EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays!

by Sally Warner

  Except I know she is speaking as an artist, not as a skin-color bossy person.

  Still, I’m glad my dad is not here to hear this conversation. There would be a parents’ meeting for sure.

  “That’s a rude thing to say, Kevin,” Cynthia Harbison calls from the next table. She is like the girl version of Jared in our class. Lots of opinions, and all loud.

  “Yeah,” Heather Patton agrees. She is the girl version of Stanley, meaning that she is her hero Cynthia’s loyal personal assistant. “You’re practically saying Fiona should shut up, Kevin. And ‘shut up’ is against the law around here. It’s a swear. Be careful, or we’re telling!”

  “Kevin never said ‘shut up,’” Annie Pat Masterson says from the table next to ours, defending Kevin. “That was you, Heather.”

  Annie Pat is Emma McGraw’s best friend, and she wears her bright-red hair in pigtails that stick out like warning cones. Her skin is so pale that she almost doesn’t need to use any crayons at all when she colors in her face—although she’ll probably use peach, which I heard used to be called “flesh color” in the olden days, until people looked around.

  But some kids still say, “Pass the flesh, please,” when they’re coloring. Annie Pat’s cheeks are pinker than usual. This happens when she gets mad.

  Sometimes I get worn out from girls getting their feelings hurt.

  It’s hard to keep track of who is feeling what.

  “I don’t get why we even have to do this,” Jared says, trying to color extra hair over his crayon ears, which he accidentally drew way too big.

  Jared doesn’t like being left out of any uproar.

  “I guess it makes P.T.A. meetings more fun,” Emma argues, maybe thinking it was a real question. “And parents like looking at art.”

  Emma doesn’t like to stir up trouble, but she doesn’t back away from it, either.

  Even trouble with Jared.

  “Huh. ‘Parents,’” Cynthia says, shrugging. “Your dad’s not even here, Emma. He lives in England. Remember? With his new family?”

  I can hear Emma gasp, she’s so surprised at Cynthia’s fake-casual stealth attack—which breaks the number one kid rule about not talking about other kids’ families.

  Ever.

  “Be quiet, Cynthia,” Annie Pat says, defending her friend.

  Worn. Out.

  “P.T.A. meetings are dumb,” Jared insists, glaring at Emma as if the whole open house thing was her bright idea. “My dad says so. That’s why he never goes.”

  Me, I’m just glad we’re not talking about skin color anymore—exactly the way Corey would be glad if we had been talking about freckles, and we stopped. Or the way Annie Pat would feel if we’d been talking about red hair.

  I could go on and on with examples like that.

  We’re all basically happy with who we are, but I think no one wants too much attention.

  It’s not because there’s anything wrong with brown skin that I’m glad the conversation has moved on. It’s just that there aren’t enough kids here at Oak Glen who have it.

  That starts to make skin color a big deal, at least at times.

  Not very often, though. And PHEW! for that.

  3

  HURT FEELINGS?

  “Listen, everyone,” Ms. Sanchez calls out two days later. “I’ve decided that this afternoon will be tidying time. I want your cubbies sorted, and the coat closet looking nice, even the lost-and-found box. Oh, and we need all your desktops spray-cleaned and sparkling. I have the supplies over by the sink.”

  It is Thursday, P.T.A. meeting day, and we just finished lunch. It started raining again toward the end, so some of the kids who were playing outside—like me and most of the boys—smell like wet sweaters and sweatshirts.

  Well, like wet dogs, Cynthia said. And she has a dog, so she should know. A couple of the outside girls are fussing with their damp hair, which seems to have gotten either stringy or frizzy.

  What is it with girls and their hair? I don’t see how they get anything else done in life. You should hear Alfie in the morning, when Mom’s getting her three little braids ready for the day.

  “Why?” Jared says, raising his hand a second later. “No one’s gonna see our room, are they?”

  “A parent or two might wander by after the meeting,” Ms. Sanchez points out. “And we see it every day, don’t we? Things around here have gotten pretty grubby, if you ask me. Now, let’s all pair up so we can get to work.”

