by Lisa Yee
When he got a thumbs-up, he felt a little bit better.
By the time he got to Holly’s house, he was ten minutes late. Holly had her arms crossed and was tapping her foot.
“Sorry,” Bobby apologized as Holly looked at her watch.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. Holly had a hard time staying mad at Bobby. “We’ll just have to walk fast.”
Bobby ran to catch up to her. “What happened after I left the show?” he asked, even though he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know.
“Well,” Holly started, “at first no one knew what to do. Then Mrs. Carlson apologized, saying there was a medical emergency. Then the show went on and it was great!” Her eyes were bright.
“But what about Sandy? Who took my part?” Bobby asked. He wondered if maybe Chess stepped in for him. Chess was pretty good at being a dog, although his romping could use some work.
“We just did the musical without Sandy,” Holly explained. “Don’t worry, it was fine. No one noticed you weren’t there.”
Bobby felt like he had been slugged. The show went on without him and nobody noticed?
“Oh, Bobby,” Holly continued, “it was so fun! We got a standing ovation.”
Bobby pretended to smile, even though he felt lousy. Stupid rotten asthma, he thought. He had always wanted a standing ovation. Sometimes, when he was alone in his room, he practiced taking bows in front of an imaginary audience.
Holly and Bobby slipped into Room 15 just as everyone was settling down. Several of the girls snickered when they saw him. Chess was organizing his pencils. He did this every morning. “You okay?” he asked without looking up.
“I guess,” Bobby answered.
“I fell off the stage,” St. James boasted. “Your dad is so cool. Did you see how he leapt over those people? He’s like Super Football Dude. You should have seen your face when he was carrying you like a football. You looked so weird.”
“Yeah,” another boy added, “I would have been so embarrassed if my dad did that. I’m surprised you even showed up to school today.”
“And those freaky sounds you were making, it sounded like a wounded animal,” someone else added. “Can you teach me how to do it?”
Bobby felt himself shrinking. Maybe he’d turn invisible after all.
“You could have waited until you were backstage,” Jillian Zarr sniffed. “But noooo, you had to cause a big scene and disrupt the entire show. That’s so like you, Bobby Ellis-Chan. You’re just an attention hog and so is your father. My mother even said so.”
Bobby winced. “Jillian Zarr, for your information, I don’t have asthma attacks on purpose,” he protested. “And as for my dad, he was just trying to help me!”
Just then, Mrs. Carlson approached his desk. “I’m so happy to see you’re all right. I was worried about you. Bobby, why don’t you explain to the class what asthma is?”
Bobby gulped. It was bad enough they saw an asthma attack in action — but now he was expected to talk about it?
Mrs. Carlson smiled encouragingly.
He took in a deep breath and looked directly at Jillian Zarr. “First of all, I can’t help it when I get asthma attacks. Asthma’s this thing, a disease —” He cringed when he heard someone say, “Eeeew, Bobby has a disease.”
Mrs. Carlson nodded to him to keep going.
“It means that if I have a bad allergic reaction to something, or a cough, it can trigger my asthma,” he explained. “When that happens, I start wheezing —”
“Like this!” St. James said, demonstrating wheezing. Soon all the boys were making wheezing noises.
“Thank you, boys,” Mrs. Carlson said. “But that’s enough. Bobby, please continue.”
“Well, when I wheeze, my chest really hurts, like someone’s pressing on it and I can’t get enough air. Then I have to go on my nebulizer —”
“That’s a machine,” Chess jumped in. “I’ve seen it many times. It’s like some space alien contraption that delivers medicine.”
Bobby nodded. He’d often thought of his nebulizer that way.
Mrs. Carlson stood behind Bobby. “Class, I think we can all agree that Bobby is very brave to have to put up with all of this. Lots of people have medical conditions that they’ve learned to live with. If we can be more understanding of others, everyone benefits.”
Just then Swoozie raised her hand. “Mrs. Carlson, my brother has diabetes.”
