Ellray Jakes Walks the Plank

by Sally Warner

  Ellray Jakes

  walks the plank!

  BY Sally Warner

  illustrated by

  Jamie Harper

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2012 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Text copyright © Sally Warner, 2012

  Illustrations copyright © Jamie Harper, 2012

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Warner, Sally.

  EllRay Jakes walks the plank / by Sally Warner; illustrated by Jamie Harper.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Third-grader EllRay is becoming famous for messing up when his little sister accidentally kills the classroom goldfish EllRay is taking care of and then he leaves his teacher’s read-aloud book at home.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-56584-1

  [1. Behavior—Fiction. 2. Responsibility—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction.]

  I. Harper, Jamie, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.W24644Ep 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011016029

  Manufactured in China

  Set in ITC Century

  Book design by Nancy Brennan

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Lucy and Noah Parsons —S.W.

  For Alison and Maddie —J.H.

  CONTENTS

  1 ZIP, NOT SWIMMY

  2 TWO SHAKES

  3 A DISASTER

  4 DEAD OR ALIVE

  5 INVISIBLE PET DAY

  6 NUTRITION BREAK

  7 AN EXTRA LITTLE VACATION

  8 THE NAME YOU GET

  9 OCTOPUS TAG

  10 TUG-OF-WAR

  11 YOU OWE ME!

  12 CLASH

  13 PLANNING MY GETAWAY

  14 SUCH A STUPID FIGHT

  15 BLAME IT ON ELLRAY

  16 MAYBE

  17 THE GEODE

  18 PERSONAL BEST

  ZIP, NOT SWIMMY

  “Why do you hate Swimmy?” my four-year-old sister Alfie asks me one rainy afternoon in April during spring break.

  “I don’t hate him,” I say, pressing PAUSE on my hand-held video game. And it’s true. I just don’t want to start liking him too much, that’s all. He has to go back to school on Monday.

  Alfie and I are both sitting on my bed, but I am the only one who is supposed to be here. I was alone in my room, leaning against my pillows minding my own business, trying to top my personal best in Die, Creature, Die. Mom thinks the game is too violent, but it’s not. It’s just space creatures you are socking with your FIST OF DOOM. But Alfie ruined the whole thing.

  “He’s just a regular goldfish,” I say. “He’s barely even two inches long. What is there to hate?”

  “But you don’t like him,” Alfie says, not backing down.

  Everyone says how cute my sister is, but they don’t know how stubborn she can be. She is golden-brown like an acorn, and she has big brown eyes. She usually wears her hair in three puffy little braids, one on each side of her head and one sort of in the back. It’s hard to explain girls’ hair right.

  I am so glad I do not have to be the one to fix Alfie’s hair each morning, by the way! You should hear the yelling. And Alfie’s braids have to be just perfect. I feel sorry for my mom.

  “That fish is not even ours, Alfie,” I remind her—and I remind myself, because I secretly really do like him. He is very unusual for a goldfish. He has a white spot on his stomach, and you can just tell how smart he is. Also, I think he knows me now. “And his name’s Zip, not Swimmy,” I remind Alfie. “You’ll just confuse him if you start calling him by the wrong name.”

  Zip is actually Ms. Sanchez’s goldfish, and Ms. Sanchez is my third grade teacher at Oak Glen Primary School, in Oak Glen, California. Oak Glen is about an hour away from San Diego if the traffic is bad, which my dad says it always is.

  Ms. Sanchez’s boyfriend won Zip for her at a church festival two weeks ago when he tossed a ping-pong ball into a bowl of water the size of a softball. Ms. Sanchez says this is a lot harder to do than it looks.

  And then Ms. Sanchez brought her new fish to our classroom so it wouldn’t be alone all day. She says Zip will be our class mascot, and that having an official pet will also “help remind us of other living things.”

  I think there are plenty of “other living things” in our class already, like fifteen girls and ten boys, only ten, and I am reminded of them every single day.

  But whatever!

  When it was time for our school’s spring break, I volunteered to take care of Zip at my house for the whole week. Ms. Sanchez was going to fly to Texas to see her family, but my family wasn’t going anywhere, because our dad had geology classes to teach at a college in San Diego.

  Our family’s vacations almost never come out even, except in the summer.

  A goldfish is probably the only thing in the whole universe Alfie isn’t allergic to, so this was going to be my big chance to see what it was like having a pet in the house. And I was happy to volunteer to take care of Zip, because I kind of felt sorry for him, not getting to go to Texas with Ms. Sanchez just because he’s a fish.

  He can’t help that.

  Maybe I’ll get extra credit from Ms. Sanchez for taking such good care of her new pet, our class mascot. I could use some extra credit, that’s for sure.

  My name is EllRay Jakes, and I am eight years old, and I am having the worst semester EVER.

  But that means things can only get better, right?

