Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff Read Free Book Online

Mountford said she felt sorry for me about that, but I didn’t care so long as I got cake and ice cream. That part was taking forever.
    I wondered if you blew your birthday candles out three times, did that mean you got three wishes?
    When it was time for presents, Erlan got ten new chess sets.
    After the party was over and most of the kids had gone home, Erlan and I hung out in the quilt fort in his bedroom and played Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. Erlan kept shouting “No release!” right before he attacked me with the red bot, and then I’d holler “No release!” even louder and attack him right back with my blue one. I knocked his block clean off eight times.
    It was the best part of the party.

reading
log.

    M om thumbed through my homework folder while our dinner whirled in the microwave. I looked at the time. Four minutes thirty-seven seconds to go. My stomach growled.
    â€œAlbie,” Mom said slowly, pulling a sheet out of the folder, “is this your reading log?”
    I adjusted the napkins on the table so they were perfectly straight against the corners, just the way Dad liked, even though he was working late again, so he wouldn’t be there to see it. “Yep,” I said. I tried to wait until Mom started congratulating me on all my good reading to start smiling, but I couldn’t help it. A hint of a grin snuck onto my face. We only had to read for fifteen minutes a night, but the past four days I’d read for twenty at least. On Thursday I even read for
forty,
which I never even thought was possible, unless you were Grandpa Park with his newspaper.
    But for some reason, Mom didn’t seem happy like she should have been. “What is this?” she asked. And for a second, I thought she’d found some sort of mashed-up banana in my backpack or something, that was how disgusted her question sounded. But there wasn’t any mashed-up banana. She was still looking at my reading log. She held it out to me.
    My eyes scanned down past where Mrs. Rouse had written “Great reading, Albie!” But I didn’t see anything that looked mashed-up-banana disgusting.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    Mom flicked the paper back to her own eyeballs. “What on earth are these books you’ve been reading, Albie?” she said. “
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
?
Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets
?
The Invasion of the Potty Snatchers
?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. I still didn’t get why she was mad, and when Mom got like that—confusing mad—it was best to talk slow. “The Captain Underpants books. They’re really funny.” The only problem with them was that their titles were so long, it took me forever to write them on my reading log. But it was worth it.
    I set the forks down on the table and moved to the backpack. I pulled a book out for her to see.
Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants.
“I’ve read four already.” Calista had gotten them for me from the library, which I was about to tell my mom, but for some reason at the last minute, I decided not to. “Look at the pictures,” I said instead.
    Mom skimmed through the book so fast, I was pretty sure she didn’t even notice the flipbooks, which are the funniest parts. “Albie,” she said slowly. Her forehead was wrinkled up like it was at Dad sometimes when they talked about who was supposed to do the grocery shopping, but I still didn’t get why. We weren’t talking about grocery shopping. “You’re way too old for these books.” She flipped the book open again, to a page where Professor Pippy P. Poopypants is getting really mad about everyone making fun of his name. It’s funny because he’s a scientist, but also he has a really terrible name. Mom held the page up so I could see. “Look at these drawings,” she said. “This is for babies.”
    I