by Sally Warner
My heart goes FLOOP. Kevin was still acting a little weird today, I think, remembering. I thought he would have “come to his senses,” as my mom sometimes says, and that his hurt feelings would have blown over by now.
“What happened, buddy?” Dad asks. “Did you and Kevin have a falling-out?”
That’s his way of asking if me and Kevin had a fight, only Dad doesn’t like to say the word.
“I dunno,” I mumble. “Kevin’s okay, as far as I know. I mean, it’s not like I’m the boss of him,” I try to explain, hoping this will get me off the hook. Because no way am I explaining to my dad what happened at school yesterday afternoon.
Me almost making Kevin cry. By accident.
“No-o-o,” Dad says, a thoughtful look on his face. Well, he always has a thoughtful look on his face. That’s because his brain is so gigantic, I guess.
“Maybe Kevin was sad about something else,” I say.
Dad holds very still. “Something else?” he asks, his voice quiet. “Something other than what?”
Uh-oh, part two.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “You know school, Dad. Stuff happens there. You remember.”
“All right,” Dad says. “Things happens at school. But you two have to stick together, EllRay—whether you want to or not.”
Huh? “Why do we have to stick together?” I ask.
“You know why,” Dad tells me.
“Because we both have brown skin?” I say, like I’m answering a test question.
Dad stares at a shark poster on the opposite wall.
“Me and Kevin are friends, Dad,” I tell my father. “So you don’t have to tell me to—”
“Kevin and I,” Dad interrupts, still not looking at me.
“Kevin and I,” I echo.
Dad’s big on talking right. His latest thing is “Mister G.” For example, if Alfie says, “I’m busy playin’!” instead of “playing,” Dad will say, “What happened to Mr. G? Poor old Mr. G!”
To me, he’s more likely to joke, “We paid for all twenty-six letters in the alphabet, buddy. Including Mr. G, who lives at the end of many words. So let’s put him there.”
I know Dad’s right, but it’s hard to remember everything. And isn’t what you say more important than how you say it?
Right now, I can’t remember anything, I’m so nervous. Me and Dad—I mean Dad and I—hardly ever talk about skin color.
To tell the truth, I never used to think about what color I was when I was little.
And when my dad does talk about other people with brown skin, he usually says “the community.” And by that, he does not mean Oak Glen.
“You don’t even like Kevin’s dad,” I remind my father. “Not really. I heard you tell Mom once.”
“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, son,” Dad says, giving me a look, and not the fun kind. “I like Kevin’s dad just fine. I mean, we don’t have a lot in common, but I like him.”
“You have something in common,” I say, keeping my voice quiet, to match his.
Dad finally smiles. “That’s right, buddy. We’re linked. And that’s what I’m talking about with you and Kevin. You’re linked, too. And that link will seem more and more important to you as time passes. As you get older. Especially in a town like Oak Glen, where the community is so small.”
Linked. Just like Cynthia Harbison said, Dad means that Kevin and I match—even though Kevin is taller than I am, and better at sports.
Also, Kevin’s obviously a kid who gets his feelings hurt more easily than I do.
I think feelings are just embarrassing. The word “feelings” says it all, doesn’t it? They’re supposed to stay inside you, where they belong. Not get all blabbed about.
And our skin isn’t even the same color brown!
But I guess people would say we officially match.
“Okay,” I tell my dad. “But we don’t have to think about that yet, Dad. Because if Kevin’s mad at me, and I’m not saying he is, it doesn’t have anything to do with skin color. It’s the opposite, even.”
“The opposite of skin color,” Dad repeats, like it’s almost a question.
That does sound kind of weird. I hope he doesn’t ask me to “define my terms.”
That’s always scary with him.
“Well, I’ll take your word for it, EllRay,” Dad says, still smiling. “But I want you to promise to be open with me about what’s going on at school.”
“Okay, Dad,” I say, crossing my fingers under the pink plastic pony ad.
