My Miserable Life

by F. L. Block

  Rocko Hoggen broke my clavicle.

  Those are the reasons I am having a miserable week.

  Dear Ben,

  I’m sorry you are having a miserable week. You can always hand me a little note if you are feeling left out or uncomfortable. I don’t think Rocko means any harm. I asked him about what happened, and he said that when you broke your arm at camp, he was really worried about you and that the boys were sad you couldn’t play handball. He just likes to be friends with Leif, since they’ve known each other for so long. Why don’t you try being friends with Simon, Joe, Darby, or Nicholas? Joe is especially nice. Maybe you could help him come out of his shell and play a little ball. Also, maybe in your next essay, you could try to write about at least one thing that is going okay. It might be a challenge, but I know you can do it.

  Ms. Washington

  CHAPTER 3

  THE CAT’S MEOW

  Even though Rocko lied about feeling bad about my clavicle and told Ms. Washington it was my arm because he doesn’t even know what a clavicle is, I was feeling a little better after reading Ms. Washington’s note. Also, today she gave us chocolate cupcakes that she baked herself. My mom never makes cupcakes anymore.

  When I was in second grade, she surprised me by bringing cupcakes to school. Usually she made fruit-juice-sweetened banana nut muffins, but this time she’d promised to behave like a normal mother and bring cupcakes with swirly frosting from the market. She came in, smiling like crazy and wearing bright-colored yoga pants. Her hair was kind of messy, and she was carrying two huge pink boxes. She put the cup-cakes on the table. My teacher at the time, Mrs. Kunkel, told me to hand them out. But when I opened the box, I saw that there were these little toy things on top of the cupcakes. You know, those little plastic things that you get at the dentist’s or doctor’s after they’ve tortured you for a few minutes with sharp instruments? (As if this makes anything better.)

  The toys would have been fine, except some had little pink Hey! Bunny Rabbits! like the ones on my sister’s pajamas, and some had blue Timmy the Trains with smiley faces. And all of them were rings that you were supposed to wear on your finger. How would the kids in my class know that I didn’t request pink rabbit heads and baby trains on my cupcakes?

  I mean, I hadn’t been into the smiley trains since kindergarten, when I used to squat on the floor and hop about like a frog trying to move the trains around the track. Then someone discovered lead paint on a few of the trains and my mom got rid of all of them.

  Angelina said that my mom had wasted all that money on those poison trains because she never could say no to me because I used to be so cute. I’d put my arms up when I wanted to be held and say, “Hum peas,” which meant “Hold me, please.”

  “Not so cute anymore, dude,” Angelina said. “But then you had these fat cheeks and tiny teeth instead of those big honkers, and you smelled like strawberries and not like dirt.”

  Sometimes I hate my sister more than usual.

  In second grade I was still kind of cute, if you ask me, but maybe not cute enough for my mom not to ask me first before she bought cupcakes with stupid girly and babyish plastic rings on them.

  I took one look at the cupcakes and started to cry. Mrs. Kunkel was the kind of teacher who believed no one should cry, especially boys. Once she had taken me aside to explain that if boys cried, everyone would make fun of them and label them a crybaby. But I was only seven. I really don’t think it’s so bad for boys to cry, even when they get older. I especially don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying when your mom brings babyish cupcakes to school.

  Yeah, that’s my cupcake story. But Ms. Washington’s cupcakes tasted great, and there weren’t any stupid plastic toys on them, and even if there had been, no one would have associated them with me.

  But today when Ms. Washington was handing out the cupcakes, Rocko Hoggen jumped up, bowed (yes, bowed), and said, “I’ll help you distribute the cupcakes, Ms. Washington.”

  I wanted to help her, but I had been staring at Serena Perl’s part and the little red sparkly things along the neckline of her shirt and hadn’t thought of it. Ms. Washington said, “Thank you, Rocko. You are the cat’s meow.”

  Great. Even Ms. Washington was going over to Rocko’s side.

  Leif Zuniga’s mom, who is the room parent, came into the classroom to help Ms. Washington collect and grade the tests. A lady walked in with her. She had on a pink T-shirt with a heart that said RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, just like Mrs. Zuniga’s T-shirt.