  Cynthia raises her hand. “I’ll work with Heather,” she says after Ms. Sanchez has called on her. “And I think Emma probably wants to work with Annie Pat,” Cynthia continues, as if sorting people out is her job. “And Jared should work with Stanley, because they’re the only ones who can stand each other.”

  “That’s just fine,” Ms. Sanchez says, sounding distracted as she heads for the sink. “Keep going, Miss Harbison,” she adds over her shoulder.

  “Okay,” Cynthia calls out, looking important. “Well, EllRay should work with Kevin, of course,” she says.

  Wait, what? Of course? “But I want to work with Corey,” I say, raising my hand—for Cynthia!—and talking at the same time.

  See, Corey and I are still playing this game we invented last Saturday, when he spent the night at my house. It’s a version of this really cool hand-held video game we both want for Christmas called Die, Creature, Die, only we made up our own story and words and rules. And we were taking turns telling each other more of the made-up story at lunch today. It would be fun to keep on doing it while we help clean the classroom. Since we have to clean the classroom, I mean.

  “But Ms. Sanchez put me in charge,” Cynthia says, like she’s explaining something really obvious. “And you and Kevin match, EllRay. You go together.”

  We match.

  She means we both have brown skin.

  “Now, hold on a second,” Ms. Sanchez says from across the room, actually raising both hands in a stop-right-there! kind of way. “No personal comments, if you please.”

  She doesn’t just have eyes in the back of her head, she has ears there, too!

  “I didn’t say anything bad,” Cynthia mumbles under her breath.

  But Ms. Sanchez isn’t letting this one slide. “Using your reasoning, Cynthia, perhaps I should put Corey and Annie Pat together, just because they both have freckles?” she pretend-asks.

  And that’s not a personal comment?

  “Hey,” Annie Pat murmurs, unexpectedly wounded.

  WOW! Didn’t she know she has freckles?

  Annie Pat’s cheeks turn pink under the cinnamon sprinkles scattered across her cheeks.

  “Yeah,” Emma chimes in. “And I thought Cynthia said Annie Pat was my partner. And EllRay wants Corey to be his partner. He just said so.”

  Kevin slides me a weird look. I can’t crack the code of it.

  Could he have hurt feelings?

  But he’s a boy!

  It could just as easily have been Kevin who came over to spend the night last weekend, only he didn’t. Or Kevin and I could have been the ones playing the made-up version of Die, Creature, Die at lunch today. Only we weren’t. Kevin was busy playing Sky-high Foursquare with Jared, Stanley, and Jason Leffer, this other guy in our class. That doesn’t mean we aren’t still friends!

  So me wanting to get paired up with Corey today is nothing personal against Kevin. It just happened that way.

  Girls always seem sure about who they are friends with, by the way, but it changes a lot. In fact, they even rank their friends—like who is their first-best friend, their second-best friend, and so on. And the whole class knows every boring detail. Always.

  With us guys, it’s harder to tell who’s friends or not. But basically, we’re okay with most guys most days. And we all have a couple of friends we really like to hang with, like I do with Corey and Kevin.

  The three of us are solid. I thought we were, anyway.

  There might be some kid one of us is fighting with—but it is always fini
shed in a flash.

  Getting over hurt feelings moves faster for boys than for girls, in my opinion. Like water compared to mud.

  “Your freckles are absolutely adorable, Annie Pat,” Ms. Sanchez assures her. “I was merely trying to make a point, though I think it got lost somewhere along the way.”

  Cynthia whirls to face Kevin. “Are you friends with EllRay?” she asks, her hands on her hips. As if that’s the point of this whole thing.

  Kevin looks down at his sneakers. “I dunno. I thought so,” he says, but his voice is so quiet that most kids can barely hear it.

  I hear it, though. And it makes me feel really bad.

  I clear my throat, wondering what I’m about to say.

  “Shhh,” Cynthia says, like I’m about to make everything worse—for her.

  “Hah,” Jared jeers. “Kevin got dumped! Even EllRay doesn’t wanna hang with him.”

  Hey, wait a second. “Even EllRay?”

  And I didn’t dump anyone!

