Dear Dumb Diary Year Two #5: You Can Bet on That Read online

  “I bet you’re wearing a different shirt

  underneath that one,” he said.

  We looked at each other for a moment and

  then sat in silence for several blocks.

  “It’s best that we don’t know the results of

  these bets,” I said, unbuttoning monkeyvomit.

  “I have no idea what we were just talking

  about,” he said, loosening his tie.

  In the afternoon, Angeline ran up to my

  locker and rudely interrupted a conversation that

  Isabella and I could have been having. (Of course

  she didn’t see the monkeyvomit shirt. I had that

  stashed in my backpack.)

  “We doubled the hits on the site!” she

  squealed squealfully.

  Isabella pulled out the new iPad that her

  mean older brothers recently gave her without their

  knowledge.

  “Show us,” she said.

  Angeline opened up the Student Awareness

  Committee site. “See? Look at the numbers! We

  had FOUR people read the blog last night.”

  20

  Isabella and I started laughing. I could actually

  hear our laughter echoing off the flawless

  porcelain perfection of Angeline’s sad face.

  “That’s just embarrassing,” I said.

  “You’re making the Internet cry,” Isabella

  added. “You’re making my iPad feel bad about itself.”

  Angeline looked hurt, which I am sensitive

  and caring enough to know should bother me. But

  then an expression suddenly flashed across her face

  that reminded me of Isabella, and I shuddered.

  “Well, it’s not my name there at the top of

  the page.”

  She was right. Isabella and I are the

  presidents of the Student Awareness Committee.

  Right there at the top of the page, just below the ad

  for Lou’s Car Wash and just above Angeline’s latest

  article (“Lambs Are Really Cute When They Do Cute

  Lamby Things”), we saw our names, big and

  bold, like the entire stupid site had been our

  stupid idea or something.

  Instinctively, I tried to rub our names

  off with my fingers, but it’s an iPad, so the names

  just got bigger, and I panicked for a second.

  “We quit,” Isabella said.

  “Yeah. Take it down,” I said.

  “Let’s see what Uncle Dan thinks about you

  two ignoring your responsibilities,” Angeline said

  snottily, and started marching snottily toward

  the office.

  You might remember, Dumb Diary, that Dan

  Devon is the assistant principal of our school. He’s

  Angeline’s uncle, and since he married my Aunt

  Carol last year he’s my uncle now, too.

  As she snottily stormed away, Angeline

  turned around just long enough to let us have a

  snotty glimpse of the puppy-dog eyes she was

  planning to snottily use on Assistant Principal

  Devon. They were so big and watery and sad

  that, for a moment, I was sure that there was a

  blinded puppy stumbling around someplace looking

  for the eyeballs that some snot had stolen.

  22

  “Hang on,” Isabella said. She told me

  that Assistant Principal Devon just got over

  being angry about her selling some first graders

  earthworms by telling them that they were baby

  boa constrictors. She had to give the money

  back, wash some desks, and write a report about

  why it is wrong to paint stripes and eyes and fangs

  on a worm. Needless to say, Isabella doesn’t feel

  like having any additional friction right now.

  “People don’t appreciate how hard it is to

  customize a worm,” she said quietly.

  23

  So we agreed to help Angeline with the stupid

  site we’re presidents of. I told her maybe I’d try to

  come up with something to write about, just to

  protect our reputations. Isabella, who is so cute

  with how she’s always grubbing for money,

  wanted to know about the car wash ad.

  “That sponsor,” Isabella said. “How did you

  get them to place an ad on your derfy little

  website?”

  “He’s a friend of my dad. We have a way to

  tell how many people click on his ad,” Angeline

  explained. “The more people that click, the more

  Lou donates to the Student Awareness Committee.

  He only pays when people click.”

  Isabella began clicking furiously on the

  ad. She looked like a squirrel trying to crack open a

  nut with one finger. Squirrels might do that.

  “Here comes my money,” she said gleefully.

  “It won’t work,” Angeline said. “The clicks

  have to come from different users. The Internet

  is onto you, Isabella.”

  24

  As much as I would have loved to hang around

  and be bored the rest of the way to

  death, I had to go get my monkeyvomit shirt and

  cleverly put it back on in the girls’ bathroom.

  After I changed, I kept the shirt concealed

  under my jacket and ran out to the car, where Mom

  was waiting to pick me up. Perfect timing.

