Dumbness is a Dish Best Served Cold (Dear Dumb Diary: Deluxe) Read online

  “I’m in,” Isabella chirped immediately.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You were just giving

  Angeline all kinds of grief about this. You can’t just

  change your mind like that.”

  Light glinted across Isabella’s glasses in such a

  way that I couldn’t see her eyes. That’s always

  disconcerting. It’s like talking to a Stormtrooper.

  “Jamie,” she said, “money changes things for

  me, in the same way that a penguin can change a day

  at the beach for a killer whale. It’s what I am. It’s what

  I believe in. I’m not going to lie to you, Jamie. There is a

  price I would sell you for, and it’s not as high as you

  think.”

  “Just tell me it’s higher than what a car costs,”

  I said.

  “It’s more than what many cars cost,” she said,

  and patted my hand. I jerked it away.

  “Money can’t buy happiness,” I wisely

  reminded her in my ultra-wise wisdom.

  “We’ve all heard that saying a million times,” she

  scoffed. “But we’ve never heard it from somebody who

  needed money. If you offer a dollar to a broke person,

  they

  won’t turn it down. Do you think they’ll ever say,

  No, thanks. I’m afraid that buying myself something to

  eat with that dollar might not make me happy? Grow

  up, Jamie.”

  She was right. In a horrible, horrible,

  horrible way, she was right. We don’t need all the

  money in the world, but we need some of it.

  And maybe Angeline really did have a good

  idea. I mean, it had to happen sooner or later, right?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE IDEA

  Angeline’s bedroom is clean. It’s pink and

  small

  —

  Angeline’s parents are not rich

  —

  but

  everything is neat and organized, and there are a lot of

  tiny things neatly arranged.

  “How do you keep things so

  undestroyed

  ?”

  Isabella asked with genuine curiosity as she looked

  around at all the undestroyed items.

  There was a tiny glass unicorn on Angeline’s

  dresser.

  “Look at those frail little glass legs,” Isabella

  said with wonder. “I can feel them starting to break

  just by staring at them.”

  “Let’s not stare at them, then,” Angeline said,

  motioning for us to join her on the floor. “Let’s look

  at this instead. This is the idea I wanted to tell

  you about.”

  She slid a box out from under her bed and

  opened it with great ceremony, beaming.

  “What do you think?” she asked proudly.

  It was a paper plate with writing on it.

  We heard Isabella opening the front door before

  we realized she had stood up and left the room.

  She was halfway down the front steps before we caught

  up to her.

  “You didn’t even let me tell you about it,”

  Angeline whined.

  “You said this idea was worth money,” Isabella

  said. “A paper plate with writing on it? I know a bad

  idea when I see one.”

  “We came all the way over here. We should at

  least let her do her little presentation,” I said.

  Isabella dragged her feet as hard as she could,

  groaning loudly as she plodded from the front porch all

  the way back to Angeline’s room.

  She flopped down on the floor as hard as if

  somebody had scooped out her insides and replaced

  them with barbecue charcoal.

  “Let’s hear it, Cupcake,” she moaned.

  “So,” Angeline began, cheerfully unaware that

  the name “Cupcake” is an insult. (Although as I

  write this, I’m not sure why, since they’re delicious and

  beautiful and everybody likes them

  .

  .

  .)

  “So, you know how obesity is a problem,” she

  began, “but people may not always know how to

  address it

  —”

  “You address it like this:

  TO FATTYPANTS

  ,”

  Isabella cut in.

  Angeline ignored the interruption and Isabella’s

  accompanying snorts.

  “So, with these specially printed plates, people

  are reminded of what they should be eating,” she

  went on. “See, it’s like a pie chart, except there’s not

  much room for pie.” She giggled, absurdly pleased with

  her own lame joke.

  Angeline held up a plate and pointed to the

  different sections with a long, graceful finger (which

  looked like a swan finger, if swans had fingers). There

  was a diagram showing how much of each meal should

  be protein, how much should be vegetables, and so on.

  “How do we make money off this?” Isabella

  demanded.

  Angeline smiled. “Well, we come up with the

  design

  —

  I know Jamie can do that, she’s so talented

  —

  and we sell the idea to a company that manufactures

  plates. I know that you can do that part, Isabella.

  You’re very persuasive. I mean

  —

  you guys can do

  so much.”

  She was manipulating us like dough. Like the

  sweet, delicious dough that we are. And she was baking

  us into the type of delicious cookies you can only get

  from dough like us. And she was putting sprinkles of us

  on top of us, and

  —

  forget it. I’m hungry. I want

  some cookies. I’ll pick this up in the next chapter,

  called

  .