Soon everyone was discussing their medical ailments and showing off their bruises and scars. One girl had her tonsils out, and another got hives whenever she ate strawberries. St. James showed the class his scrapes from when he fell off the stage, and Jackson said he had a lactose intolerance and couldn’t drink milk, but he was almost certain that ice cream was okay. Bobby was glad that the spotlight was off of him.
“All right then,” Mrs. Carlson said. “I want to thank everyone for sharing. I hope that now that we know more about one another, we’ll be less likely to make fun of someone if something happens that they have no control over.”
Bobby glanced at Jillian Zarr, but she was busy looking at her fingernails.
“Now then,” Mrs. Carlson announced. “We got our class pictures back! I’m going to pass them out so you can see them, but then I want them kept in your desk until it’s time to go home.”
The front row began laughing and by the time the students in back of the room got their pictures, everyone had turned around to look at Bobby. Slowly, he turned the photo over, and then understood why.
Bobby turned to St. James. “You said we ALL were going to make faces.”
“I said that?” St. James asked innocently.
Chess looked apologetic. “I was going to,” he said, “but I chickened out. After all, my mom’s going to see this.”
Bobby groaned and stuffed the photo in his desk. Great. Was this how he was going to be remembered in fourth grade?
At recess, Jillian Zarr’s wolf pack circled Bobby. “First you make all the boys wear their shirts backward and inside out, then you sabotage the musical, and now this! You ruined the class photo!” Jillian cried.
All the girls mimicked the face that Bobby had made in the class photo.
“Bobby Ellis-Chan, you are a disgrace!” Jillian Zarr announced. “Can’t you do anything right?”
Bobby glanced around for reinforcements, but the rest of the guys were at the far end of the playground playing Arctic ice robots. Jillian Zarr’s stare was making him start to wither. Then his eyes met Holly’s. She didn’t look angry, like the rest of the girls. She looked straight at him and gave him a nod so small that he was sure no one else had seen it. But it was all he needed.
Standing up straight, Bobby said to Jillian Zarr, “I am not a disgrace. I am Bobby Ellis-Chan, and if you don’t like that, then you can … you can … you can just go back to Mars!” And with that, Bobby turned on his heels and went to join the boys, as Jillian Zarr stood speechless.
For the first time in his life, Bobby was looking forward to PE.
“What’s going on?” Holly asked as the teams lined up and Mr. Rainerhaus took roll.
“Nothing,” Bobby said, trying to hide a grin.
“Bobby Ellis-Chan, I know you,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re up to something.”
Just then, a loud, deep voice yelled, “Where’s Mr. Rainerhaus?”
Everyone froze as a large figure in full football gear stampeded toward Mr. Rainerhaus. It stopped short of knocking him over, and growled with one arm out in the trademarked Freezer stance.
Elated, Mr. Rainerhaus stuck his arm out and growled back. “Everyone!” he cried. “It’s Roy Ellis-Chan, The Freezer!”
The kids clapped and crowded around Bobby’s dad. He normally looked big, but when he was in his LA Earthquakes uniform with all the pads, he was even more impressive.
As The Freezer gave the class tips on throwing and catching the football, Bobby watched carefully. Everyone was listening to his father and laughing and n
odding. And Mr. Ellis-Chan looked happy, unlike when he burned dinner, or ruined the laundry, or sewed a dog costume.
“If it’s okay with your teacher, I brought something for all of you,” The Freezer was saying. Mr. Rainerhaus nodded, then beamed when Bobby’s father opened a big cloth sack. Inside were special edition Freezer foam LA Earthquakes footballs. There were enough for everyone. Bobby knew the Ellis-Chan garage was full of boxes of Freezer footballs, Freezer posters, Freezer jerseys, and tons of other Freezer stuff from when his dad played pro ball.
“Bobby, will you be in charge of handing all this out?” his father asked.
“Sure thing, Dad!” Bobby said.
“My son said you were playing football, and suggested I come by,” The Freezer explained to Mr. Rainerhaus as the kids tested their new footballs. “When Bobby asks me to do something, I do it!”
“Wow,” St. James told Bobby as he caught Jillian Zarr’s football and then threw it over the fence. “You sure are lucky.”
Bobby nodded. He did feel lucky.
