our stuff.
Isabella has mean older brothers, so she has grown
up thinking that somebody is always going to take
her stuff or throw a booger at her.
This may be why Isabella wrongfully believes
that every place else is worse than here, and I
rightly know that every place else is better. (Except
those places with weird laws like you can’t dance
with a monkey or wear high heels. We both agree
that those places are worse.)
Aunt Carol came over for a while tonight
to visit Mom. She discovered some weight-loss
pamphlets on her desk, and she was all upset that
maybe somebody was telling her that she was
gaining weight and now her wedding dress won’t fit
right.
We all told her that it was just somebody who
was all jealous of her wedding.
Isabella was over for dinner tonight, so
thankfully she was on hand to cheer up Aunt Carol
by telling her about her cousin who was so big
they just stitched two wedding dresses together.
She said she could get Aunt Carol the name of the
dressmakers who did it and that they also make
tents, in case Aunt Carol is thinking about going
camping for her honeymoon.
Isabella always has the answers. I guess
I’m pretty lucky that we’re best friends. It’s also
lucky that when Isabella is over for dinner, Dad
insists that we get pizza or something like that
because it’s difficult to predict how nonfamily
members will medically react to Mom’s cooking.
24
Isabella and I tried to teach Stinker some
foreign words after dinner. Stinker hates cats, so
I said “gato,” which is the one Spanish word I
know. It means “cat.” But he didn’t do anything,
so Isabella thinks he might be deaf. She tried the one
bit of sign language she knows, which also happens
to be cat. Stinker sniffed the air, which she said
proves he’s deaf because he was sniffing for a cat.
But I don’t think he’s deaf. Anytime your
hands go near your face, Stinker thinks you have
food, so he goes on alert to figure out what you
have and then determines how hard he wishes for
you to drop it, which is a dog’s favorite way to eat
things.
If I ever open a restaurant for dogs, the
waitstaff will walk back and forth past the dog’s
table, eating whatever he had ordered. Every time,
they will just drop some of it on the floor.
Oh, and the dogs’ water glasses will be filled
from the toilet because Stinker also seems to
enjoy that, too.
25
Saturday 07
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline called FIRST THING THIS
MORNING!!! She is one of those insane people that
gets up early on days she doesn’t have to get up early.
The project we’re doing isn’t due for weeks,
but Angeline wants to PLAN AHEAD.
I was also PLANNING AHEAD, Angeline.
I was PLANNING on putting it off until the day
before it was due, which is a totally legitimate kind
of planning. So you’re not the only one capable of
PLANNING, Blondwad.
Anyway, Angeline is a PARENT WHISPERER,
one of those people that can talk to parents and
understand their odd language. She told Mom all
about the project, so now, of course, Mom will be on
my back until it’s done. She also told my mom about
the plan she had for us today, and how she and her
mom would be by in a while to pick me up . . .
. . . to go take pictures of graffiti
somewhere.
26
Angeline’s mom, you might remember, Dumb
Diary, looks a lot like Angeline (you know, after
Angeline is deformed into a mom) but has hair that
is even worse than mine.
She and Angeline seem to have a very strange
mother-daughter relationship in which they talk
nicely to each other. What’s that about, right?
Her mom is really nice to me because her
brother, Assistant Principal Devon, is marrying my
aunt Carol, which I think will make her my cousin
or grandma-in-law or something like that if the
divorce I’m hoping for doesn’t come through
(fingers crossed).
I like Angeline’s mom, which makes me
wonder if Angeline was a
dopted. Or built in some
twisted doll factory.
27
We drove up to the supermarket and tried to
figure out something we could say about the graffiti
we found, but it was mostly just people’s names
written on the wall out by the trash cans. (Hey,
here’s a tip, graffitists, if you want us to read your
name so bad that you’ll paint it on a wall, why don’t
you PRINT CLEARLY?)
Nice idea you had, Angeline. We’ll have
to find something better than this for our dumb
project.
Sunday 08
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella and I talked for a long time on the
phone this morning, which usually makes Dad
nuts, because, as a dad, his conversations with his
friends go something like this:
DAD: Hey.
DAD’S FRIEND: Hey.
DAD: Lawnmower.
DAD’S FRIEND: Lawnmower football.
DAD: Gas-tank football crescent-wrench
plumbing.
DAD’S FRIEND: Bye.
DAD: Bye.
And this is a friend he hasn’t talked to in four
years.
29
But on Sundays, Dad just tries to relax and
leave everybody else alone because if he starts
talking about you making the most of your time,
Mom will start talking about him making the most
of his time right when Dad is really focused on
making the least of his time by watching TV and
butt-sitting-on. So I can talk on the phone for
a looooooonnnngggg time on Sundays.
30
I was trying to talk Isabella into the idea
of getting accents, because I think it would be
cooler if we could talk to each other in accents
and nobody could understand us. Then Isabella
told me that she heard about this girl from another
school or something who fell asleep in class with a
permanent marker in her mouth and it leaked and
left a blue spot on her tongue for the rest of her
life. Now, the total humiliation has forever deprived
her of the right to stick her tongue back out at you
when you stick your tongue out at her. Who could
live that way?
