My Miserable Life (15 page)

Is this better? Thank you for helping me. You are the best teacher in the whole universe.

Sincerely,

Ben Hunter

Dear Ben,

It's such a pleasure to have you in class. I've learned a lot from you. Sometimes life can be hard, can't it? But you have a lot of people who love and believe in you, and I can see that you believe in yourself more now, too. I'm going to miss you when you go to middle school. Please come visit me.

Yours truly,

Ms. Washington

 

CHAPTER 17

CRAZY HAT DAY

Today was crazy hat day. Last night my mom told me she'd heard me talking in my sleep. She ran into the room.

“Ben? Ben, what's wrong?”

“Don't make me wear the butterfly hat!” I'd said. But I don't remember saying it.

My mom had promised that I didn't have to, and I went back to sleep.

In the morning I put on my Darters cap because that's as crazy as I get in the hat department.

Serena Perl wore a red beanie decorated with black dots and antennae to look like a ladybug. After school they were selling Long Pops, and when my mom came to pick me up, she'd brought a dollar bill and told me I could get one for me and one for a friend.

Serena Perl was standing behind me in line. I asked her if I could buy her a Long Pop, and she said sure. We walked out together licking our pops. It made our tongues neon red. I told her that was my favorite color, and she said it was hers, too. My mom was waiting by the front gate with Monkeylad in his Halloween costume.

“I thought he might behave better in his hot-dog bun,” my mom said, “even though it's not Halloween.”

I bent down to pet him, and he kissed my face like a maniac.

“Oh, wow, he loves you so much!” Serena said. “Does he sleep with you? If I had a dog, I'd always want him to sleep with me.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “My sister and I share him.” This was actually true. Angelina had started letting me have Monkeylad every other night.

My mom had brought some Chix Stix with her, and she asked Serena Perl if she would like to see Monkeylad do a trick.

“Do you want to hold up the treat for him?” my mom asked.

Serena did, and Monkeylad jumped to get it but then settled down onto his haunches and just sat like a little man. After she gave him the Chix Stix, he still sat there. And sat there some more.

“I love dogs,” Serena said. “I want to be a veterinarian.”

I hadn't known that about her. How could I not have known? Although she had written her Career Day thank-you note to Dr. Knapp, and she did have a lot of shirts with dogs on them.

“He's still sitting there!” Serena said.

“Would you like to come over and hang out with us sometime?” my mom said.

“Sure. That would be great. See you later, Ben. Thanks for the Long Pop.”

She walked away, and Monkeylad fell onto his front paws. He looked exhausted from sitting up for so long. That couldn't have been easy, with a hard curly monkey tail like that under your bony butt.

My mom smiled at me. “Monkeylad, you little Chix magnet,” she said. She held up another Chix Stix and gave it to him. “Get it, Ben, a Chix magnet?”

Then she took something out of her purse. Something dreaded that should not appear in public at any time in a kid's life. “Ben, I think you need to reapply some sunscreen before we go home. Monkeylad licked it all off you!”

“Seriously, Mom? Seriously? There is no way I'm putting that on now.”

She didn't make me. Even she realized how embarrassing that would be.

*   *   *

Later that night, while Angelina was at Twinkle Knoll's, I asked my mom if we could watch a movie together.

“Sure,” she said. “That sounds like fun.” She'd been more relaxed lately. Maybe it was because she hung out with Tree and meditated and got acupuncture.

I picked a DVD of this movie
Scaranormal Activity
that Thursday had left in my room. It was supposed to be funny but also pretty scary. I showed the cover to my mom.

“No way,” she said.

“Please, Mom.”

She thought about it for a minute. “I don't know. I don't want you to have nightmares.”

“If it gets too scary for me, I'll let you know,” I said. “And we can eat chocolate to comfort us.” Angelina had convinced my mom to buy us real, sugar-sweetened chocolate eggs for Easter, and we had a few left over since, luckily, there is no Easter Fairy who steals chocolate. But we were supposed to have the chocolate eggs only on weekends, which actually just meant Saturday night, and this was a Friday.

My mom laughed. “Okay,” she said. “But you have to tell me the truth. If you get too scared, we're turning it off.”

So we got the chocolate eggs and sat down to watch the movie with Monkeylad sleeping on my feet. The movie got pretty scary, and at one point, without looking away from the screen, I took my mom's arm and draped it over my shoulders.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Should we turn it off?”

I bit into another chocolate egg without moving my eyes from the movie. “No,” I said. “It's the best thing I've ever seen!”