I’ll be a little open.
“Change of topic,” Dad says, perching on the edge of my bed and reaching over to knuckle-rub my scalp. “What do you think about an after-Christmas getaway to Anza-Borrego, EllRay? Just you and I? No girls allowed. Anyway, they’ll be off doing something special, too.”
“Can we camp out?” I ask, my eyes wide.
He nods. “We may. Fingers crossed,” he tells me. “If it’s not too late to get a permit, and if the weather cooperates.”
“Sounds good,” I say, smiling big time. “Only I think I need a new sleeping bag. A mouse chewed up the corner of my old one,” I remind him. “Remember? In the garage?”
“Darn mice,” Dad says. “We’ll keep your new bag in the house. How about that?”
“I’m getting a new sleeping bag?” I ask, eyes wide.
I hope it’s a regular grownup one, not a skimpy bag with cartoon characters all over it. It gets cold in the desert at night!
“Well, Christmas is coming,” Dad reminds me.
Which is completely unnecessary when you are talking to a kid about Christmas.
6
BRAINSTORM!
“There’s EllRay,” Jared and Stanley shout from across the playground on Monday morning, and they charge toward me like football players heading down the field. They’re in the middle of some fantasy game, that’s probably what’s going on.
So I stand there and take it when they slam into me.
It’s not like I’m gonna start running from them.
A bunch of girls swarm around us before things can develop any further. “Listen,” Annie Pat Masterson says, her red hair shining in the sun. “My mom told me that the P.T.A. said each class is supposed to decide what they’re gonna do for the assembly this Friday. We’re supposed to brainstorm! That means everyone has to talk at the same time. So should we do a skit? With really cute costumes? I vote yes.”
Annie Pat looks like she’s ready to jump into a costume right now.
Stanley groans.
“Or singing?” Annie Pat’s best friend Emma asks, ignoring the groan. “Only I don’t know what we can sing about,” she worries aloud. “Not if we have to take Christmas out of everything. That’s what my mom told me the P.T.A. said we had to do, because of religion.”
“We could sing ‘Frosty the Snowman,’” Kry Rodriguez says, brushing her long bangs to one side. “I don’t think snowmen are against anyone’s religion.”
“But a lot of the little kids at Oak Glen have never even seen snow,” Emma points out. “So they’ll just be more confused than they already are.”
“Is Frosty the one who had a very shiny nose?” Fiona McNulty asks. She’s the crayon artist, remember? She says she has weak ankles, even though she walks just fine. So I don’t know.
“I think that was Rudolph,” Kry says. And she’s usually right about things.
“I thought we were just supposed to figure out what to call the assembly,” I say. “That’s what my dad told me. But maybe we should leave the word ‘snow’ out of the assembly title, too, like with ‘Christmas,’ since it never snows in Oak Glen, California.”
“It did once, I think,” Kry says, tapping her chin and looking up at the sky through her bangs as if the answer might be written on today’s puffy white clouds. “In the olden days.”
“Dang! And we missed it,” Corey says, kicking some leaves that look like little gold inside-out umbrellas.
“Hey,” I say, giving him
a friendly shove. “When did you get here?”
I look around for Kevin, but he’s not on the playground yet.
“There’s a real good song called ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland,’” Emma says, like she’s thinking aloud. “So maybe we should call the assembly that. Because you can have a ‘winter wonderland’ without any snow.”
“How?” Jared asks, his hands on his hips. “The whole entire song is about how much fun it is knocking down some dude’s snowman. So duh.”
Okay, two things. First, it’s like we are brainstorming without a brain, me included. And second, I’m pretty sure that’s not the only thing the song ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ is about, but it’s too early in the day to argue.
Especially with Jared.
It’s like Jared eats arguments for breakfast, he loves them so much. Arguments give him energy, like a vampire slurping up blood.
Not that that’s a very Christmassy comparison to make.