  TWO SHAKES

  Since we can’t go on vacation, my mom got the idea of “taking a vacation at home.” So far … it has been pretty fun, I have to admit. Here is how we’ve spent our time.

  1. Alfie and I take turns choosing what cartoon show to watch in the morning, which means that every other morning we get to watch something good.

  2. Also, we have been on a couple of picnics with Mom, and two hikes, until Alfie complained that her feet were too short to hike any more. Ever again.

  3. And we went to see a movie one afte
rnoon, but it was for four- year-olds like Alfie, not eight-year-olds like me. The popcorn was good, though.

  4. We even went to the San Diego Zoo one day, and then we surprised my dad by visiting his office at the college. It really was a surprise for him, too! And when my mom went to get a cup of coffee, Alfie sat on the office photocopy machine and copied her own rear end. Luckily, she was wearing shorts at the time. And then I dropped a giant box of paper-clips on my dad’s office floor, and they went everywhere.

  5. Dad said he had a meeting pretty soon after that, so Mom and Alfie and I went home.

  “Swimmy is confused already, EllWay,” Alfie tells me, pronouncing my name wrong, as usual. “And I like the name Swimmy. It’s in my favorite book by Leo Lionni. And our family should be the ones who get to name him, because we’re the ones who decorated his fish house.”

  This part of her crazy explanation is actually true. Ms. Sanchez already bought Zip a bigger bowl, because his old softball-sized one was so small, and Zip was growing. My mom is the one who bought him a castle to swim through.

  Mom writes fantasy books for grown-ups. That’s why she loves castles. And that’s also why Alfie and I have such weird names: “Alfleta,” which means “beautiful elf” in old Saxon, which no one even speaks anymore, probably not even old Saxons, and “Lancelot Raymond” for me. Lancelot was a guy in a famous old story.

  L-period-Ray. EllRay. Get it?

  And yes, a substitute teacher did say my real name out loud in class once last fall, and it was a disaster—especially because I’m the shortest kid in Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class, even counting the girls. So how could I fight back when kids started teasing me? Especially the sometimes-mean ones like Jared Matthews and Cynthia Harbison?

  But getting back to Zip, even Dad got interested in fixing up his new bowl. He gave me half a geode to make the whole place sparkle.

  A geode is like a trick rock, and it’s one of the coolest things in the world. All geodes are round, gray, and boring on the outside, but if you cut them in half with a special saw, there are beautiful crystals growing inside where the hollow part is.

  It’s like there’s a surprise present inside each one.

  So now Zip’s sparkly geode sits right next to Mom’s castle, but Zip doesn’t even seem to notice it. I guess he misses Ms. Sanchez too much, or maybe he’s still mad about Texas.

  But Zip does care about food, and that’s where I come in. Feeding him is my job this spring break. I give him two shakes of goldfish food first thing in the morning and two more shakes of food just before bed.

  I have to admit it’s not as much fun as I thought it would be.

  “Call him whatever you want to, Alfie. I don’t care,” I tell my little sister, giving up. “You’re not the one who has to feed him. I’m the one doing all the work around here.”

  “I could feed him for the rest of the week,” Alfie says, excited.

  “Nuh-uh,” I say, turning back to my video game. “It’s way too hard.”

  “Please?” Alfie asks, and her face crinkles up.

  Uh-oh. This is a bad sign with her. It’s the crying sign.

  “PLEASE?”she begs.

  “Well,” I say, giving in, “maybe just at night. But I’ll have to show you how.”

  “I know how,” she says. “I’ve been watching you.”

  “Just two shakes,” I remind her.

  “Just two shakes. And I only get to do it at night,” she repeats, so happy that she even makes me smile—which I am also doing because I have accidentally tricked her into doing one of my chores.

  “So, I’ll see you later,” I say, hoping she’ll take the hint and scram.

  “Okay,” Alfie says, hopping off my bed. “See you at supper. Bye, EllWay!”

  That was easy, I think, getting back to my game’s space creatures and their terrible fate.

  What could go wrong?

  A DISASTER

  The first thing I see the next morning is the last thing I ever wanted to see.

  It’s Zip, and he’s not zippy or swimmy. He’s floating.

  Not in a fun way, either.

  He is on his side, and he is surrounded by gummy brown fish food that is all stuck together. The fish food covers the entire surface of the water in Ms. Sanchez’s newly decorated bowl, which is sitting on my desk.

  Zip is dead.

  Zip, with the white spot on his stomach.

  Zip, who was smart, you could just tell.

  Zip, who knew me.

  Zip, who was counting on me to take good care of him.

  What happened?

  Alfie. That’s what happened. This is a disaster.

  “Alfie,” I shout. “Alfie! Come in here right now and see what you did!”