  “They must have had a fight,” Stanley says, jumping in. “Oh, EllRay,” he coos, pretending to be Kevin. “Don’t you wuv me anymore?”

  “Be quiet,” I tell him. “That never happened.”

  I try to catch Kevin’s eye, but no go.

  I know Kevin McKinley, though, and I can tell you this much for sure.

  1. He doesn’t care about us supposedly “matching.”

  2. Anyway, we don’t match. He’s a lot taller than I am.

  3. And I don’t think Kevin even cares who his partner is when he helps clean up. Big deal, right?

  4. But I do know he doesn’t like having this talk happen in front of everyone in class. That turned it into a big deal, which is embarrassing for him.

  5. And Kevin hates being embarrassed—worse than anything.

  In fact, he looks like he’s about to start crying.

  And Kevin never cries.

  How did this hurt feeling stuff happen? So fast, and out of nothing but spray bottles and cleaning rags?

  I do not know what to do.

  “This has gotten completely out of hand,” Ms. Sanchez tells us, like we didn’t already know. “But tick-tock, people. We are running out of cleanup time. Kevin, I’m going to ask you to be my special assistant for the afternoon, okay?”

  Like that’s supposed to make everything all better.

  “Aww,” Cynthia and Heather object at the same time, because sometimes, being Ms. Sanchez’s special assistant means that you get a Hershey’s Kiss when you’re done. And most girls are nuts for chocolate.

  It’s not science, Dad told me once, but it’s true.

  “‘Aww,’ nothing,” Ms. Sanchez says, snapping out the words. “Each of you choose a partner this minute. And then each of you head over to the sink right now and grab a spray bottle or a cloth. And do a fabulous job.”

  “HUP! HUP!” Stanley Washington says, starting to march in place.

  “Stanley,” Ms. Sanchez says, warning him.

  “But I meant that in a good way!” Stanley almost yelps.

  And you can tell by his face that he’s telling the truth.

  “Get going, then,” Ms. Sanchez says, laughing. “Start tidying!”

  4

  A FEW THINGS I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT

  “Tell your mom I’m ready to go, buddy,” Dad tells me on Thursday night, the car keys jingling in his hand. “I don’t want to miss a minute of this meeting.”

  Okay. My dad is a big supporter of education, obviously, but I think he’s being sarcastic. Having a nice relaxing night at home with the whole family is one of his rules. But tonight, he had to race back early from his college in San Diego and then “bolt down some food,” as he put it, before it was time to leave for the six thirty P.T.A. meeting.

  In other words, he wanted to stay home. But when you’re talking parents and schools, here are a few things I’ve been thinking about. It’s my longest list ever.

  1. Parents are the bosses of kids, and they have lots of rules.

  2. Schools are also the bosses of kids, and they have lots of rules, too. Different rules.

  3. So us kids sometimes get stuck in the middle.

  4. There are many school rules that parents cannot argue with—such as when school starts and finishes, stuff their kids are allowed to wear, and so on.

  5. And there are a few squishier school things—not rules, exactly—that parents usually go along with, whether they deep-down want to or not. Attending P.T.A. meetings and parent-teacher conferences. Sending cans of food to school for food drives. Stuff like that.

  6. So basically, when the parents’ rules and the school’s rules clash, like tonight, the parents usually go along with it for the sake of their kids.

  7. But schools can also be a little nervous around parents, in my opinion. I think it’s like schools never know what is going to set a prickly parent off: grades, skin color, religion, anything involving bringing money from home.

  8. I think that’s why schools usually make us kids be the ones to give the parents some kinds of news—about how we need to bring money for a field trip, or that there’s going to be another parents’ meeting, or that we have been exposed to lice or pinworms and the parents should do something about it. Fast.

  Why have I been thinking about this so much? Because Alfie’s hair-touching disaster last fall kind of freaked me out—with Dad suddenly questioning what was going on at Alfie’s school.

  If Kreative Learning and Playtime Day Care really counts as a school.