But in fact, even when everyone is happy and things are going great, Jared sometimes likes to get mad in advance.
Just in case!
“I like that idea,” Kry says thoughtfully, her dark brown eyes shining. “Because ‘winter wonderland’ can also mean sparkly decorations and fun. Without the snow. So that would be a good thing to call the assembly. We just won’t sing the song,” she adds, probably to make Jared feel better.
“If you say so,” he mumbles.
Kry’s about the only kid Jared won’t take on. I think he kind of likes her.
“She just did say so,” Emma tells him, fake-innocent.
“So, we’ll tell Ms. Sanchez that ‘Winter Wonderland’ is our suggestion for the assembly title,” Cynthia says, like she’s been taking notes. “But what song are we gonna sing?”
“We’d better figure something out,” Heather says, sounding gloomy. “Or they’re gonna make us sing ‘Jingle Bells’ again, like last year. While we JANGLE those old bells.”
“And while the boys sing all the wrong words,” Cynthia says, shaking her head in disgust.
I forget the wrong words, except for “Batman smells.”
Maybe this won’t be so bad after all!
“Let’s do that one again,” Stanley says, laughing.
This reminds me to look around for Kevin again. Is he here yet?
Sort of. He has appeared out of nowhere and is sitting on the boy’s lunch table, pawing through his lunch sack, even though school hasn’t started yet.
Us guys do that. That’s why we’re always starving by the time we get home from school.
Kevin is continuing to ignore me—because I embarrassed him in public last Thursday. Accidentally, but what difference does that make?
I don’t blame him for being mad, now that I think about it. Someone can accidentally knock you over during recess, can’t they? And it can hurt just as much as if they aimed themselves at you with a giant slingshot.
“C’mon,” Emma says through a tangle of wind-blown curly hair. “We have to come up with something good to sing this year. We don’t want to just stand there shaking a bunch of rusty old bells. That’s so babyish.”
“Yeah,” Annie Pat says, seconding her. “And the assembly is this Friday, in only four more days. And we want to look good, whatever we do.”
“We should dance,” Kry says, inspired.
Yeah. That’s gonna happen.
Jared makes a few hurling sounds, and Stanley pretend-dances to them.
“The girls, anyway,” Emma says, seeing the expression on my face. “But what kind of dance?”
“I’ve got an idea,” Cynthia says, and Heather gets ready to back her up no matter what. You can see it happen. “My mom listens to this old song called ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’” Cynthia tells us, “and it’s really cute. We can tell Ms. Sanchez we want to do that one—before she sticks us with ‘Jingle Bells’ again.”
“I think I know that song,” Kry says, beaming at her. “And it’s adorable. Good one, Cynthia.”
“Thanks,” Cynthia says, looking surprised and bashful at the same time.
Everyone likes Kry. I don’t know how she does that!
“I don’t wanna do anything ‘adorable,’” Corey mutters in my ear. And I kind of agree.
But I don’t have any better ideas, and the buzzer just sounded.
I feel myself being pulled along with the crowd of kids as we make our way toward the school building.
“Dude,” a voice behind me shouts, cutting through the noise around us.
Kevin.
“Hey,” I say over my shoulder. I attempt a smile. “Listen, Kev. I’m really—”
“I decided you owe me, EllRay,” Kevin says. “Big-time.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“I’m talkin’ about makin’ things even,” he says. Talkin’ and makin’?
But I decide not to say anything to Kevin about ‘poor Mr. G,’ to use Dad’s expression. Not that I would.
“I’ll tell you the rest later,” Kevin adds as we push our way past the heavy door to Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class. “After I figure it out.”
He’ll tell me the rest later.
Lucky me.
But at least Kevin’s talking to me again!
7
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
“You boys go straight to Principal James’s office, give him this, then come right back,” Ms. Sanchez tells Kevin and me an hour later at her classroom door. She hands me an envelope that I guess is full of our brainstorm ideas for the assembly title and the song we would not refuse to sing, “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“That’s okay. EllRay can go alone,” Kevin tells her.