  “Boys and girls, you know our room parent, Mrs. Zuniga,” Ms. Washington said. “And this is our other room parent, Mrs. Hoggen. Thank you so much, ladies.”

  My mother would never be a room parent; she was always too busy for some reason. I guess it’s hard being a single mom without a dad to help, but she should have thought of that a long time ago.

  My mother didn’t even have time to run for anyone’s life. I was glad she wasn’t a room parent, because she would have embarrassed me. But still, why couldn’t I have a mom who helped Ms. Washington?

  Mrs. Zuniga and Mrs. Hoggen seemed like they might hold hands when they left the classroom together; they looked like they really were best friends. Just like their kids.

  At recess I ran around the track by myself until I could hardly breathe and felt like throwing up. Maybe I didn’t have any friends; maybe my mom wasn’t room parent material. I wasn’t the cat’s pajamas like Rocko. But at least I was fast.

  * * *

  When I got home from school, I guess I looked pretty upset, because my mom was all “What’s wrong, Ben? Ben, sweetie? What is it?”

  I wouldn’t answer.

  “Maybe you’re hungry? Are you hungry? Did you eat your lunch? Why don’t you eat your lunch?” There she went with the question marks again.

  “Mom, I hate what you pack me.”

  She looked through my lunchbox and found the untouched sandwich and seaweed and carrots and mostly untouched grapes. “How can you go a whole day on three grapes?”

  “That’s not what’s bothering me. Everything is not always about food. You don’t know how to parent.”

  I learned this line from Angelina. It always makes my mom really mad, probably because it’s kind of true. She always tells us that no one can make you mad if what they say isn’t true, because then it can’t hit a nerve. I guess I hit a nerve.

  “How could you say that? After all I do for you every day of your life? Do you ever think about all the things I do for you?” She went on and on while I took off my shoes and picked the lint from between my toes, ignoring her.

  Angelina came into the room with her cheerleader friends Twinkle Knoll and Amanda Panda Rodriguez. They were listening to the Nananna song “Na Na Na Na Na Na Na” on Angelina’s phone. “What’s wrong, Ben?” she asked.

  I wouldn’t answer her, especially in front of Twinkle and Amanda Panda.

  “Remember to go where the love is,” my sister said, before dancing away.

  But I didn’t really know where that was anymore.

  * * *

  Later, I got in bed and my mom came to say good night. “I’m sorry I got so mad,” she said.

  I told her I was sorry for saying she didn’t know how to parent.

  “I probably got mad because it’s kind of true sometimes. It’s a pretty hard job, and I try to do my best, but it’s not always very good. Do you want to tell me what happened at school today?”

  But I didn’t want to tell her. It would have sounded stupid to say, “I’m upset because my teacher called Rocko Hoggen the cat’s meow.” And my mom would have just said, “I think you’re the cat’s meow,” which wasn’t the same thing as Ms. Washington saying it.

  Besides, there were so many other things that were wrong, it was kind of overwhelming.

  When my mom kissed me and turned off the light, I remembered what Ms. Washington had said about how she wanted me to think of one thing that was okay. I thought for a while. It was September, and not much g
ood stuff happens in September. Summer ends, and you have to go back to school. Then I realized that Halloween was coming in a month. It felt like forever, but at least it was something to look forward to. Sort of.

  OCTOBER

  THE CANDY CORN CARNIVAL

  by Ben Hunter

  There’s a carnival at our school just before Halloween to raise money to buy computers and art supplies. It’s called the Candy Corn Carnival. I’m not sure if I think this is such a good event.

  There are many delicious temptations that I’m not allowed to eat because my mother is an antisugar fanatic. It doesn’t seem fair that my mom lets me go to an event named after a candy but hardly lets me eat anything sweet.

  Another reason I don’t like the carnival is the cakewalk. A cakewalk is where they play music and you walk in circles until the music stops. If you’re on the number they call when you stop, you win a cake.