I can’t always figure out what point Isabella
is trying to make with these stories. I think the
connection here was that this story had to do with a
mouth, which is the main hole accents come out of.
But for somebody who doesn’t like kids from
other schools, Isabella sure knows a lot about them.
31
Monday 09
Dear Dumb Diary,
The visitors from the faraway middle
school arrived today. Okay, it’s only a couple
miles away, but still. I had a close encounter with
one today and, excellently, so did Angeline.
Here’s how it went: We were in English
class and Mr. Evans was talking about his dumb
understanding-cultures-through-
writing thing, and he started giving us a haiku
lesson.
A haiku is a traditional Japanese three-line
poem that has five syllables in the first line, seven
in the next line, and then five in the last line, which
is useful to know in case you ever find yourself in a
position where you’re inspired to write a beautiful
poem, but you can’t be bothered to spend any more
than seventeen syllables on the project.
So, Mr. Evans read us a few, and I guess
they’re kind of pretty. Most of them seemed to be
about flowers and birds. Then he asked us to write
one, but he only gave us a couple minutes. I really
don’t think it was fair to make us read them out
loud, but he did.
Anyway, this was mine:
Five syllables here.
And now you got seven more.
And now five. Happy?
32
When Evans is angry he pumps extra blood
through his face so that his big ugly head-vein
throbs at you. He gave me a couple of throbs and
then called on Angeline. This, unfortunately, was
her haiku:
The sparrow’s music
Is brighter and lovelier
Than festive feathers.
It got a little round of applause, of course,
because even Angeline’s intestinal gas would get a
little round of applause.
But before they could all erect a big gold
statue to the memory of how excellent Angeline’s
haiku was, a girl in the back—one I had not noticed
when I came in—raised her hand. She was one of
the new Wodehouse Middle School kids. And Mr.
Evans called on her: “Yes, Colette.”
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34
That’s right Dumb Diary; “Colette.” That’s
a French name, which means it sounds 25% more
attractive than a non-French name—like if her
name was Barney.
And get this: She is prettier than Angeline.
A LOT PRETTIER! And she’s doing it without the
unfair advantage of blond hair. In fact, Colette’s
hair is black. It’s as black and silky and shiny as
if you crossed a puppy with a unicorn. And gave it
black hair.
Okay, that particular animal didn’t come out
as attractive as I thought it might. Anyway, Colette
has really pretty French-looking hair. This was her
haiku:
Hey bird. Thanks loads but
Your song won’t make up for the
Bird poo on our car.
Colette’s haiku got applause and a laugh.
I think she really was aiming it directly at Angeline,
because right on the last line, I saw her look
straight at Angeline and smile, but not a nice smile
It was more like the kind of smile a beautiful fairy
lumberjack might make just before it took a chain
saw to an annoying blond tree.
And, with that, it was as though Angeline’s
haiku was wiped off the face of the Earth, as easily
as you might wipe her face off a train.
35
36
Right after class, we caught up to Colette in
the hall, her dizzying beauty causing boys to blow
along after her like sad little leaves caught up in a
hurricane of Pure Girlness.
“Nice haiku, Colette,” Isabella said.
And I adorably added, “I wish that haiku had
been my-ku.”
And Isabella had to add, “You should, Jamie
It was way better than yours.”
Which was really uncalled for. I let Isabella
know that by thinking up a really great comeback
about two hours later, which I forgot by the time I
saw her again.
Shut up. It was a really really great
comeback!
37
Tuesday 10
Dear Dumb Diary,
Colette sat with us at lunch today. The name
Colette is French, so I guess I wasn’t surprised to
see her eating FRENCH fries. I asked her if she
had French toast for breakfast and then almost
immediately regretted it because she looked at me
like I look at my little cousin when I see him putting
some
thing in his nose.
Fortunately, Isabella was there and she is
really good at conversation.
“So, what is it that you’re after?” Isabella
asked, in what might not have been her best
conversational effort to date.
“After?” Colette said with innocent cuteness.
I had to explain how Isabella is just naturally
suspicious of everybody because of her mean older
brothers. Colette just smiled really big and said,
“Oh, I know something about getting
even with mean older brothers.”
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39
I am not a little sister, so I don’t speak the
language these two were talking, but I managed to
pick up bits and pieces of what Colette was telling
Isabella, like:
“Loop the rope once only. Any more
than that, and you could send them to
the emergency room.”
“Use spoiled cat food. It’s the
worst, and don’t get any on your hands.
It could blind you.”
And . . .
“Make sure they understand that
if they tell the police, it will be way
worse next time.”
Isabella took notes that looked better than
any she had ever taken before, and when Colette
left, she said, “That may be the finest little sister
that has ever lived. This is a level of treachery and
payback that I never even imagined.”
Isabella looked a little like Aunt Carol did the
day she told me she was engaged.
40
Wednesday 11
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella got a speck of glitter in her eye
during art class today and had to go down to the
office to see the school nurse. I had a very hard
time believing that she needed medical attention,
because I have seen Isabella endure things that
would make professional spies tell you where the
secret plans were hidden.
The nurse couldn’t see the glitter speck at