Absolutely Alfie and the Princess Wars

by Sally Warner

  EllRay loved basketball. He called Mr. Havens “Coach.”

  “Shhh,” Scooter told the kids at Alfie’s table. “He’s talking.”

  Scooter’s real name was Stephen, Alfie knew. The other three kids at their table were Arletty, Hanni, and Alan Lewis, another new kid this year. Alan’s big thing was that he hated being called on in class, Alfie knew, and he was always worrying it was about to happen. “Is he looking?” Alan sometimes whispered, shrinking in his chair.

  By now, the middle of October, Alfie and the other girls were getting used to having what they still secretly called “a boy teacher.”

  The boys in class had liked the idea from the very first day, of course.

  “Oak Glen finally has a firm Halloween plan,” Mr. Havens said, getting everyone’s attention. “Principal James and the Parents’ Association decided to move our annual costume parade to a week from this Friday, for those students who want to take part. But costumes are not required, of course. The parade will take place after lunch. Then everyone will return to their classroom for a class party,” he added. “Nothing too fancy, just some juice and muffins, maybe. A few of our very generous parents will take care of that.”

  A buzz of excitement seemed to zip through the class.

  From across the room, Bryan Martinez’s hand inched up in the air, and Mr. Havens called on him. “But, Coach,” Bryan said. “That’s not Halloween. Because my mom said Halloween is on a Tuesday this year.”

  Alfie nodded in agreement, hearing this.

  “It’s ‘Mr. Havens’ when we’re inside, Bry,” his teacher reminded him. “And your mother is right. But it was decided that our celebration should be on a Friday afternoon, so it will interfere less with schoolwork. The whole week might be lost if we held the parade and party on a Tuesday.”

  This made no sense to Alfie. But—a parade! And a party!

  Was she about to argue with Mr. Havens about the details?

  No way!

  “But, Mr. Havens,” Suzette said, raising her hand, too, but speaking before he’d even called on her. “Does that mean that on the real Halloween, we have to wear regular clothes to school? And not our really cute costumes? Because I heard that wearing the exact right costume on Halloween can bring a person good luck for the whole year! And I’m gonna need it.”

  “Where in the world did you get that idea?” Mr. Havens said, laughing. “Wear the right costume on Friday, Suzette, and you should be okay.”

  Suzette looked as if her teacher had just taken away a present.

  Alfie held her breath. Was Suzette telling the truth about the good luck, or was she making stuff up again? Suzette had vowed for one whole year that she’d seen the tooth fairy in person, for instance. And that probably wasn’t true.

  “You can wear your costume at home on the real Halloween, of course,” Mr. Havens reminded Suzette—and anyone else still listening. “If you go trick-or-treating, that is—or to some neighborhood party. However you celebrate this grand occasion. Maybe you can find your good luck then, if Friday afternoon doesn’t work out for you.” He smoothed his skinny tie straight.

  “Boo-o-o,” Suzette whispered under her breath.

  Across from Alfie, Hanni looked disappointed, too. “No fair,” she murmured, shaking her head.

  “Be quiet, Hanni, or you’ll wreck it for everyone,” Scooter whispered, unable to help himself.

  Alfie cringed, waiting for Mr. Havens to react.

  “Would you ladies prefer to skip the Friday parade and class party altogether, and see how lucky you feel then?” Mr. Havens asked, folding his muscle-y arms across his chest and raising one eyebrow as he scowled in Suzette’s direction, and then at Hanni. “Because that can be arranged,” he said.

  “No, sir,” Suzette said.

  “I guess not,” Hanni said.

  “You know not,” Scooter told her.

  “Scooter,” Mr. Havens warned. “Now, All-Stars. Let’s get going with our Shared Reading, okay? Because I found a couple of really good books for you. Books that fit right in with both the holiday and the season, which is called ‘autumn,’ or ‘fall,’ by the way. Not that we get much of that here in Southern California. But I think you’re going to like them.”

  And Alfie settled back in her chair for one of her favorite times of the day.