  .

  .

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OKAY, I HAD COOKIES AND CAN WRITE AGAIN

  Isabella and I discussed how much better

  Angeline’s plate idea could be, if it wasn’t drawn so

  badly by Angeline, and if it was pitched by somebody

  better at pitching than Angeline.

  “I’m right here, guys,” Angeline said. “I

  can hear you.”

  I patted her hand softly. “Angeline, it’s

  important that you realize that we know that.”

  “What would somebody pay for plates like this?”

  Isabella asked, getting to the point. That’s how she

  likes her points: gotten to.

  “Maybe only a little bit more than they’re

  already paying for plates,” Angeline said. “But if the

  manufacturers pay us a little for each one, it could

  add up.”

  Angeline watched Isabella stand up and move

  slowly toward the door.

  “

  AND Mr. Henzy will give us extra credit for

  this,” she added, batting her eyelashes out of habit

  before remembering that her eyelash batting doesn’t

  work on us. “He’d love to see us do a project that would

  increase our real-life personal finances.”

  “Do you think it could bring my grade up to a D?”

  Isabella asked hopefully.

  “It might. What’s your grade now?”

  “It’s a pretty bad grade,” Isabella said. “It’s like

&n
bsp; if you concentrated your hardest on intentionally

  forgetting everything you were ever taught.”

  “Like an F?” Angeline asked. “Like you’re

  failing?”

  “It’s a little lower than that,” Isabella said.

  “I didn’t know there was anything lower than

  failing,” Angeline said, blinking her wide, innocent eyes.

  Isabella chuckled.

  “There’s an entire WORLD of grades below

  what you surface dwellers know,” Isabella said. “While

  you’re floating around up here in the clouds, among

  the A’s and B’s, you have no idea what’s going on down

  in the G’s and H’s.”

  “Isabella got a J once in math. Basically, that

  means that she couldn’t count to one,” I explained.

  “I totally could,” Isabella said. “I just didn’t

  want to.”

  “So, what do you say, Angeline?” I asked. “Will

  this get her up to a D?”

  “It might,” she said with a shrug.

  “I like this,” Isabella said, waggling the plate at

  Angeline. “It’s a little bit like stealing, but also a

  little bit like cheating.”

  Of course it was nothing like either of those

  things, but when Isabella is in a good mood, sometimes

  it’s best to just let it go without an argument.

  And so, without any more preparation, we

  plunged into The Big Weird Thing.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE PRICE WE HAVE TO PAY

  I never really know what to expect when I drag

  my tail into math class. It might be boring, but on

  the other hand, it could be terrible.

  This time it was terrible. Again.

  Mr. Henzy made us guess at the cost of a college

  education. Again, we had to take our papers home and

  get our parents to sign them.

  Isabella said she wasn’t going to fall for it this

  time, so her plan was to just ask her parents what it

  would cost, write down a number a little higher than

  that, and have them sign it. She had not yet decided if

  she would be stomping on her dad’s foot anyway.

  That sounded like a good idea to me

  —

  not the

  stomping part, just the asking part

  —

  so I gave it a

  shot at dinner.

  “What’s it going to cost you two to put me

  through college?” I asked just as my dad was trying to

  squeeze down a bite of one of my mom’s casserole-

  shaped objects. “And let’s make it someplace good,

  like a really good college. Something deluxe. One where

  they grow ivy on the buildings.”

  A lot of people credit Dr. Heimlich with the

  brilliance of his maneuver

  —

  you know, the one where

  your mom gets behind your dad and squashes his guts

  with one big sudden squeeze. And the good doctor

  deserves a lot of credit. Think how many lives that

  move has saved.

  What they never give him enough credit for is the

  hilarious

  popping sound a clump of casserole

  makes when it’s forced out your dad’s trachea at

  eighty miles an hour.

  It should be called Heimlich’s Hysterical

  Champagne Bottle of Comedy.

  After Dad recovered from being maneuvered, he

  made it clear why he had choked.

  “Jamie, parents can’t always afford college for

  their kids. Sometimes kids have to get loans to afford

  college,” he said, and his voice had a sad, serious

  tone to it.

  “And scholarships,” Mom added. “Students

  often try to get scholarship money from the college,

  based on good grades or special abilities.”

  “So

  .

  .

  .

  how much is it going to cost?” I

  asked again.

