And she’s got enough to think about with us kids, hasn’t she?
Jason is kind of a chunky guy, but it’s mostly muscle, he says. And I believe him. He has buzz-cut hair, like the fur of this hedgehog I saw once in a nature book. And his ears stick out a little, but in a good way. You definitely know they’re there.
I think I could turn Jason into a pretty cool friend, especially if I can get him to stop making jokes and pulling pranks all the time. Stuff like that is funny, and I love funny. But it can wear a person out after a while.
Also, I like the chance to be funny, too.
My last friend possibility is Diego Romero. My mom says that his name sounds like it belongs to a movie star. And I can tell that a couple of girls in our class kind of like him, even though Diego is a quiet guy. He likes to read. He even reads instructions! And sometimes he brings these really thick books to school to share with Ms. Sanchez.
But he’s not a kiss-up, he’s cool. And I think I could loosen him up.
Okay. Now that I think about it, maybe none of these five guys is perfect, but like I said about Nate, I can fix that. All I have to do is to hang out with them more, get to know them better. Starting tomorrow morning.
And then I can choose which kid I want to be my spare friend.
Who will it be? Major, Marco, Nate, Jason, or Diego?
Maybe the winner can even become my personal assistant some day! I know Corey’s way too busy winning swim meets and polishing his medals to take on that role, even if he would. But having a personal assistant does sound pretty cool.
Now, all I need is to figure out who the lucky kid will be.
It would be great to have a new friend by Friday, the day of Alfie’s show. But my long-term goal is to have one by the end of this month.
January.
Then I’ll have a happy new year for sure!
3
SECRET PLAN
“Hurry up, EllRay,” Mom says as I shovel a last spoonful of cereal into my mouth. The spoon is heaped so high that the milk in it trickles down my wrist. It makes my sleeve feel wet and sticky.
What’s the big deal about making me take a shower and then put on clean clothes every morning, when messy stuff like trickling cereal milk happens before I’m even out the door?
Give it up, Mom! It’s hopeless.
“Don’t forget your lunch,” my mother reminds me.
Like I would. Food is just about my favorite thing. Also playing, and TV. “Where’s Alfie?” I ask, trying to turn the mom-spotlight away from me for a second.
“She’s upstairs, changing her barrettes,” Mom says, shaking her head. My mom is tall, thin, and pretty, and her skin is the color of the best caramel you ever saw. She likes to wear headbands, but not the scary plastic kind with teeth that Cynthia Harbison wears to school. Cynthia’s headbands look like they’re mad at her head. “Alfie forgot that she already wore the barrettes she put on this morning,” Mom tries to explain. “Just last Thursday. It was a narrow escape,” she adds, laughing.
Alfie is turning into a fashion diva, Mom says. Whatever a diva is.
I think it means spoiled.
“She better not make me late for school,” I say.
See, Dad has already left, because he has an hour-long drive to San Diego. Like I already said, he teaches geology at a college there. So Mom has to drive both Alfie and me to school every day. Alfie gets dropped off first each morning, and sometimes it takes her a long time to leave the car.
Here is an example of how hard it can be to get Alfie to leave Mom’s Toyota. One morning when Alfie was about to get out of the car at school, she discovered that she had put on shoes from two different pairs of sneakers, one pink and one blue. That was a major meltdown. Alfie cried so hard that she yakked out the car window, and then she and Mom had to go home and lie down after they dropped me off at Oak Glen and Mom hosed off the car.
I’m glad I missed that part of the morning.
Another time, Mom caught Alfie trying to sneak a new doll into school. That’s against the law at Kreative Learning and Daycare—which has a sign outside that my dad just loves, for some reason. The sign reads, Featuring Spanish, Computer Skills, and Potty Training. Dad sometimes makes a joke about how hard it would be to teach all three things at once.
I guess that’s how teachers think. Even college teachers.
But like I said, Alfie sometimes refuses to leave Mom’s car, which is why I’m worried about being late on this very important Monday.
Day one of my secret plan.
The day when I figure out which new friend to choose.
“EllWay, c’mon,” Alfie is saying, hands on her hips as she stares at me from the kitchen doorway. “Wake up!”
“I’m awake,” I tell her. “Anyway, Mom and I were waiting for you, slow-poke.”
“Mom’s already in the car,” Alfie informs me. “And me and my cute barrettes don’t wanna be late.”
“Me neither,” I say, locking the kitchen door behind me on my way out.
Not today, of all days, I add to myself.
4
LIKE A SPY
Oak Glen Primary School goes from kindergarten through sixth grade, which puts our third grade class right in the middle, if you count kindergarten. And us third grade kids are in the middle size-wise, too, except for me. I am the shortest kid—boy or girl—in Ms. Sanchez’s class, and I have been all semester. I keep hoping that someone even shorter will transfer in, like a leprechaun maybe, but no such luck.
Dad tells me I’ll start growing taller pretty soon, but when?
If the weather is nice, which it almost always is in Oak Glen, we play outside near the picnic tables before school starts. Well, the boys play, and the girls in our class mostly just hang, talk or whisper, and make fun of us boys. My opinion is that the girls don’t want to mess up their clothes first thing in the morning. Excuse me, their outfits.