  I must get my trickiness from Dad. When he

  came home from work tonight, he was confidently

  wearing his monkeyvomit tie. The three of us sat

  down to eat, and for the first time in a long time,

  Mom’s dinner was not the ugliest-looking thing

  at the table.

  Maybe Mom should use this fabric to make a

  tablecloth. Then everything she served would look

  great in comparison.

  Thursday 05

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Thursday used to be Meat Loaf Day. We would

  spend the first half of the day fearing lunch and

  the second half regretting it.

  We helped convince the school to stop having

  Meat Loaf Thursday, and they replaced it with

  SURPRISE Thursday. Now Bruntford (our

  lunchroom monitor) walks around taking little

  surveys where she asks you how much you either

  A.) Hate

  or

  B.) Especially hate

  the new Thursday Special.

  26

  Isabella and I were forming our opinion of

  today’s Thursday Special, the HOTDOG FIESTA

  (which was nothing more than a sad little hotdog

  wobbling around in a taco shell), when Angeline

  flitted over and landed at our table like an

  enormous butterfly, only much flittier.

  “Got something to write about?” she asked.

  “For our site?”

  “I can’t think of anything to write about,” I

  said. “What are you writing about next?”

  “This new menu item,” she said, pointing

  one of her lustrously painted fingernails at my

  lunch. “I’m writing about the Hotdog Fiesta and

  how good it is.”

  “Good? Are you joking?” I asked.

  “‘Fiesta’ means ‘party’ in Spanish. This is more like

  a . . .” I turned to Isabella. “How do you say

  ‘funeral’ in Spanish?”

  “El funeral,” she said. “Or entierro.”

  “Isabella speaks Spanish?” Angeli
ne asked,

  surprised.

  I shook my head. “No. She just knows how to

  say ‘funeral’ in a lot of different languages.”

  27

  Friday 06

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Today, Isabella showed me our Student

  Awareness Committee site again. 53 people liked

  Angeline’s story about the Hotdog Fiesta. That’s a

  record number of likes. There’s a little section

  under the article where people can leave their

  comments, and that’s where things get really weird.

  “Awesome story,” one person wrote.

  “I guess those hotdog things are pretty

  good,” a different dope said.

  “I hated them until I read your article.

  Now I love them,” said another misguided

  halfwit.

  Isabella tapped the screen on her

  brothers’

  iPad.

  “And look — she says that tomorrow she’s

  writing something about how much she likes to run

  laps in gym.”

  Isabella pointed out that Angeline might be

  influencing public opinion. Soon, everybody will

  see everything the way Angeline does. Isabella

  said that even though Angeline isn’t as bad as many

  of the diseases we’ve read about, one Angeline

  seems to be about as many as the world should

  have to deal with, in spite of the fact that it seems

  to be able to deal with many diseases.

  I told her that I didn’t think Angeline’s dumb

  little blog posts meant anything to anybody.

  “You remember how long it took you to finally

  get rid of the meat loaf? How many of those Hotdog

  Fiestas are you prepared to eat?” Isabella asked

  dramatically. “And don’t forget the other things

  they’ve tried to substitute for meat loaf.”

  29

  Isabella is sleeping over tonight. Right after

  dinner, my mom gave her a great big surprise. A

  REALLY BIG SURPRISE.

  My mom made Isabella a skirt and hat.

  Isabella kicks people far more than the

  average person kicks people, and when you do

  that in a skirt, there’s a huge issue of not

  broadcasting your underwear for the whole world

  to see because:

  A.) It’s embarrassing.

  and

  B.) All the people who saw the underwear have to

  be kicked as well, and the whole process

  begins all over again.

  and

  C.) Who has time for that?

  30

  So Isabella hates skirts. But even though

  she hates them, and even though this particular

  skirt was ugly even compared to my monkeyvomit

  shirt, Isabella accepted it, said thank you, and ran

  off to the bathroom and put it on. She even wore

  the matching hat.

  We were all watching that reality show on TV

  with those awful people that say awful things to

  one another, and when my mom got up to leave the

  room, I asked Isabella if she really liked the skirt.

  “Oh, heck no,” she said right away, and

  my dad laughed quietly.

  “Then why were you in such a hurry to put it

  on?” I whispered.

  “Jamie, my grandma is always making me

  horrible clothes. I know all about these things.

  The sooner you wear them, the sooner you spill

  something on them or tear out a seam. With stuff

  this ugly, you must never delay, Jamie. You have

  to wear it fast and wear it hard.”

