Ellray Jakes Walks the Plank

by Sally Warner

  “What are ‘remains’?” Alfie asks, sounding suspicious.

  “She means his body,” I tell my sister. “His dead body, Alfie.”

  “EllRay,” Mom says in a warning voice.

  “Well, excuse me,” I say. “But Ms. Sanchez happens to be in Texas. And I’m the one who’s going to suffer for this, Mom, since Zip is d-e-a-d dead. How do you think I’m going to feel walking into class next Monday with an empty fish bowl in my arms?”

  “But we get to keep the castle,” Alfie says, like that’s a well-known fact. “And the sparkle rock, too.”

  “It’s called a geode, and no, we don’t,” I tell her, almost glad to say something that will make her feel sad. “They belong to Ms. Sanchez and her next goldfish, who I’ll probably never even be allowed to meet, in case he faints or even drops dead when he sees me.”

  “Mommy!” Alfie yelps.

  “Downstairs, the both of you,” Mom says, sounding strict. “EllRay, pour your little sister a nice bowl of crunchy cereal and a cold glass of juice. I’ve got some cleaning up to do in here,” she adds, trying to hide her shudder as she peeks at poor Zip, who is floating like a little orange island in a muddy brown lake.

  It is obvious that Alfie doesn’t want to go downstairs and miss out on all the gory drama. “But Mommy, I—”

  “C’mon, Alfie,” I say. “I’ll let you choose the cartoon this morning, even if it’s the one about those princess kittens.”

  “Thanks, EllRay,” my mom calls out as we leave the room.

  “It’s my day to choose the cartoon anyway,” Alfie says over her shoulder.

  “Whatever,” I tell her, sighing. “What-ever.”

  INVISIBLE PET DAY

  It is now Monday morning, and spring break is over, and it has finally stopped raining. But everything is still shiny outside as I walk up Oak Glen Primary School’s front steps, being careful not to spill the water in Ms. Sanchez’s goldfish bowl.

  No, there’s no fish inside the bowl, because when she got back from Texas, Ms. Sanchez told my mom she’d rather wait a while before buying a new one. But I wanted the kids in my class to see the castle and the geode, at least, so they’d know how hard I tried to make Zip happy while they were away on their fun vacation trips. And since I didn’t want the castle and geode clanking around inside an empty bowl, I filled it with water before I left home, even though my mom said that was inviting disaster.

  Too late, Mom! Disaster already came.

  “Mr. Jakes,” the principal calls out with a big smile on his face—I think. It’s hard to tell with that beard. He walks down a couple of steps to greet me. He likes to say hi to kids in the morning, especially the ones he knows.

  This includes me, but that’s another story. Okay, two stories.

  “Did you have a nice vacation?” the principal asks as I stand on the step, trying not to let any water slosh out of the bowl when other kids push by.

  “It was okay,” I say, being polite. “Did you have a nice vacation too?”

  “Sure did,” he says, and then he peers into the bowl. “Hmm,” he says. “Did someone forget to tell me it’s INVISIBLE PET DAY here at Oak Glen?”

  This is his idea of a joke, I guess.

  “Nope,” I say. “I’m just returning Ms. Sanchez’s fish bowl. I was taking care of it for her while she was in Texas.”

  “Well, that was nice of you,” he says, waiting for the rest of the story.

  Emma McGraw and Annie Pat Masterson are coming up the stairs on my right, I see, wishing I could disappear before they see me. They are whispering and giggling together, so maybe they won’t notice me standing here with a basically empty fish bowl in my arms, talking to our principal, who is probably the tallest bearded man in the world.

  Yeah, right. I don’t stand out at all!

  “EllRay,” Annie Pat says, screeching to a halt. “Where’s Zip?”

  Just my luck. She wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up, so naturally she’d notice something like a missing fish.

  “He decided to walk to school today,” I say, but when Annie Pat and Emma jump back and start examining the concrete steps as if Zip might be trying to climb them one at a time, I realize it didn’t sound as funny as I hoped.

  “I’m just kidding,” I tell them. I hate it when I have to explain a joke.

  “But where is he?” Emma asks, her eyes wide.

  “Ms. Sanchez will tell you,” I say. “She said she’d make an announcement.”

  “And so I know we’re all very sad,” our teacher says, shortly after taking attendance and announcing the death of Zip Sanchez, not naming the actual murderer. “But these things happen, and life goes on. Any questions?”

