by Jim Benton
all. Isabella said that maybe her tear hole ate it,
but the nurse said that couldn’t happen. I’m not so
sure. Almost nothing has come out of Isabella’s tear
holes since I’ve known her.
After English, I met up with Isabella outside
the nurse’s office, and we stopped by the main
office to talk to Aunt Carol.
Isabella asked about the ballots. She
wanted to know if they’d been written yet and if
they were ready to be handed out yet and had she
heard about how wedding cakes were totally out
of fashion now and most celebrities were having
wedding pies instead.
Aunt Carol had not done anything about the
voting stuff yet, and Isabella was the second girl
to ask her today and she wanted to know exactly
where Isabella heard that wedding cakes were no
longer “in.”
Isabella couldn’t remember, but she thinks
it was on the news or in the papers or online. Maybe
all three.
I thought it was pretty helpful, but Aunt Carol
acted all mad like it was Isabella’s fault that the
fashion world had lost interest in cake. Not exactly
a news flash. One look at those fashion models, and
I could have told you that they had tragically lost
interest in cake a long time ago.
41
Thursday 12
Dear Dumb Diary,
Turns out that we also got a lunch lady from
Wodehouse Middle School. Today, she made the
best school lunch that has ever been served in
Mackerel Middle School.
It was called beef pâté. That’s pronounced
pa-TAY, which might be French for meat loaf,
if Isabella is right. Truthfully, it didn’t taste
much better than the turd loaf that they usually
serve us on Thursdays, but you could tell it was A
LOT BETTER because there was a little sprig of
parsley on the plate, which makes everything more
appealing.
42
Now that I think about it, your foreign-ness is
sort of the sprig of parsley sitting next to you
on the plate.
We might never have known the pâté’s
origins, except that Colette sat with us today at
lunch and her sharp sense of taste identified it as a
Wodehouse recipe.
I had a lot of questions for her about her
middle school, like how it was different and if
they had accents there or any troublesome blond
infestations like the one we have.
She wisely knew immediately who I was
talking about (I pointed a little), and said that
there were some girls at her school who also
bleached their hair and wore too much makeup.
(Isabella and I looked at each other, because we
both know that Angeline doesn’t do either one, but
it’s rude to contradict someone when they are lying
in a way that you enjoy.)
Colette also said they did things at her
school like voting for BEST FRIENDS, MOST
BEAUTIFUL, MOST ARTISTIC, and stuff like
that, but the whole ventilation problem probably
canceled it this year, so now she wouldn’t get to
do it.
Isabella told her not to worry. She said
that the voting at Mackerel Middle School would
include the kids that are here temporarily from
Wodehouse. I have no idea how Isabella knows that,
but she is a total expert ON EVERYTHING, which
is why she wins MOST CLEVER every year.
44
45
FRIDAY 13
Dear Dumb Diary,
Isabella is sleeping over tonight. We went
through our regular list of sleepover activities
quicker than usual. I’m telling you, if there was
such a thing as a Professional Prank Caller,
Isabella would be able to choose that career over
the other two she usually says she wants to do:
Master Catcher of Master Criminals or if
that doesn’t work out, a Master Criminal. Also,
she likes Dental Hygienist.
46
After making a few international prank calls,
Isabella started asking me about Aunt Carol and the
voting and said we should just tell her that we’ll take
care of everything, since she’s busy with a failing
wedding. I really did NOT want to take on this huge
extra project, since I have been very busy avoiding
the huge project I already have to do with Angeline.
Isabella is very persuasive, and I finally
agreed to talk to Aunt Carol, but only if Isabella
went along with me on the accent project. She said
okay and started teaching me to mispronounce
words like her grandma does.
Isabella’s grandma has an accent, but it
always sounds a little gross to me. (Sorry, Isabella,
I love your grandma, but she looks like a jack-o’-
lantern that was run over by a bus.)
But when Isabella speaks like her grandma,
I guess it sounds cool. It doesn’t make her sound
smart or sophisticated exactly, but it does make
her sound like she’s from someplace else.