  Instead of Alfie, Mom comes rushing into my room. “EllRay, what in the world is going on?” she asks. “Alfie is brushing her teeth.” And then she sees the fish bowl—and what is floating in it.

  Zip is so dead that he practically has little Xs where his eyes are, like in the cartoons.

  “Oh, my,” Mom says, covering her mouth with her hand. “And this would be the morning your father left early to go to the gym.”

  “Alfie murdered Zip,” I say, in case Mom has missed seeing the empty fish food container lying next to the bowl. “She fed him to death. She begged and begged me to let her help, and I finally said yes, but I told her two shakes. And look what she did!”

  Alfie trots into my room, her pink toothbrush drooping in her hand. “What’s the matter, EllWay?” she asks.

  “A dead goldfish, that’s what’s the matter, Einstein,” I tell her, pointing.

  PLONK goes her goopy toothbrush onto my floor. “Swimmy!” Alfie cries, throwing herself against the bowl and hugging it with both arms.

  “His name’s Zip!” I say, shouting again. “At least it was. What did you do?”

  By now, of course, Alfie is sobbing—like that’s going to help Zip. Or me. “I wanted him to have a pa-a-arty,” she wails. “I felt sorry for him! And I thought if I fed him all at once, I wouldn’t have to do it anymore from now on. I could just play with him.”

  “Well, congratulations,” I tell her. “Because now, no one has to feed him. He’s dead forever! And what am I supposed to tell Ms. Sanchez next Monday? ‘Sorry I killed the brand-new pet that your boyfriend won for you at the church festival, but I couldn’t keep a goldfish alive even for a week?’ How is that gonna make me look, did you ever think of that, Alfie? Huh? Everyone in my class is going to hate me!”

  “Who cares how it makes you look?” Alfie yells back at me, tears spurting out of her eyes. “Think about Swimmy!”

  DEAD OR ALIVE

  “Hang on, you two,” Mom tells us. “Let’s focus. We’ve got a dead goldfish on our hands, here.”

  “He had a name, Mom. Zip. And this is all Alfie’s fault,” I say.

  “I’m only four!”

  “But you dumped the whole container of fish food into the bowl,” I remind her. “After you promised you’d do it right!”

  “Didn’t you notice all that food floating in the bowl last night, EllRay?” Mom asks me. “Before you turned out the light?”

  “No. I didn’t even look,” I say. “I was trying to finish Treasure Island, that book Ms. Sanchez let me take home over vacation. Why, are you saying I should have checked to make sure Zip wasn’t eating his head off? Or maybe even flying around the room?”

  “I don’t think eating too much killed him,” Mom says, looking into the fish bowl once more. “He probably choked from all that food clogging up his poor little gills.”

  “Oh, that’s better,” I say. “Thanks for telling me, Mom.”

  “Look,” my mother says, frowning. “I know you’re upset, EllRay, and this is definitely a bad morning for all of us. But let’s not get snippy. That’s not going to help the situation or change anything.”

  “But what are we going to do?” I ask.

  “Bury him,” Mom says. “Or flush him, if
it’s too rainy to go outside and dig a hole. I mean a grave.”

  “Flush him down the toilet? Like poo?” Alfie asks, completely grossed out by now, on top of being sad.

  “We are not flushing him,” I say. “I should bring him back to Ms. Sanchez, dead or alive. Because I have to prove what happened, don’t I? He’s evidence. Otherwise, people might think I just decided to keep him. And we don’t even know what religion Ms. Sanchez is, Mom. Maybe she’ll want to bury him at her own church.”

  “No, we get to bury him,” Alfie says, frowning. “And I’ll say a little prayer.”

  “I suppose we could put him in the refrigerator until Monday,” Mom says, trying to think fast.

  “No!” Alfie and I yell at the exact same time. The thought of Zip’s poor little orange dead body lying next to Mom’s low-fat peach yogurt is just too much.

  “I’d wrap him up first,” Mom says, trying to calm us down. “And put him in two or three thick plastic bags. Or maybe he could go into the freezer,” she says to herself, as if that would be a whole lot better.

  “Next to the ice cream?” Alfie asks, horrified.

  “We’re out of ice cream,” Mom reminds her.

  “Next to where the ice cream is supposed to be?” Alfie says, looking even more upset than before, as if this might ruin ice cream for her forever.

  “What a DISASTER,” I say—to myself, not to my mom or my little sister.

  “We could buy Ms. Sanchez another fish,” Mom suggests.

  “You mean trick her?” I say, surprised that my mother would come up with a sneaky plan like this one.

  Besides, I already figured out that trying to fool Ms. Sanchez would never work. What about that spot on his stomach? And the intelligent expression on his face?

  “Not trick her,” Mom says. “We’ll call her first, and we’ll tell her what happened. Then we’ll offer to buy her another goldfish just as nice. We could ask about the—the disposal of the remains at the same time, I guess.”