Someday Angeline (2 page)

Mrs. Hardlick said that Columbus proved the world was round.

Angeline knew that was also wrong. If he really had made it to India,
then
he would have proved it was round because India was east and he sailed west. But he bumped into America first and he could have sailed to America even if the world was flat.

Besides, everybody knows the world is round before they are born. That’s why nobody is even slightly surprised when they first learn it in school.

These were the thoughts occupying Angeline’s mind when Mrs. Hardlick suddenly called her name. “Angeline!” she commanded. “Take your thumb out of your mouth right now!”

“Oops,” she thought as she quickly pulled it out.

“We don’t suck our thumbs in the sixth
grade,” said Mrs. Hardlick proudly.

She heard some of the other sixth-graders snicker.

Mrs. Hardlick resented Angeline. She didn’t like having an eight-year-old kid in her class of sixth-graders. She especially didn’t like having an eight-year-old kid who was smarter than she, although Mrs. Hardlick would never admit that Angeline was smart. In Mrs. Hardlick’s mind, Angeline was a genius, which had nothing to do with being smart. It was more like being a freak, like a goat with two heads.

“Only babies suck their thumbs,” said Mrs. Hardlick.

Angeline felt ashamed. Even kids in the third grade, her age, didn’t suck their thumbs anymore. She felt like she was going to cry. “Oh, come on, Angeline,” she told herself. “Don’t start crying. Not now!” She cried way too much for the sixth grade. She even cried a lot for the first grade.

“Look, she’s crying,” someone teased.

She was not. It wasn’t true. But then, as soon as she heard that person say it, then, wouldn’t you know it, she did start to cry.

“She may be smart but she’s still a baby,” said someone else.

“She’s not smart, she’s a freak.”

“Angeline, don’t be a crybaby,” Mrs. Hardlick admonished her. “If you feel you must cry, go outside. You may come back in when you are ready to act like a sixth-grader.”

Still crying, Angeline walked outside.

“What a freak,” she heard someone say.

She sat down outside, next to the door. She was wrong. Mrs. Hardlick didn’t hate it when she sucked her thumb. It was just the opposite. Mrs. Hardlick loved it. The whole class loved it. They loved to put her down. And whether she realized it or not, that was why she cried. It wasn’t because they called her a baby or a freak; it was because they enjoyed it so much.

She bit the tip of her thumb and sniffled. She felt just like a double-headed goat.

At lunch, she sat by herself on the grass against a tree and ate a peanut butter and jello sandwich. She preferred jello to jelly with her peanut butter.

There was a boy also sitting alone not too far away from her. She watched him try to open his bag of potato chips. He pulled and pushed the bag in every direction until she was sure that all the chips inside had been smashed to smithereens. Still, the bag would not open.

She took another bite out of her peanut butter and jello and tried to keep from laughing. Besides crying too much, Angeline also thought she laughed too much. It wasn’t that she laughed a lot—just at all the wrong times. She thought
watching the boy try to open his potato chip bag was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, but she didn’t want to laugh at him.

He bit the bag with his teeth and jerked at it with both hands. Nothing. Still holding it in his teeth and both hands, he vigorously shook his head.

She gulped down some milk, with her eyes fixed on the boy.

Suddenly the bag burst open, and Angeline instantly burst out laughing, causing milk to squirt out of her mouth. The potato chips exploded out of the bag and onto the ground. Angeline couldn’t stop laughing as she wiped the milk off her face with a napkin.

The boy stared at her. He still held part of the torn bag in one hand, part in the other hand, and part in his teeth. The potato chips were in little crumbs all around him.

Angeline did her best to stop laughing. She only managed to halt every other laugh. She hoped the boy wouldn’t hit her. She didn’t want to cry again.

But, to her surprise, the boy also laughed. It was a stupid, awkward laugh. He sounded like an embarrassed hyena. Then, seeing that Angeline
was still watching him, he pretended to eat his empty bag of potato chips—not the potato chips, but the bag itself—as if that was all he ever wanted in the first place.

Angeline thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.