They save their running around for later in the day.
I walk toward the picnic tables as if I am seeing the guys in my class for the first time. I feel like a spy.
“Hey, EllRay!” my friend Corey calls out, waving at me.
Corey has blond hair and freckles, and he usually smells like chlorine. He works out before school at a swimming pool in an Oak Glen gym, that’s why. And then, after school, he works out at an aquatics center in a bigger town nearby.
“Aquatics” means doing stuff in the water.
An aquatics center has more than one pool, Corey says. Also, they’re longer and more official looking. And nobody has fun there, the way Corey tells it.
But he’s having fun now, at least. Corey is playing with a wooden paddleboard, his latest obsession. He must have sneaked it into school in his backpack. This doesn’t break any big rule, except for the one that says you can’t bring toys to school. And Cynthia and Fiona say that the paddle part of the toy could be used as a weapon. They keep threatening to tell on him.
But Cynthia’s toothy headband could be used as a weapon.
So could a book, if it was thick enough!
Corey says that paddleboarding is a sport—this kind of paddleboarding, with a red rubber ball attached to a small paddle by a piece of elastic string, not the kind you do standing on a board in the ocean.
And grownups are always trying to get us kids to do more sports, aren’t they?
They have meetings about it all the time. With cake.
Also, Corey never plays with his paddleboard in class.
I’m not saying he’s right to sneak it into school. I’m just reporting the facts.
Another fact is that until he gets caught and the paddleboard gets taken away from him, Corey is likely to keep bringing it to Oak Glen. “Watch this,” he tells me, bouncing the ball off the board about ten times in a row.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, ba
m, bam, bam, bam, bam.
“Don’t you dare hit me with that thing, Corey Robinson, or I’m telling,” Cynthia calls out from one of the girls’ picnic tables, right on schedule. She is about ten feet away from Corey, who, of course, ignores her.
I sneak a spy-like peek over at Marco and Major, who are playing on the beat-up grass. They are huddled over these little plastic knights Marco collects—and sneaks into school.
We don’t mean to be bad. We are just trying to have some extra fun.
I think Marco would live in the olden days if he could, and Major would be right there with him!
Me, I’m more of a modern day kind of kid. I like cell phones and tablets, and the more apps stuffed into everything the better. Most of all, I like video games. My current favorite one is Die, Creature, Die. I got it for Christmas. It’s handheld but still cool.
They didn’t have that in the olden days, Marco.
I shift my sneaky spy gaze over to Nate Marshall. His red rooster crest looks extra perky today. He is explaining something to Kevin, who looks confused. Kevin is trying to sneak away. “See?” Nate is saying, keeping up with him, like they have magnets in their legs. “Don’t you get it? The cylinder head delivers the spark.”
“Sort of. I think I get it,” Kevin says, looking around in a “Save me!” kind of way. I think Kevin is afraid there’s going to be a quiz, and school hasn’t even started yet!
Hmm, I think. Turning Nate into a spare friend might be too much work. Especially now, when I need fast results.
Meanwhile, Jason Leffer is laughing with Jared and Stanley on the other side of one of the boys’ picnic tables. I think he’s pretending he just pulled a giant booger out of his nose, only it’s really a raisin from his lunch sack.
Excuse me for saying “booger.” I am just reporting the facts.
“He’s gonna eat it,” Fiona shrieks from one of the girls’ picnic tables.
They don’t officially have “girls’ tables” or “boys’ tables” at Oak Glen Primary School, by the way. I think doing that is against the law. It just works out that way, about girls’ tables and boys’ tables, once you get past first or second grade.
I forget. That was a long time ago.
The point is, Jason is fun.
But Diego Romero can be fun, too, I remind myself. Right now, Diego is leaning against a tree, reading a car magazine. I don’t know much about cars, but the magazine looks pretty cool. And once Diego is my friend, I can sort of scootch him over to stuff that doesn’t involve reading. Things I like to do.
So, Diego and Jason it is, I decide. If I play this right, I’ll have two spare friends!
A spare, and a spare-spare.
Alfie will be so impressed. She’ll feel good about coming to Oak Glen Primary School next year.
“Hey,” I say, scuffing my way over to Diego’s tree. “Cars, huh?”
Brilliant, EllRay.
“Yeah,” Diego says, marking his place with a finger and looking up at me with a friendly smile.
Hey. An accidental good start!
“What kind of car do you want to have when you turn sixteen?” Diego asks me, really curious.
Not my mom’s old one, that’s for sure, is all I can think. Because after all, turning sixteen is eight years away. And that’s a whole other lifetime, since I’m only eight years old now.
But luckily, the warning buzzer sounds before I have to answer Diego. “Later, dude,” I say, trying to match his earlier smile without being too weird. But Diego’s not even looking at me. He’s too busy getting his stuff together.
“Dude,” Corey calls out, winding the elastic string loosely around his paddleboard handle and jamming it into his backpack. “Who you growlin’ at?”
“Nobody,” I say, trying to erase my goofy smile as we all head toward class.