  My sister, Angelina, won a cake during a Dustin Peeper song called “I Love You, Baby, You Pretty Little Girl.” She thought she’d won because Dustin Peeper is good luck for her. The cake was big and pink and white. She gave it to Amanda Panda for safekeeping.

  I won a cake, too, during a hip-hop song by the rapper Valet. It was a good song and a good cake. The cake was small and chocolate and beautiful. I loved that cake. True story. But my mom came over just as I won it and asked if she could donate my cake to the homeless shelter. I said no. No way. That cake was mine. I backed away from her and tripped, and my cake fell in the mud. Just then, a kid I know, whose name I will not mention here (but it rhymes with taco), walked by and tossed his Dustin Peeper hair and smiled at me.

  He said, “Hey, Ben, nice cake.”

  When we got home, Amanda Panda came over with a big box that she said was for a school project. I knew what was really in there. She and my sister ate it all without sharing any with me.

  These are the reasons that I think the Candy Corn Carnival is a bad event and should be abolished.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MONSTER HEAD THAT DIDN’T SPURT BLOOD

  “Mom, Ben needs a good Halloween costume,” Angelina said. “That will cheer him up. A really scary one, not one for babies. Right, Ben?”

  I didn’t want to admit that she was right. But it wasn’t a bad idea. I had been asking my mom for a Halloween costume for weeks, and Mom just kept saying that I should wear one of my old ones. These included the Timmy the Train that I wore for three years straight, a Ninja Rabbit, and a robot. None of these were acceptable, not to mention that they were all too small. But of course Angelina had an ulterior motive. “Can Monkeylad and I get one?” she asked with a head roll and jump in the air. Twinkle and Amanda Panda, who were with her as usual, followed suit.

  My mom rubbed her temples. “Can you and Monkeylad get one, too?” she said in her usual stressed, question-mark way. But she agreed as long as Angelina took me.

  Great, I had to go costume shopping with my sister? But at least she’d gotten my mom to fork over the money.

  Monkeylad came skidding across the wood floor and jumped up, trying to lick off Angelina’s freshly applied lip gloss. He had demon eyes. Angelina and her friends ran away from him, screaming.

  My mom asked me to throw a ball with Monkeylad in the backyard, but I didn’t want to when his eyes were rolling around like that.

  * * *

  Angelina didn’t like taking me costume shopping, but she did like to go to Bull’s Eye, our favorite neighborhood store, especially when she had cash from Mom. We went straight to the Halloween section. It was well picked through, but among the stupid animal suits and pirates and wizards and vampires that Angelina said were “totally uncool,” I saw the perfect costume.

  It was a monster with a head that had been split in half so that part of the brain showed. Blood squirted out and ran down the inside of the mask when you squeezed this attached pump. The chest had been split open to reveal a large, bleeding plastic heart. The costume was SICK! I knew I had to have it. But by the time Angelina bought her pink catsuit with ears and tail, there was only enough money to get a monster head that looked like the cool one except it didn’t squirt blood.

  “You owe me, Ben Hunter,” she said. “I got Mom to get you a new costume, and she made me take you instead of going with Twinkle and Amanda Panda. Plus, before you were born, I didn’t have to share my costume money with anyone.”

  So I had to settle, as usual. Monkeylad didn’t get a costume at all, but we figured he wouldn’t really care that much and he could wear his hot-dog bun from a few years ago.

  Angelina likes to play the older-sibling-who-didn’t-used-to-have-to-share card. Sometimes it makes me feel bad that I came along and ruined her life. This time it made me mad, because 1) this wasn’t her money, it was Mom’s, and 2) when Angelina was one and two years old, she couldn’t have really cared about how much her tiny pumpkin and Hey! Bunny Rabbit! Halloween costumes cost. Still, I let her get away with her shenanigans this time because if I were her, I would probably resent having me as a little brother, too.

  The story goes, when I was born, Angelina was really mad at my mom and me. Mom bought Angelina a purple teddy bear and had my grandma give it to her and say it was from me. That didn’t fool my sister. She knew that a new-born baby can’t go out and buy a teddy bear.