  4

  Counting by Two

  “Oh, beautiful Princess,” Alfie whispered to her kitten three nights later, on Thursday. She and Princess were alone in Alfie’s room.

  Alfie’s homework was done.

  Dinner was finished, the dishes had been rinsed and stacked in the dishwasher, and Alfie had already taken her shower.

  This time was all hers.

  “You’re such a good kitty,” Alfie told Princess, stroking her kitten’s gray-and-white fur. “What do you want to be for Halloween, little girl? Hmm?”

  Maybe at least one of them would come up with an idea.

  Princess was almost four months old. She was looking and acting like a small version of a cat now, and not a helpless kitten.

  Springing into action, Princess grabbed a plush gray dolphin from among the other stuffed animals leaning against Alfie’s pillows. The kitten starting kicking the dolphin hard with her hind feet. It was a real attack. “Princess,” Alfie scolded, trying to rescue the beloved dolphin.

  “Yes-s-s?” answered a high voice from behind the door to her room—which then swung open.

  It was EllRay, pretending to be the princess Alfie had been talking to. He held out a cell phone—their mom’s—in a pretend-dainty way. “It’s for you, little villager,” he said, adjusting an invisible tiara with his free hand. “Come on,” he added in his normal voice. “Mom says you can talk for ten minutes, and then bring her phone back downstairs.” He shook the cell phone a little so that Alfie would take it.

  “But who is it?” Alfie asked.

  “How should I know?” EllRay said. “I am D-O-N-E. Done, yo,” he added, tossing Alfie the phone.

  “Hello?” Alfie asked, feeling shy as EllRay vanished back into the hallway, and Princess scampered to the top of her tower. “Hello?” Alfie said again, wondering if this was one of EllRay’s tricks.

  She’d been pranked before, and she hated it.

  “It’s me. Bella,” a husky voice said.

  “School Bella?” Alfie asked, because they had never talked together on the phone before.

  “Uh-huh,” Bella said. “Why? Do you know a lot of other Bellas, too?”

  “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t,” Alfie teased, trying to settle into the rhythm of the phone call as if she got them every day of the week—which she did not.

  Was this what being a teenager felt like?

  Cool!

  “Um, well, I was wondering something,” Bella said.

  “Wondering what?” Alfie asked, hoping Bella would ask her about their math homework, “Skip Counting by Two.” She had gotten it correct right away—for once.

  Two, four, six, eight.

  “Like, wondering-if-you-want-to-come-over-for-a-playdate-this-Saturday,” Bella said, tumbling the words together in her hurry to get them out fast. “Saturday,” she said again. “The day after tomorrow. But it’s okay if you say no. My mom asked your mom, though, and your mom said I should go ahead and ask you.”

  “I know when Saturday is,” Alfie said, trying to joke and sort out this unexpected information at the same time.

  A playdate with Bella!

  It sounded good. In fact, Alfie had been wanting to invite Bella over to her house sometime soon. Playing alone with one other girl was the most fun, Alfie thought. That’s when you really got to know someone.

  Bella Babcock’s family had moved to Oak Glen a month after school started, so she was the last All-Star to enroll in Mr. Havens’s class. Bella was an only child, and really
cute, Alfie thought, with a few pale freckles scattered across her turned-up nose. Her short, tufty, dark-blond hair seemed to catch the sunlight like a magnet when they were playing outside.

  Seeing how shy Bella was at first, Alfie had volunteered to show her around Oak Glen Primary School. And she’d stuck up for Bella last month, when Lulu was mean to her for no reason.

  Not that Bella needed to have someone stick up for her anymore, Alfie had seen over the past few weeks. Lulu apologized to Bella ages ago, which was a good thing, since she and Bella sat next to each other at the table behind Alfie’s. And Bella had slowly but surely found her own comfortable place among the twelve other All-Star girls.

  She fit in, but she also didn’t seem to mind going her own way. For instance, Bella had ignored Cute Barrette Day altogether—and it wasn’t because she had short hair, either. Alfie had seen Bella wear cute barrettes in her hair before.

  Bella just hadn’t been into it that day.

  Alfie secretly admired that.