Then the boy took his sandwich out of its plastic bag, threw
it
on the ground, and pretended to eat the plastic bag. Angeline couldn’t stop laughing. She watched as he poured the rest of his milk onto the dirt and pretended to eat the empty milk carton. She was hysterical.

At that moment there rolled past her a tennis ball, which someone had hit all the way from the baseball field. It stopped next to the boy who was so funny.

“Hey, Goon! Get the ball!” someone called.

The boy looked at the ball.

“Get the ball, Goon!”

He didn’t get it.

Philip Korbin, one of the kids in Angeline’s class, walked toward the boy. He was obviously disgusted that he had to walk so far and waste the recess when he could be playing baseball.

“Come on, Goon, throw me the ball,” he said.

“I’m eating,” said the boy, and he pretended to eat his milk carton again.

Angeline laughed.

Philip gave her a dirty look as he walked past her and got the ball himself. “What a goon,” he muttered, and started back toward the baseball field.

“Maybe if you didn’t call him a goon, he would have gotten the ball for you,” said Angeline.

“Shut up, Freak,” said Philip. He threw the ball back toward the field and ran after it.

“I hope you strike out,” said Angeline when she knew Philip couldn’t hear her. She didn’t know much about baseball except that the one time she got to play she struck out.

She finished her peanut butter and jello sandwich and washed it down with some milk. She still had some cookies. For the sake of his joke, the boy had thrown away his whole lunch. Angeline thought he looked hungry. “Do you feel like a cookie?” she offered. She took a sip of milk.

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “How does a cookie feel?”

“Pppphhhrrrwwww,” laughed Angeline. This time the milk not only squirted out her mouth, it
also squirted out her nose. She thought it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

The boy was shocked. He always told jokes, about a hundred a day, but he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ever laughed at one.

Angeline couldn’t stop laughing. She didn’t want lunch to ever end. “What time does your watch say?” she asked him. She hoped there was a lot of time left.

The boy put his watch next to his ear. “My watch doesn’t say anything,” he replied. “It can’t talk.”

Angeline laughed again. She thought it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

Again the boy was amazed. He didn’t know what to think. Nobody ever laughed at his jokes. That wasn’t why he told them. He didn’t know why he told them, but it couldn’t have been to make people laugh because nobody ever did. Sometimes someone might say, “Ha ha, very funny, Goon,” but that was the closest anyone ever came to laughing. Mostly they just ignored him.

“I think you are so funny!” said Angeline when she stopped laughing.

The boy shrugged. “You’re the only one,” he
said. He was really glad Angeline liked his jokes. It was just too bad that he had dumped all his lunch on the ground and didn’t even get the cookie that Angeline had offered. He was starving.

“What’s your name?” Angeline asked.

“Goon,” said the boy and then he laughed stupidly. “See, my real name is Gary Boone,” he explained. “So for a joke I combined my two names and I call myself Goon.” He laughed again.

Angeline didn’t laugh. She didn’t like being called “Freak,” and was surprised to hear that he had made up the name “Goon” himself. “Do you like it when people call you ‘Goon’?” she asked.

Gary shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll just call you Gary,” said Angeline. “I’m Angeline.”

“Oh, you’re the real smart kid, aren’t you?” said Gary.

Angeline didn’t answer.

“Angeline Persopolis,” said Gary. “Hmm, I don’t think I can combine those two names.” But then he thought a moment and said, “Angelopolis.”

Angeline laughed. She tried to think of one too. “It’s too bad your name isn’t Melvin,” she
finally said. “Then you could be the Moon.”

Gary laughed. Not only did she laugh at his jokes, but she also liked to play along!

“Do you know any more good jokes?” she asked him.

No one had ever asked him that before. He tried to think of his best joke but, for the first time in his life, he couldn’t think of one. His mind just went blank.

The bell rang. He quickly took off his shoe, then put it back on.

“What did you do that for?” asked Angeline.

“Do what?” asked Gary.

“Take your shoe off, then put it on again.”

Gary looked around in confusion, utterly bewildered. “I don’t know,” he said.

Angeline lay on the floor, her feet on the sofa, as she read her book about the lovelorn sailor. The sailor didn’t know it, but the day after he set sail, the beautiful lady suddenly realized that she loved him too, more than anything else in the world. So she got a boat of her own and sailed the seas in search of him and was almost eaten by a shark.