  Everyone stares at Zip’s empty bowl, which is sitting on the table behind Ms. Sanchez’s desk.

  She just loved the castle and the geode, by the way.

  Ms. Sanchez is the prettiest teacher in our whole school. I only hope her boyfriend doesn’t get too mad about me killing the prize he won for her. He’s huge!

  Slowly, slowly, Heather Patton’s hand goes up. Heather wears her hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, and she likes everything to be perfect, and she says she’s allergic to coconut, but who knows? Another thing about Heather is that she kisses up to Cynthia Harbison all the time. Cynthia is the bossiest girl in our class, and that’s saying something.

  “Yes, Heather?” Ms. Sanchez asks, looking surprised. I guess she didn’t really expect there to be any questions, because—what is there to say?

  Dead is dead.

  “Is Zip in heaven?” Heather asks.

  The second Heather says this, Ms. Sanchez looks like she just got hit with a water balloon. And then kids start to BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ all around me, and a bunch of hands shoot up high in the air.

  Jared Matthews, Stanley Washington, Fiona McNulty, Kry Rodriguez, Annie Pat, Emma, Cynthia, and my friends Corey Robinson and Kevin McKinley all have their hands up. It looks like lots of kids have an opinion about whether or not Zip has made it up to heaven.

  “I—I’m afraid we’ll have to talk about pets and the afterlife at some future time,” Ms. Sanchez says, stumbling over the words. “Because we have a lot of work to catch up on, ladies and gentlemen. So let’s take a look at our spelling words for the week, shall we?”

  And slowly, slowly, the hands go down.

  NUTRITION BREAK

  “What happened?” Emma and Annie Pat ask me first thing during nutrition break—which at Oak Glen Primary School is morning recess with healthy snacks.

  Supposedly healthy snacks.

  We’re also supposed to get what Ms. Sanchez calls “fresh air and exercise” during nutrition break, which is why we have it outside on the playground, with kick balls and everything. But today, even though we are all outside, I don’t think we’ll be getting much exercise or nutrition.

  Jared is chewing strips of red licorice, and Fiona is eating barbecue-flavored corn chips. Stanley is sharing a box of leftover yellow Peeps with Corey, and Kry is dipping her hand into a little bag of plain chocolate chips, which she likes to eat without any cookie involved. She says it’s quicker that way.

  And all the third-graders in my class, even the ones who happen to be eating healthy snacks, are gathered in front of me as I lean against the icy cold chain-link fence.

  My stomach is gurgling like crazy for its own morning snack, which today is little sandwiches made from saltine crackers with almond butter glue holding them together, since it’s “No Peanuts!” at our school in case of allergies, which some kids have. But I guess I won’t get a chance to eat my crackers, not with all the explaining I have to do.

  One thing for sure, I have decided not to tell anyone Alfie was the one who accidentally killed Zip. She feels bad enough already. I will take the blame.

  Alfie’s my little sister, no matter what.

  “What happened is that the lid came off the fish food container while I was shaking out the food,” I tell Emma and Annie Pat,
making up the lie on the spot. “And it all dumped in at once. And there was nothing I could do, because Zip died instantly. And painlessly,” I add, hoping this will make everyone feel better.

  Annie Pat shakes her head, and when she does, her twin red pigtails shake too. “But I have an aquarium at home,” she says. “And the fish food lid does not come off that easily.”

  “And anyway,” Emma says, frowning, “the whole story doesn’t make any sense. I’m not saying you’re a liar, EllRay. You must have forgotten some of the details, that’s all. Zip would not have died instantly. So why didn’t you take him out of the bowl and give him CPR, and then clean every-thing up and start over?”

  Emma and I are almost friends, and so I know that she is not trying to make me look bad. She just wants to know what happened, that’s all.

  Emma’s like that.

  Forty-two eyes—three kids are absent today—stare hard at me as I try to ooze backward through the chain-link fence. “I’m just saying what happened,” I tell everyone, wishing I was anyplace else but here—even at the doctor’s, about to get a shot. And that’s my worst thing. “I can’t help it if your fish food jar is different from Ms. Sanchez’s,” I say to Annie Pat. “She’s the one who bought it.”

  “Well, I guess I believe EllRay,” my friend Kevin says slowly, as if he’s had to give it a lot of thought.

  “Yeah,” Corey says. “No matter what really happened.”

  Thanks a lot, guys.