47
When we tried the accent on Stinker, he did
not understand us, even when we screamed in order
to tolerantly accept his deafness. I’m really good at
this accent, but I’m not sure I have the confidence
to try it in public. (Oh, by the way, I think it’s an
Italian accent, which totally works for me because
I love Italian stuff like SpaghettiOs and that
chocolate-vanilla-strawberry ice cream, except the
strawberry part.)
48
I called Aunt Carol and she sounded kind
of like maybe she might want us to help with the
voting. She’s been very busy trying to track down
information on wedding pies, and that has taken a
lot of time. Isabella had me tell her that while she’s
at it, she should look into bridal clogs, which
are the new shoe that all the trendy young brides in
Hollywood are wearing. They’re made out of wood
and are supercool. And bridesmaids’ dresses now
are supposed to be brown and poofy.
I had never heard of either of these fads, but
Isabella knows an awful lot.
49
Saturday 14
Dear Dumb Diary,
Angeline called FIRST THING THIS
MORNING. She woke up early AGAIN on a day
she doesn’t have to go to school. Although, as it
turns out, today we did go to school.
Since Angeline is totally comfortable talking
to parents, she also told my mom about the plan
she had for us today.
(I really can’t stand when people talk to my
parents like they’re people.)
She got permission from Assistant Principal
Devon—her uncle Dan —to go in on a Saturday . . .
. . . and take pictures in THE BOYS’
BATHROOM!!!
50
That’s right. As if regular PUBLIC graffiti
wasn’t stupid enough, today she wanted to
understand the culture of boys by taking pictures of
the things they write on their stinky walls.
I was going to totally refuse, based on the
WEAPONS- GRADE GROSSNESS of boys’
toilets, but Isabella overheard everything and
insisted on going with us.
And we went, Dumb Diary. We went where the
boys went.
But right now my ears are ringing like crazy
and I need some aspirin and some rest. I’ll tell you
about it tomorrow.
51
Sunday 15
Dear Dumb Diary,
It’s early Sunday morning, and my ears
are almost done ringing. Let me tell you about
yesterday.
My mom dropped us off and waited outside
the school. We checked in at the office and went
down to one of the boys’ ucky bathrooms.
I was really not interested at all in this little
mission because of a nightmare I have from time
to time.
In it, I have to use the bathroom really bad,
but I can’t find a girls’ bathroom, and finally have
to use the boys’ bathroom. When I open the door and
go in, there’s Hudson Rivers, the eighth-cutest boy
in my grade, who doesn’t even seem that surprised
to see me, which is odd, because I am pretty sure
we are destined to be together one day (I think he
knows it, too). But when I see myself in the mirror I am
an orangutan and that seems to me like something
a dude would notice about his future wife.
So I was opening the door very quietly and
whispering “Hello? Hello?” and checking my feet to
make sure they were not sprouting thumbs, which
Isabella felt was taking too long, so she helpfully
shoved me in.
Writing graffiti will get you in a TON of trouble
at our school, and they clean it off as quickly as
they can, but they don’t do it every day so Angeline
figured we might be able to find some for our
report.
We took turns taking lots of pictures with
Angeline’s camera, and that made it seem less like
poking around in a horrifying bathroom and more
like we were Attractive Crime Scene Investigators
looking for some murder clues amid short poems
about doody and the very peculiar wall fixtures that
sort of look like pretty little fountains with giant
mints in them. Trust me: They aren’t.
52
It wasn’t until we started reading the graffiti
that I started to get mad.
Look, many boys can be excellent artists and
writers. But they’re just not doing their best work in
bathrooms
on general subjects.
And that’s
what made me mad.
Well, that’s not exactly what made me mad.
53
What made me mad was what they wrote
about Angeline. Because even though their work on
general topics was poor (topics like stinkiness and
doo-doo, and whether or not a certain teacher has
artificial parts), on the subject of Angeline, this
probably WAS their best work. In their lives!
I mean it was better than what they write in their
book reports, better than what they draw in art
class! Here’s a few things I jotted down:
54
55
I was trying not to look angry at the flattery,
and Angeline was trying not to look embarrassed by
it, when Isabella screamed.
I may have touched on this before, but
Isabella has awful older brothers. This means that
over the years, Isabella has developed a scream
that her parents can hear from miles away to let
them know that her brothers are inflicting some sort
of horrible torture on her. (It often involves spit.)