  “Well?” Bella asked. “Do you wanna come over Saturday or not?”

  “What time?” Alfie asked.

  “Your mom said she’d drop you off after you guys finish at the farmers market,” Bella told Alfie. “It’s okay if you say no,” she said again, sounding uncertain for the first time.

  “Of course I’m not saying no,” Alfie said, her cheeks hot at the mention of the farmers market. “I wanna come over for sure. Are you kidding me? It’ll be fun!”

  “Yeah,” Bella agreed, and Alfie could almost see her relieved smile. “Maybe we’ll even make some cookies, or bounce on our trampoline,” Bella said. “Or both. But I’m going to stop talking now, because my mom wants her phone back. Okay?”

  “Okay, sure,” Alfie said. “My mom wants hers back, too.”

  She’d been wondering how to hang up right, when they were done—without having the other person end up telling the other girls, “She hung up on me!”

  “So, goodbye,” Bella said. “Press the red phone button so it’s over, Alfie.”

  “You first,” Alfie said, smiling. “Because you called me.”

  “Okay,” Bella said—and poof!

  She was gone.

  5

  Funny Bunnies

  “Hi-eee. Here are some apples,” Alfie said to Bella on Saturday morning at the Babcocks’ front door. She felt shy as she thrust the bulging recycled bag from the farmers market in Bella’s direction. “My mom says they’re a special kind,” she added, sounding doubtful—because how special could apples be? There were green ones, sour, and red ones, sweet.

  Period.

  And apples were a weird present to bring to someone, in Alfie’s opinion.

  But Alfie’s mom was still watching from the car, so there was no way Alfie could ditch the apples in the bushes. Mrs. Jakes tooted the car horn once, waved, then pulled away from the curb. The two moms were going to have coffee together later on, when Mrs. Babcock drove Alfie back home.

  “Thanks, Alfie,” Bella said, handing the apples to her mother, who had just appeared in the front hall.

  “Alfie,” Bella’s mother said, after she’d sniffed the apples and smiled in appreciation. “That’s such a cute name, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” Alfie said, frowning. “It’s short for ‘Alfleta,’” she explained, feeling even more shy than before. “It means ‘beautiful elf’ in this olden-days language my mom knows about from the books she writes.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Babcock said, surprised. “I didn’t know your mother was a writer.”

  “Uh-huh,” Alfie said, nodding. “My big brother EllRay has a weird name, too,” she explained, wanting to get it over with. “‘EllRay’ is short for ‘Lancelot Raymond,’ or ‘L. Ray.’ EllRay. See?”

  “He’s in the sixth grade,” Bella told her mom, her eyes wide. “He likes basketball. But we gotta go play now, Mom. Okay?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Babcock said, laughing. “I’ll be around if you girls need anything. And lunch is later on. Hamburgers,” she added in a tempting voice.

  Alfie was ready for a hamburger now, she thought, her stomach gurgling as she followed Bella to her room. But she guessed she could wait.

  Bella’s house was pretty cool—although there were some moving boxes that hadn’t been unpacked yet in a spare bedroom the girls passed. “We have too much stuff for the house this time,” Bella said, following Alfie’s gaze.

  “This time,” Alfie repeated to herself, curious.

  Bella’s room was cute. She had a pretend zebra-skin rug—pink and white striped—that Alfie loved.

  “Wanna draw pictures?” Bella asked. Now she was the one who sounded shy.

  “Sure,” Alfie said, still looking around the room. “What of?”

  “Our Halloween costumes, maybe,” Bella suggested. “The parade’s next Friday. And the party.”

  “Oh, right,” Alfie said, settling down on the zebra rug with the pad of newsprint and the markers Bella handed her. “What were you thinking of being, Bella? Because I don’t know whether to be a bumblebee—my neighbor’s old costume, except the stinger is broken—or a kitty. Or a teenager, like our babysitter, Bree. Bree’s really cute. And she wears tons more makeup than my mom, so dressing up like her would be fun.”

  But would being a bumblebee or a kitty or a teenage babysitter bring her good luck for the rest of the year? Alfie coudn’t figure out how.