“That’s okay,” she echoes, smiling. “But no, he can’t. You’re going together. And now would be good.”
“She didn’t lick it shut,” Kevin tells me as we head off down the empty hall.
Down the rabbit hole.
I started calling it “going down the rabbit hole” last year, the few times I was allowed out into the empty hall during class hours, usually to deliver a message to the office or to use the restroom. Mom was reading Alfie and me Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the time, which is definitely not just a girl book, by the way. I think I got the words “hole” and “hall” mixed up.
But being alone in an empty school hall seemed strange to me back then, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. That’s my point. One minute, normal. Next minute, weird.
The hall seems weird today, too, even though I’m with Kevin. It’s like I can still hear the ghosts of sneakers squeaking and kids shouting, even though there’s nobody here except Kevin and me—and about a hundred brightly colored construction paper snowflakes pinned to the wall.
A few of them are fluttering for no reason, which is also weird. And a little scary.
Emma McGraw was right. Those fake snowflakes—and the smallest one is the size of a Frisbee—are the closest lots of kids here in Oak Glen, California, have ever been to snow. So far, anyway. They’ve probably seen real snow in movies, but maybe even that wasn’t real. Maybe—
“I said, Ms. Sanchez didn’t lick the envelope shut,” Kevin repeats, interrupting my thoughts. “So we could look inside.”
“We’d better not,” I tell him. “We already know what’s in it, don’t we? And there are probably security cameras all around us.”
This seems to impress Kevin. “Dude,” he whispers, darting nervous glances at the red fire alarm boxes on the walls and the emergency sprinklers on the ceiling. The sprinklers here at Oak Glen Primary School look like little upside-down space capsules. They could definitely be hiding security cameras inside.
“So, listen,” Kevin whispers, giving up on us snooping inside the envelope. “Like I said before school, you owe me. You know, for throwing shade last week.”
“Throwing shade?” I repeat.
I have heard this expression before. I just can’t remember what it means.
“You know,” Kevi
n says, shaking his head as we pause near a “What Not to Bring to School” poster. “Pretending to give a kid a compliment, when you’re really dissing them. Like, ‘Oh, you’re so brave going out in public with that haircut!’”
Oh. Okay.
Kevin has a teenage sister who thinks she’s the expert on everything. Tania, I think her name is. She’s big into hip-hop, and most other kinds of dance, too.
And she talks like she’s on a reality TV show. “Throwing shade” must be coming from her.
“But I didn’t—”
“Pretending in front of everyone that you really wanted to clean desks with me?” Kevin interrupts, like he’s making this really obvious point. “Because we’re such good friends? Only you already had all these plans with Corey? You made me look bad in front of everyone—on purpose. You disrespected me, dog. I looked like a fool.”
This sounds like pure Tania to me. She got him all worked up.
We are deep into “The Land of Hurt Feelings,” as Mom calls it when she’s talking about Alfie and her friends at Kreative Learning and Playtime Day Care. And hurt feelings mean Girl Land. In my opinion, anyway.
Not that I’m telling Kevin that.
“So, you’ll have to do whatever I say, so we can be even,” he tells me.
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Can’t you just sock me one, and get it over with?”
“You embarrassed me,” Kevin says, ignoring what I just said as he spells it out. “So I get to embarrass you. That’ll make us even, and then we can be friends again. I figured it all out.”
He sounds so sure of himself! And he’s always been obsessed with things coming out even. Potato chips. Cookies. Taking turns playing a game. The number of pillows he has during a sleepover.
“But I’m already embarrassed,” I try to explain. “Especially lately. Just walking around, even. I stick out like a sore thumb! Can’t I just tell you I’m sorry?” I ask. “Or—how about if I apologize in front of everyone at lunch? That would make me suffer.”