That afternoon, Bobby raced to his bedroom. Next to the poster of Troy Eagle doing his record-setting ollie, Bobby put up another poster: This one was of The Freezer flying through the air, catching a football.
“Halloween’s this weekend,” he told Koloff and Beatrice as he stood back and admired the posters. “I’m still not sure what my costume’s going to be. I know for sure it won’t be Sandy the dog.” Bobby took the little soccer ball out of the cigar box. “Are you ready to practice?”
When neither fish responded, he said, “What? Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to do tricks? Sure you do! You should have seen all the amazing things Rover could do with this soccer ball.” Beatrice turned away and explored the castle, while Koloff just stared at Bobby. “Come on you two, you can be exactly like Rover —”
Suddenly the smile fell off of Bobby’s face. In shock, he sat down on his bed and stared straight ahead. Then he got up and went over to the aquarium. “Oh man, I owe you two an apology,” he told the goldfish. “I was trying to get you to do tricks like Rover, but that was what I wanted, not what you wanted. I am so sorry. Here, look!” Bobby took the ball and the hoops out of the fish tank. “See, you don’t have to do tricks. Not if you don’t want to. Really, I promise. You two are terrific just the way you are!”
Upon hearing this, Beatrice swam up to the top of the fish tank, and Koloff joined her. Then together they swam to the bottom and, side by side, circled the tank twice before returning to the surface.
“What was that?” Bobby asked.
Again, the fish swam side by side, this time doing flips and spins along the way.
Bobby couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Koloff and Beatrice were dancing.
The outside of the Ellis-Chan house was decorated with not-too-scary skeletons and big pumpkins carved to look like Annie, Bobby, and Casey. Fake friendly bats hung from the rafters of the front porch and sparkly cobwebs adorned the windows. Mr. Ellis-Chan secured a giant spider made from plastic garbage bags to the roof as Annie raked the leaves off the lawn and then put up fake tombstones.
Inside, Mrs. Ellis-Chan, Bobby, and Casey were seated around the kitchen table. In the middle were piles of individually wrapped gumballs, fun-sized chocolate bars, and sparkly Go Girly Girl stickers.
“You still haven’t told me what your costume is,” Bobby said to Casey. He popped an orange gumball into his mouth, then blew a bubble. Bobby was good at blowing bubbles. Sometimes they got so big that the gum got stuck in his hair.
“Guess! Bobby, guess who I’m going to be for Halloween!” Casey said as she slapped a sticker on her forehead and then one on his.
Bobby pretended to think about it. “Princess Becky?” It was a pretty safe bet, since that’s who Casey dressed as every day.
“Nope.” She giggled. “You’ll see.”
“What about you, Bobby?” Mrs. Ellis-Chan asked as she dropped a gumball, a chocolate, and some stickers into a bag and then tied a ribbon around it. “Since you can’t wear your Sandy costume, we can run to the store, or maybe cobble together something from home. How about your space alien costume from last year? Does that still fit?”
“One of the heads fell off,” he informed his mother. Bobby snuck his fifth gumball. It was getting hard to talk. “But don’t worry about it. I have something else in mind.”
After the bags were filled, Bobby went into the yard to admire the tombstones. Casey was talking to Wormy Worm Worm as Gnomey Gnome Gnome stood quietly off to the side.
Bobby picked up the gnome. “Casey,” he said. “This doesn’t belong to you.”
“I know,” she said. “I gave it to my worm.”
He shook his head. “You took it from someone’s yard, and now you have to give it back.”
Casey’s eyes filled with tears. “But Bobby, Mommy said she wanted something for her garden. Plus, that’s Wormy Worm Worm’s best friend.”
“I thought you were Wormy Worm Worm’s best friend,” he said.
Casey smiled. “I am!” she said gleefully. “I guess I forgot.”
“Come on, Casey,” he said. “I’ll help you make something for Mom’s garden later. In the meantime, let’s ask Holly to take us back to where this lawn gnome lives. He’s been on vacation long enough.”
“Swoozie lives there,” Holly said, pointing to a tidy two-story brick house with a lady lawn gnome and three smaller gnomes standing next to her in the garden.