Abel came home from work. “Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” he said, but she hugged him anyway.

“Look,” said Abel. “I brought you a present. It’s wrapped in plastic so it doesn’t smell.” He set it down on the end table at the end of the sofa.

Angeline crawled over the sofa and eagerly
tore away the plastic. It was a book called
The Philosophical Substructures of Psychological Subcultures
. With a title like that, no amount of plastic could keep it from smelling.

“Thank you,” she said politely, and tried her best to look happy despite the awful odor emanating from the book.

“I hope it is smart enough for you,” said Abel.

“Oh, it looks like a real smart book,” Angeline assured him.

She put the book on the bookshelf along with all the other smelly books her father had given her. She wished he’d just bring her a book with a good story and lots of funny jokes.

“Gus is coming over for dinner,” Abel announced after his shower.

Angeline’s face lit up. “Oh, good!” Gus was Abel’s partner. They drove the garbage truck together.

Abel knew she didn’t like the book. Gus had told him she wouldn’t like it, but he bought it anyway. Gus had told him to find a book with a good story and lots of jokes. “They don’t even have to be funny jokes,” Gus had said. “Angelini will laugh anyway.”

When Gus arrived, Angeline let him in.
“Hello, Gus,” she greeted.

“Hello, Angelini,” said Gus.

“We’re having chili,” she told him.

“Sounds good,” said Gus.

“Do you like it hot?” she asked. “I mean spicy hot, not hot hot.”

“The hotter the better,” said Gus.

“Me too,” said Angeline, “only not too hot.”

Abel was in the kitchen. He accidentally touched the hot pot of chili with his thumb. “Ow!” he exclaimed. He walked into the living room with his thumb in his mouth.

“Cute,” said Gus.

“Oh, hi, Gus,” said Abel. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Angelini let me in. We decided we like our chili the hotter the better, only not too hot.”

“You want a beer?” Abel offered.

“Thanks,” said Gus.

“I want a beer, too,” said Angeline.

“Don’t act cute just because Gus is here,” Abel told her.

She blushed. She
was
acting cute and it was because of Gus. “I’m not acting cute,” she insisted. She didn’t want Gus to know that she was acting cute for him.

Abel walked back into the kitchen to get the beer.

Gus poked Angeline in the side. “You can have a sip of my beer, cutie,” he whispered.

She giggled.

She set the table while Gus helped Abel in the kitchen. She couldn’t remember on which side to put the fork and on which side to put the spoon. It wasn’t one of the things she knew before she was born.

“Do you want salad, Angelini?” Gus called from the kitchen.

“Do we have any French dressing?” she called back to him.

“No, but we have some French undressing,” said Gus.

Angeline laughed hysterically.

“See?” Gus told Abel. “They don’t even have to be
funny
jokes.”

Abel smiled. He wished he could make Angeline laugh like Gus, but he hadn’t been able to tell her a joke for a long time, either funny or unfunny. He couldn’t even say “Angelini” without choking on it.

Angeline put the knives, forks, and spoons
around the table, sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right. She knew it had to be correct in one of the places. “Okay, I’ll have salad with French undressing,” she called. “But no tomatoes in mine.”

“Sorry!” Gus called back. “There aren’t any tomatoes.”

“Good!” she yelled. “I don’t
want
a tomato.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” said Gus, “because there aren’t any. And if you think I’m going all the way to the store just to get you a tomato—”

“But I don’t want a tomato!” she screamed.

“You can scream all you want,” said Gus. “You still can’t have one.”

“Good!” she yelled. “Excellent! I’m glad we don’t have any tomatoes. I don’t want a tomato. I hate tomatoes!”

Gus stood at the kitchen door and sadly shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear that, Angelini,” he said. “I really am. But I’m afraid we just don’t have any.”

She threw her hands up in the air and gave a loud sigh. Gus laughed.

They ate the salad, chili, and soda crackers. Nobody seemed to care whether the forks, knives, or spoons were on the right side or not.

“What’s the weather forecast for tomorrow?” Gus asked.