Just a normal Monday morning, I tell myself. But things are looking up!
I’ve made my choice. My choices, I mean.
Now, all I need is to find a way to get Diego’s and Jason’s attention so they’ll want to be my friends.
5
ELLRAY JAKES THE RECESS KING!
“You’re awfully quiet over there, buddy,” Dad says at dinner.
Turkey meatloaf, a huge blob of ketchup, carrot coins, and my mom’s special potatoes.
“I’m good,” I tell him.
“EllWay’s just thinking,” Alfie explains.
She’s actually right. I have been trying to figure out the best way to make Jason and Diego want to be my friends. I mean, we’re already friends, I guess, since we have been in the same class since September, and we have never had a fight.
But I want them to be real friends.
Friends I can hang with after school, on weekends, and even during the summer.
Friends like Corey is, when he’s not busy swimming, or like Kevin is some of the time.
“Hold on a second, EllRay,” Dad says, his always-solemn face creasing into an even more serious expression. “Is everything okay at school?”
His fork has stopped halfway to his mouth.
“Now, Warren,” my mom says, probably hoping to calm him down.
Okay. Here’s what is going on.
1. My mom and dad moved us to Oak Glen from San Diego when I was in kindergarten, even though the move meant that Dad would have a much longer drive to work. All the way down to San Diego—and back.
2. But almost the minute we got to Oak Glen, I think my dad was bothered that there weren’t more brown faces around town.
3. What worried him even more was the idea that kids my class might pick on me because my skin is brown. And when Alfie came along, whoa.
4. So far, there hasn’t been any trouble like that. There are plenty of real reasons for kids to get irked with me, and the other way around! Me with them, I mean. And the same with Alfie, for that matter. Normal reasons.
5. But Dad’s worries still stick in his head—like a splinter, I guess. You know how, when you have a splinter in your hand, and you can’t get it out, the thought of it always fills your brain? Even though the splinter is only in one little part of your body?
Like that.
Like the way I feel about being short.
“I’m only asking, Louise,” Dad tells my mom, putting down his fork. “It’s a perfectly reasonable question.”
Notice how my mom and dad get to have regular names, by the way? Louise and Warren? But Alfie and I have names we have to explain.
Like I said, parents should not do that to their kids. In my opinion.
“Don’t worry, Dad. Everything is fine at school,” I say. “I just feel kind of quiet tonight, but in a good way. Like Alfie said, I’m thinking.”
“Anyway, I’m the chatterbox around here,” Alfie says, sounding proud.
As if we needed telling!
“And you’ll never guess where Suzette Monahan thinks baby kitties come from,” my little sister adds. She leans forward, her brown eyes wide.
“Oh, heaven help us,” Mom says. “Here we go.”
And—I actually stop trying to figure out how to con Jason and Diego into being my friends for a minute. What Alfie says next will either be completely rando, like our teenage babysitter says, or it’ll be really good.
Dad looks worried again. “I’m not sure that telling us where kittens come from is the best subject for the dinner table, Alfleta,” he says.
Alfleta. “Beautiful elf,” in a language only my mom knows anymore.
See what I mean?
“Why?” Alfie asks, her golden face starting to crumple. “You don’t like flowers? Because that’s where Suzette found a whole bunch of kitties, she said. In their garden. And she’ll sell us one for only a hundred dollars.”
And Mom, Dad, and I all start to laugh—which, of course, only makes things wor
se with Alfie.
But that’s okay, because she gets over things fast.
I guess she doesn’t have any brain splinters yet.
Later, in bed, I stare at my ceiling in the dark. I am trying to figure out my friend problem in a logical way. That’s what Dad is always telling me to do. “Be logical.”
He’s a scientist, remember.
Jason Leffer is already the funny kid in our class, I remind myself. So I can’t win him over with pranks and jokes. Diego, either.
And I can’t bribe them into being my friends. I don’t have enough money! I only have enough saved up to bribe maybe half a person for five minutes, tops.
My dad says I’m one of life’s big spenders, that’s the thing.
Besides, Mom and Dad would never let me get away with something as bad as bribery.
But there’s another thing I’m good at beside spending money, and that’s having fun. I can really get into it.
And when does a kid have the most fun at school?
During recess.
So if I can figure out a way to be the most fun kid in the world at recess, if I can turn into the kid with the best ideas of stuff to do, then Jason and Diego are sure to want to be my new spare friends!
I can fix what’s wrong with them after that, I tell myself—like Jason cracking jokes all the time, and Diego thinking there’s nothing better to do than read.
They’ll thank me someday.
But first, I have to become EllRay Jakes, the recess king!
Genius.
6
COMPUTER TIME
“Can I use the computer after dinner?” I ask Dad. It is Tuesday, the day after I got my bright idea.
I don’t tell my dad that I need to do some research. If I tell him that, he will peek over my shoulder and make suggestions the whole time. Dad loves research.
But this is my thing.
“I think you mean may you use the computer after dinner,” Dad says. His look shows that he has covered this subject a number of times before.
EllRay Jakes The Recess King! Page 2