  I don’t want that kind of clash happening at Oak Glen Primary School. Life is hard enough, what with me being short, and eight, and accidentally hurting one of my best friend’s feelings, which I didn’t even think could happen, not with boys. The thought of my mom and dad being mad at Ms. Sanchez—or even Principal James—makes my stomach hurt.

  I wouldn’t want to have to choose who is right, although I’m pretty sure my parents would get my vote—even if they were wrong.

  We’re like family.

  Wait. I guess we are family!

  “EllRay,” Dad says. “Wake up. Please go tell your mother that the car is leaving in three minutes. Starting—now,” he adds, tapping his watch.

  GEEZ. Like her being late is all my fault! She’s probably just trying to tell Melanie—our very cool teenage babysitter, who is in love with her cell phone and her boyfriend, in that order—what to do in case Alfie has a meltdown tonight.

  Besides call her boyfriend.

  But—“Okay,” I say, and I scramble toward the sound of Alfie yelling about her pajamas not being cute enough to wear.

  Not on such a special night as this.

  I’m outnumbered, that’s for sure!

  5

  THE OPPOSITE OF SKIN COLOR

  “Hey, buddy. Got a minute?” Dad says the next night, Friday, coming into my room half an hour before bedtime.

  “Sure,” I tell him, already looking forward to his pretend-tough-guy knuckle-rub on my head, which is his version of a hug. I am on my bed, surrounded by a pile of the toy ads that were stuffed in this morning’s newspaper. I’ve been making a holiday wish list and trying to find the perfect Christmas present for Alfie.

  I’m thinking of getting my little sister a pink plastic pony with a silky dark mane and tail she can comb. She likes anything cute, and things she can comb, and this one pony I found even has great big green eyes. Perfect. It even has eyelashes.

  “The worser the better,” Mom jokes about Alfie’s favorite toys.

  Mom groaned at breakfast when she saw the Christmas ads. “Oh, not again,” she said. “It seems like Christmas was just last month.”

  I don’t get it! How can grownups feel that way? To me and all my friends, it seems as though last Christmas happened a hundred years ago!

  And even if the grownups feel that way about it, they shouldn’t say anything.

  Why try to ruin it? Because Christmas is the best.

  1. No school.

  2. Presen
ts.

  3. Lots of parties and good stuff to eat. Chips and dips. Candy. And cookies.

  What’s so awful about that?

  Dad piles up a few of the colorful ads to get them out of the way, perches on the edge of my bed, and reaches over to knuckle-rub my hair. “Are you making a list and checking it twice?” he asks, smiling as he looks at one of the ads.

  “I think it’s supposed to be Santa Claus who does that,” I tell him.

  My dad sometimes gets the details wrong on normal person stuff.

  “So,” Dad says, followed by—nothing.

  Uh-oh. What’s up? “We’re still having Santa at the assembly, aren’t we?” I ask, because that’s probably one of the things they talked about at the P.T.A. meeting last night. And I look forward to those tiny candy canes all year, because you can jam a whole one in your mouth, and then you get a real drool-factory going.

  Only you have to remember to keep your mouth shut, because—slur-r-r-r-p!

  “It looks that way,” Dad says, laughing. “A few members of the anti-sugar brigade didn’t like the candy cane idea much, but I can’t see Santa passing out celery stalks, can you?”

  “Not really,” I say, picturing the celery duels that would take place one second later. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! “I guess Christmas and little candy canes just go together,” I tell him.

  “Not that they’re going to be calling the assembly Christmas-anything,” Dad says, sighing. “Principal James suggested ‘A Holly Jolly Holiday’ as one possibility of what to call it. He even mentioned ‘Diversity Day.’ But in the end, we decided to leave it up to you kids. The principal will be taking suggestions on Monday.”

  “Right. Us kids will come up with a name for the assembly,” I tell him, angling my head for another knuckle-rub. “But let’s stick with calling it Christmas here, okay? At least at our house.”

  “It’s ‘we kids,’ buddy,” Dad tells me. “And it’s a deal. ‘Christmas’ it is. So. How’s Kevin lately?” he asks, leaning back against a pillow. “His dad told me last night that he came home from school yesterday looking kind of down, only he wouldn’t talk about it. But he seemed to think you might know why.”