Inside a tiny bathroom, when we were all
standing aboutthisclosetogether, Isabella’s
brother- scream was crippling. Angeline and I
nearly fainted.
And here’s why Isabella screamed: In one
of the stalls, written in clear, bold green marker,
it said:
I didn’t know what to say. But Isabella did,
and she said it: “I guess maybe not everybody
thinks you’re the prettiest girl in the world, huh,
Angeline?”
56
Which was true, I guess. But she said it over
and over to Angeline all the way back to her house
when we dropped her off. And she even yelled it out
the window as we drove away.
It never really seemed to bother Angeline
that much, but it did seem to bother my mom quite
a bit. She asked Angeline to get her copies of all the
photos we took to see what else had been written on
the subject of her daughter on the bathroom wall.
Apparently, this is just something moms are curious
about.
Monday 16
Dear Dumb Diary,
It’s strange, but the graffiti in the boys’
bathroom made me feel so confident about myself
that I decided to try out my new accent just a little
bit today around my locker. I was disappointed at
how intolerant the kids at my school are of people
who sound like they might be from other countries.
At first they smiled, and then they laughed,
and then when I didn’t laugh, they asked what was
wrong with me.
But Mr. VanDoy walked by and nicely asked
me if I was choking on something, which is a pretty
good indicator that I was really doing a very good
accent.
57
Angeline ran up to me in the hall and was all
excited about photographing graffiti in some of
the girls’ bathrooms now and I told her to go
ahead and do it by herself, and she said we had to
do it together. I’m so sure. What does she think?
That we’re some sort of conjoined twins connected
at the assignment?
58
59
But she wouldn’t drop it, so just to shut her
up, I went with her into the girls’ bathroom right
down the hall from my locker.
There was practically no graffiti, which
is really good news because I think it means we
are going to fail this assignment and it will be
Angeline’s fault.
We photographed: 1) A small drawing of a
bald guy peeking over a wall that had been mostly
scrubbed off.
2) A picture of Miss Bruntford that was drawn
by Isabella a month ago — and which Isabella had
pointed out to me already.
3) And, unbelievably, ANOTHER “VOTE
JAMIE KELLY FOR PRETTIEST.” It looked
exactly like the one we saw in the boys’ bathroom.
It seemed obvious to me that the accent
was working, even though I had only started this
morning. Some girl must have been overwhelmed by
it and ran in here to write this loving tribute.
When I told Isabella about the graffiti later,
she said, “Maybe you’re getting prettier
and we just can’t tell.” I thanked her at
the time, but now as I write this, it doesn’t sound
that nice.
I have to admit that since the graffiti is so
complimentary toward me, I’m starting to warm up
to Angeline’s super-dumb idea.
“Maybe we should check out one of the
teachers’ bathrooms,” I said. Isabella’s head spun
around like Stinker’s when he hears a Cheeto hit the
ground.
“I’ll do it!” Isabella said. “Let’s go!”
60
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But here’s the thing. You can’t just barge
into the teachers’ bathroom and start snapping
pictures. Trust me, you don’t want to: Adults need
A LOT of assorted ointments and lotions just
to keep from turning into piles of dust, and you
DO NOT want to accidentally get a look at them
applying these. (It’s a long story, but let’s just
say —Grandma. Lotion. Rash. Bare naked. Moral of
story: KNOCK FIRST.)
Plus, I knew we needed to ask permission, but
that wasn’t going to be a problem, of course. I knew
Aunt Carol would say yes, so all Isabella and I had
to do was go to the office after lunch and ask.
62
Aunt Carol said no. Can you believe it? I’m
her own niece ! I was really angry and Isabella
was so mad that she walked right out of the
office . . .
. . . and walked right back with Angeline, who
asked the exact same thing, and then Aunt Carol
said okay.
63
WHAT? ! ANGELINE! I was really mad
that another thing came so easy to Angeline.
Isabella told me not to get my panties in a wad
about it, and said she knew Aunt Carol would say
yes to Angeline, because generally people are nicer
to other people than they are to their own relatives.