  When my mother brought me home, Angelina took one look at me and ran outside holding a plastic spoon. My mom followed her and took the spoon away. Angelina had bitten off a piece of it. My mom freaked out and made sure there weren’t any pieces of spoon in Angelina’s mouth. Then she asked why Angelina was so upset.

  “I’m having a hard time, Mommy,” two-year-old Angelina said. “I’m afraid the baby will take you away from me.” She had started speaking in long sentences when she was nine months old. I, on the other hand, took a long time to speak. Mostly I just liked to listen to my sister. Since we didn’t have TV, she was the best entertainment I could get.

  My mom tried to comfort Angelina, but my sister never seemed to have recovered from the trauma of me being born. She would pull my shirts up and poke my fat belly, saying, “Touch, baby! Touch! Touch!” When my mom told her to stop, she said she was just trying to teach me words. No wonder it took me so long to talk.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE HALLOWEEN FAIRY IS EVIL

  The night after the Candy Corn Carnival, I heard shouting and knocking. I went to the door and looked through the peephole. The Grump from next door was standing there. Monkeylad was next to him with something gross in his mouth.

  “That dog stole my cake,” said the Grump. “This is the last straw. If you don’t do something about that dog, I will call the authorities.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr.…,” my mom said. I didn’t feel so bad about calling him the Grump if she didn’t even know his name.

  I felt like a Grump, too. Monkeylad had tried to help me, but I couldn’t eat that piece of cake he’d brought. It had dog teeth marks all over it.

  Angelina and her friends were going to have a Halloween party at Twinkle Knoll’s house. Twinkle Knoll has five brothers and sisters who all look just like her, each one year older and one head taller than the next, with big, perfectly round blue eyes and long blond hair.

  Their parents let them have parties, watch TV all the time, and eat as much candy as they want. Obviously their house is a perfect place to hang out at on Halloween. There’s no so-called Halloween Fairy there to steal your hard-earned Halloween candy. Not like at my house, where she lurks in the corners, ready and waiting with her dreaded Lurning Bush school-supply store gift certificates to trade for your candy.

  First of all, you can’t make up for stolen candy with school supplies, and second of all, why would you misspell the name of a place where kids were supposed to go to learn? The little buddies would get confused. And what did that name mean, anyway?

  Just then, my mom came out of her room wearing THE WINGS.

  One Halloween she’d dressed up as a fairy with these big wings
that looked like the feathers came from real pigeons, a wreath of fake pink flowers on her head, and an old lace dress that kept getting tangled and torn on the branches when she took me out trick-or-treating. She had to turn sideways to let the kids pass her on the sidewalk because the wings were so huge. One year she was an angel wearing the same wings. One year she was a butterfly. Yep, same pigeon-feather wings.

  And this year she had on an orange-and-black outfit with orange-and-black-striped stockings and the same wings.

  “Guess who I am?” my mom asked.

  She was the Halloween Fairy, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  “Are you ready?”

  I didn’t want to go trick-or-treating with her, but it would have been worse to stay home and give out candy to Rocko Hoggen and Leif Zuniga and Serena Perl, who were probably all trick-or-treating together dressed in matching zombie outfits. So I made my mom promise to keep her distance and pretend she wasn’t with me if we ran into anyone I knew.

  Before we left, Monkeylad was having one of his demon possessions. His eyes were rolling up in his head and had turned blue.

  “We need to exercise the demon so he doesn’t attack trick-or-treaters at the door,” I told my mom.

  “You mean exorcise?” she said, laughing.

  “That’s what I said,” I said.

  She bent down really slowly, holding out a Chix Stix treat, caught Monkeylad, and Velcroed on his hot-dog bun. As soon as it was on, he sat down and looked up at her with twinkling black puppy eyes. It was like magic.

  “This hot-dog bun was worth the investment,” my mom said. Monkeylad had worn it a few times already, but it was harder to put on now since he’d gotten a little chubby around the middle.

  I had to admit, he did look kind of cute as a hot dog. And it would be much harder for him to escape and steal meat while wearing that thing.