Bobby could see a brown patch on the grass where another lawn gnome had once stood. “Put him back, Casey,” he instructed.
Reluctantly, his sister shuffled over to the brown patch, holding Gnomey Gnome Gnome. She kissed his head, then returned him to his family.
As they walked back, Casey’s lower lip began to quiver. “I miss Gnomey Gnome Gnome.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s happy to be home,” Holly told her. “You can visit him anytime.”
Casey brightened at the thought. “Hey, Holly Holly Holly, did you know that Beatrice and Koloff can dance?”
Holly smiled. “That’s nice, Casey,” she said.
“It’s true!” Bobby told her. “Come on, I’ll show you. Let’s race to my house!”
Holly peered into the aquarium. Then she rubbed her eyes and looked again. “Bobby! It really does look like they’re doing synchronized swimming.”
Casey pressed her nose against the glass. “What’s stinkronized swimming? Does it hurt? Does it stink? Holly, did you know that fish poop and pee in the water?”
“Casey, stop that,” Bobby said, wiping her nose print off the glass. “Synchronized swimming is like dancing in the water together. See how Koloff and Beatrice are swimming side by side?”
“Can they twirl?” Casey asked. “I can.” She twirled around the room to prove it.
“It’s amazing,” Holly gushed as Casey spun past her. “How did you get Beatrice and Koloff to swim together?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Bobby said. “I kept trying to get them to do Rover’s tricks, but they weren’t interested. This was all their idea.”
Casey twirled past again, then fell over. When no one said anything, she leapt up and fell over again, then got up and left in a huff.
“I’m going to wear my Miss Hannigan costume tonight,” Holly told Bobby. “What are you going to be for Halloween?”
“All the guys are going as superheroes this year. I’m going as one too,” Bobby said.
It was starting to get dark outside as the Ellis-Chans scarfed down their dinner of bologna-and-cheese sandwiches and carrot sticks. Annie was wearing a Glinda the Good Witch costume, and Mrs. Ellis-Chan looked like a giant apple.
“You guys better get dressed for Halloween,” Annie said. She drained a glass of milk and then belched. “There’s not that much time.”
Mr. Ellis-Chan, Casey, and Bobby all stopped chewing, then abandoned their meals and raced up the stairs.
After changing into his costume,
Bobby flexed his muscles, admired himself in the mirror, and then took a bow as the imaginary audience cheered. “Well, what do you two think?” he asked Koloff and Beatrice. They swam side by side, then spun around.
When Bobby went back downstairs, he was shocked to see what was waiting for him in the living room. His father stared back at Bobby and appeared to be in shock too.
Mr. Ellis-Chan was wearing a Troy Eagle skateboard shirt, skater shorts, a brain bucket, and kneepads!
“I don’t have a skateboard,” Bobby’s dad said, “so I patched this one up.” He held up the broken Troy Eagle Super 74. It looked like there were miles of gray duct tape wrapped around it. “I hope you approve of my Bobby Ellis-Chan costume.”
A huge grin crossed Bobby’s face. “I approve,” he said, motioning to his own costume. “Do you?”
Mr. Ellis-Chan’s grin mirrored his son’s. “I approve a hundred and fifty percent,” he said, holding out his hand so Bobby could give him a high five.
Bobby was wearing a LA Earthquakes jersey with number 17 on it — his dad’s number. Plus he had borrowed Annie’s helmet and pads and was holding a Freezer football.
Annie strolled into the room carrying a giant cauldron filled with bags of treats. “Well, you two look weird,” she said. Bobby thought she looked really pretty in her Glinda costume, but didn’t say anything for fear she’d slug him.
“I think we all look great!” Mrs. Ellis-Chan said as she joined them. “But what about Casey — where is she?”
“I’m almost ready!” they heard Casey shout from her room.
The family gathered at the bottom of the stairs to wait for Casey’s grand entrance. “Get ready,” she called out. “Get set…. Look at me!!!”
“Where’s your costume?” Bobby asked when his little sister joined the rest of the family.
“This is it,” Casey replied, striking a pose like a fashion model.
“What are you supposed to be?”