  Dad and I looked at her in awe. How can she

  scheme so well?

  31

  Dad jumped up and ran out of the room. Two

  minutes later he was in the kitchen, wearing his

  monkeyvomit tie.

  “Who wants hot fudge sundaes?” he shouted

  merrily, waving the chocolate syrup bottle

  recklessly.

  Unfortunately, not a drop got on the tie.

  32

  Saturday 07

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Isabella and I had one of those days where

  you spend four hours trying to come up with

  something to do, and then, by the time you come up

  with something, there’s no time to do it, so you just

  watch TV in positions that make it look like maybe

  you were born without bones.

  We do this about twelve times a month.

  “Since we’re not really doing anything, we

  should practice debate,” I said.

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Isabella said.

  “We just did,” I said.

  Then Isabella hit me for tricking her into

  practicing debate.

  33

  “Maybe what we should do is have you write

  something for that dumb website,” she suggested.

  “That’s not US doing something. That’s ME

  doing something.”

  “Look,” Isabella said. “We could spend hours

  going back and forth about why I see something

  one way and you see it the other, wrong way. The

  bottom line is that Angeline is currently writing

  circles around you, and I guess that means she’s the

  better writer.”

  “HA,” I said, really big like that. “I’m a

  better writer than she is and you know it.” (Look

  how big I wrote that HA.)

  34

  “Oh, I know, Jamie. It’s just that, right now,

  nobody else does. The whole school is reading

  Angeline’s entries and not yours.”

  She was right, but it made me so mad

  that I intentionally spilled soda on her pants so

  she would have to walk home wearing the

  monkeyvomit skirt.

  (And hat, you know, because it really set off

  the ensemble.)

  35

  Sunday 08

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  I started to read Angeline’s entries on the

  Student Awareness Committee blog today. Here’s

  one of them:

  I like warm days. I don't like when it's very hot,

  and I don't like when it's very cold. Sometimes when

  it's only a little bit hot I don't mind it much. And

  sometimes when it's only a little bit cold I don't mind

  it much. In conclusion, I like warm days.

  — Angeline

  P.S. And kind-of-warm days.

  It was a great entry because I’ve always

  wondered what sort of thing we’d get to read if a

  blog post was written by a fart. Like, a real fart.

  Like if a mindless odor-cloud, with no

  personality or purpose, stopped drifting around

  a room for a moment, somehow learned how to

  press the keys on a keyboard, and wrote a few lines

  36

  about the weather before it just dissolved into

  thin air and was blamed on the dog. I had always

  wondered that.

  And then I read the responses to her post,

  which got 67 likes, now the current record.

  37

  “Oh, Angeline, you really nailed it. LOL! Warm

  days! LOL!”

  “I liked the part about the warm days. Wow!”

  “I agree about the cold days and also about

  the days that aren’t very cold.”

  Angeline is slowly turning everybody

  into farts.
/>   Monday 09

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  It’s clear that Mr. Smith’s wig was designed

  for men with thinning hair who want to create the

  illusion that they are balancing a Yorkshire terrier

  on their heads. This is not really appealing to

  anybody, except maybe a real Yorkshire terrier

  during a flood.

  In social studies today, he had us pair up with

  our partners for quiet practice debates. He gave us

  each a short list of subjects and said to just spend

  a couple of minutes on each one. He explained that

  one of us had to be against the things, and one of

  us had to be for them.

  “I’ll be for the things,” Angeline said.

  “But you haven’t even read the list,” I said.

  “That’s okay.” She smiled. “I know that I’m

  for them.”

  39

  How can somebody know that they’re for

  something without even knowing what it is? I

  started just making up debate topics to test this

  theory.

  “All right, Angeline,” I said, pretending to

  read from the list. “Why are you for rainy days?”

  “It’s good for the plants, and you can stay

  inside and read a book.”

  Okay. Okay, maybe I could see that.

  “How about the flu?” I said. “Why are you in

  favor of the flu?”

  “Well, it helps you to appreciate the people

  that take care of you, and you feel so great when

  it’s over.”

  I almost bit through my pencil.

  “Okay, Blondy. How about getting struck by

  lightning?”

  Angeline rolled her big fat eyes and batted

  her big fat eyelashes. I’d done it. Even Angeline

  couldn’t come up with something good about

  getting struck by lightni —

  40

  “Well, it’s a very rare occurrence. So, I guess

  it would make you famous,” she said, SMILING.