  “Huh,” Bella said, examining a scented marker. “Good ideas. Do you think Mr. Havens is gonna wear a costume to school?”

  “Probably just a funny hat or something,” Alfie predicted, thinking about it. “Unless Mrs. Coach gets him to wear something cute.”

  “Mrs. Coach” was what the All-Stars secretly called Mr. Havens’s wife, who had not yet been seen by any of the second-grade kids.

  Scooter said his mom sometimes called Mrs. Coach “the unicorn,” in fact, as if she might be imaginary.

  “I don’t think Mr. Havens would ever wear anything too cute,” Bella said, laughing.

  “Me either,” Alfie said. “But what are you gonna be, Bella?” she asked, reaching for a black marker—for the bumblebee stripes.

  Bella leaned forward, excited. “I’ll be the cutest bunny ever, I think,” she said. “See, my mom found some really soft fleece at the store,” she explained. “And she said she could get some silky stuff for the insides of the bunny ears, and make a perfect fluffy tail, too. She’s really good at sewing.”

  Bella paused. She looked as if she had something else to say.

  “What?” Alfie asked.

  “Well, we could be two funny bunnies together, that’s what,” Bella told her. “If you want to be one, that is. It’s just an idea,” she added.

  “But my mom can’t sew anything right now,” Alfie said. “She’s writing another book, and she has to finish it on time. It’s like extreme homework.”

  “My mom could make the costume for you,” Bella said, sounding excited. “She said she would. If you want to be a bunny, too, I mean,” she added, backing off a little.

  “That might be okay,” Alfie said, trying to imagine it.

  The two funny bunnies. Bunnies were rabbits, right? And rabbits were definitely good luck. Or their feet were, anyway, Alfie thought, trying to remember the details of that goofy old story.

  Two bunnies, or rabbits, meant eight rabbits’ feet, Alfie figured, secretly doing the math on her fingers. Unless their front feet were called paws, she corrected herself silently. But even four rabbits’ feet were enough to bring two girls good luck for the year, for sure! It was easy math.

  “You’re thinking about it,” Bella said, excited.

  “I’m thinking yes,” Alfie said. “If your mom really wants to make both costumes, I mean. Because—you’re right. It would be cute. And lucky, too,” she added, nodding.

&nbs
p; Decision made!

  “I am so happy right now,” Bella told Alfie. “I mean, I knew it was a really good idea. And I guess I could do it alone. But it’ll be a lot more fun with you doing it, too.”

  “We gotta keep it a secret, though,” Alfie warned her. “Because it’ll be a hundred times cuter if we surprise everyone next Friday, right? And if it’s a secret, no one can copy us.”

  “I can keep a secret,” Bella said, crossing her heart.

  “Me too,” Alfie said, crossing hers. “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s draw bunnies!”

  “Bunnies,” Bella agreed, selecting another marker and sniffing it.

  “And then we can eat hamburgers,” Alfie added as her tummy growled again.

  “And afterwards, my mom can measure you for your bunny costume,” Bella said.

  Alfie smiled. “This is fun,” she said. “Thanks for inviting me, Bella!”

  6

  The Same as Everyone Else

  “I don’t like it when we have to do journal entries for weekend homework,” Hanni said two days later. It was another Monday morning, and she and Alfie were on their way to school in the Sobels’ car. Hanni kept her voice low, even though her mom was listening to the news on the radio as she drove.

  “I know. I don’t like it either,” Alfie said. “Weekends are when we should be doing stuff, not writing about it. But at least we only had to write four sentences—about the toys we like to play with when we’re inside. ‘Something About Me,’ Mr. Havens called it.”

  “Yeah,” Hanni said. “But with punctuation and capital letters. And a beginning and an end. And on top of all that, Mr. Havens will probably make us read them out loud.”

  “Only some of them,” Alfie reminded Hanni. “Mr. Havens is pretty nice about journal entries. He says that the rule is, we can keep our journals private if we want. We get to raise our hand and volunteer if we feel like reading something out loud.”