  Dad stared down at his casserole, and it

  probably stared back. It’s always possible that Mom

  baked something’s eye into dinner.

  “Jamie, we’re going to make it work for you,” he

  said, and he stood up and walked away from the table.

  I looked at Mom, and she faked a smile. I have

  no idea why people try that. There’s nothing more

  obvious than a faked smile.

  In the corner of the room, Stinker ate the thing

  Dad had coughed up.

  Then I watched him eat it a couple more times,

  and it struck me that he was doing a pretty good job of

  dramatizing just how I felt.

  I went up to my room and worked on Angeline’s

  plates. There’s something about the smell of pencil

  shavings and glitter that always makes me feel

  better. I came up with a few ideas:

  I showed them to Angeline and Isabella the next

  day at lunch.

  “Is this all you’ve got?” Isabella asked,

  which is the perfect question to ask somebody if your

  goal is to destroy their self-confidence. This never

  works on me, however, because Isabella destroyed

  whatever I had left of that years ago, and in its place I

  grew a hard, turtle-ish shell.

  “I think they’re great,” Angeline said, her eyes

  shimmering annoyingly with excitement.

  “So how do we test them?” I asked.

  Isabella grabbed Dicky Flartsnutt by the collar

  and pulled him over to our table. Dicky, you might

  recall, Dumb Diary, is our very good friend who we love

  and who is a dork.

  Isabella had him look at the plates, which he did

  with the enthusiasm that only dorks have for things

  like paper plates and that rainbow you sometimes get

  with a garden hose.

  “They’re plates,” he said, getting right to

  the heart of it.

  “If you had to eat off these, would it make you

  want to be less fat?” Isabella asked.

  Angeline interrupted.

  “No. No. Hang on. That’s not the right question.

  Dicky, first tell us, do you like the look of these

  plates?” she asked gently.

  “Yes. Jamie drew on them. I can tell.”

  “That’s right. But what if Jamie hadn’t drawn

  on them?”

  “Then I guess they’d be blank.”

  I interrupted.

  “Dicky, we want to sell plates like these to

  people like your mom. Do you think she’d buy these?

  You know, to set up balanced meals for you?”

  “Yes,” he said, and Isabella released him with

  a little shove.

  “They’re a hit!” Angeline squealed, making

  tiny rapid claps directly in front of her face.

  “AHIT?” Isabella scoffed. “Because Dicky

  likes them? Dicky likes the sound of the Velcro on his

  shoes, too.”

  “They’re not a hit exactly, Angeline,” I said.

  “Not yet. We have some work to do.”

  In the weeks that followed, we tried to figure out

  how to really make the plates a genuine hit. Angeline

  started researching companies that made paper

  plates, and I worked on improving the designs.

  Isabella watched a lot of Netflix movies about

  companies or jobs or something

>   —

  she never really

  explained exactly how that was helping, but I’m sure

  she was learning important stuff.

  I must have redrawn the designs for the plates a

  million times, after learning what proportions of

  protein, grains, vegetables, and other stuff the experts

  recommended.

  There was only one thing left to do. We had to

  actually make some plates and test them out.

  First, we needed a way to get the images on the

  plates. It turned out that running them through

  the copier at school was just about the simplest,

  easiest way to jam it forever and make it catch

  on fire.

  We explained to Assistant Principal Devon (my

  Uncle Dan) what we were doing with the plates as he

  was vacuuming up the copier toner that the firemen

  had spilled all over the floor.

  He said that maybe Miss Anderson (my art

  teacher) could make it an art project and have all the

  kids decorate their plates themselves with

  nonpoisonous markers and try them out at lunch.

  (Assistant principals are always really interested in

  not poisoning kids.)

  Using my designs, each kid would draw the

  proportions on their plate, and then the cafeteria

  workers would put the food on the plates based on

  the design.

  And that’s what happened.

  I make it sound like this all happened fast, but it

  actually took a while to get everything together.

  Miss Anderson didn’t really want to interrupt her

  class schedule with the plates because she had very

  big, very important plans for her students to

  create some spectacular masterpieces featuring

  macaroni glued to something. You know, just like the

  great works of art you see in museums.

  But Uncle Dan talked her into it, possibly

  because I think she has an adult crush on him, which is

  illegal because he’s married to my Aunt Carol, but I’m

  not going to say anything because we ARE getting our

  plates after all.

  Sorry, Aunt Carol, you’re on your own with this

  one. Hope there’s not a big awful divorce coming up.