  Cynthia flips up the collar on her fuzzy red jacket and shrugs. “Well, who cares what happened, or how it happened?” she asks. “It was only a goldfish.”

  “Yeah. We’re sorry for Ms. Sanchez and everything, but it was,” her friend Heather chimes in, trying to be loyal to Cynthia but nice to our teacher at the same time. Heather wants everyone to like her.

  Good luck with that, by the way.

  “My neighbor has a fish called an oscar in his aquarium,” Jared says, his gums and tongue all red from the licorice. “And it eats goldfish. My neighbor buys ’em ten at a time! He calls them ‘feeder fish,’ and he doesn’t even give them names. So what’s the big deal about one dead goldfish, even if it was a prize?”

  “That’s so sad that the poor little things don’t even get to have names,” Fiona says, ignoring the part about how the other fish eats them. She’s got that orange dust they put on barbecue chips all around her mouth.

  “Eww. A cannibal fish named Oscar. Gross,” Cynthia and Heather say with twin squeals, but Annie Pat looks interested. Remember, she’s the one who wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up.

  “Is it a tiger oscar?” she asks, her dark blue eyes shining with excitement. “They live in the Amazon River, in South America.”

  “I’m never swimming there,” Cynthia says to Heather, and Heather nods her head in agreement.

  Heather always sides with Cynthia. I think she’s scared not to.

  I can’t help but feel a little happy that this terrible conversation has moved so far away from what a mess-up I am for supposedly killing Zip, our new class mascot, Ms. Sanchez’s prize goldfish. In fact, the talk has moved all the way from Oak Glen, California, to the Amazon River, in South America. That’s pretty far! Maybe I’ll get a chance to eat a cracker or two after all. I start to relax.

  “Where did you bury Zip, EllRay?” Kry asks, after popping another chocolate chip into her mouth.

  And—WHOOSH, we’re back in Oak Glen with a dead fish.

  “In my backyard,” I say, trying to look serious and sad at the same time.

  Don’t tell anyone, but really, Zip’s funeral was a little bit funny. Here is what happened.

  1. It was still raining the morning when we buried him, but we each had an umbrella. Well, everyone except Zip.

  2. And we couldn’t find a little box to put him in, so Alfie stretched Zip out on a blue plastic doll bed from this set she has. Then she covered him with a Kleenex pretend-blanket, and she put an ivy leaf over his face so she wouldn’t have to look at it again, because that was the part of Zip that looked the most dead. The rest of him almost looked okay.

  3. Then Mom put Zip and the bed into a plastic container-like he was some really weird leftover.

  4. Then I dug a muddy hole in the backyard with Mom’s small gardening shovel.

  5. And then we put the plastic container in the hole, and my mom said some nice stuff about Zip, even though she barely knew him.

  6. Then Alfie said her prayer, only it got so long that Mom had to say “Amen!” just to give Alfie an excuse to stop talking. Or to shut her up, I don’t know which.

  7. I wanted to say something nice about Zip too, because after all, I was the one who really knew him–and who was responsible for him. But I didn’t want to start crying, not that anyone would even have noticed with all the rain.

  That last part about Zip’s funeral wasn’t funny, but the rest of it was. Kind of.

  It’s confusing how something can be sad and funny at the same time. Or funny and sad.

  “Well,” Cynthia says, smoothing back her already-smooth hair. “Remind me never to ask you to take care of anything, EllRay Jakes.”

  And Heather gives Cynthia an admiring grin. “Yeah,” she agrees.

  “Like I would,” I say back to both of them.

  But really, I don’t blame Cynthia and Heather for saying what they did.

  Zip was my job.

  I wouldn’t ask a mess-up like me to take care of anything, either.

  AN EXTRA LITTLE VACATION

  It is still Monday, and we just had afternoon recess. But we have all been ready to go home for about two hours, even Ms. Sanchez. You can tell. Some of the hair that she usually wears pulled back in a shiny black bun is falling down, and there is a blue ink mark on her chin.

  A couple of the girls put bunches of little flowers from the playground ice plant in front of Zip’s empty fish bowl after lunch—to honor him, I guess. But Zip didn’t know what flowers are. He was a fish. And those flowers aren’t helping our mood any, especially my mood.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Ms. Sanchez says just as we are getting ready to take our dreaded weekly spelling quiz, the one that is repeated on Friday. “The first day back at school after a vacation is always hard, and today has been no exception to that unwritten rule. It has also been a sad day for us all, for obvious reasons.”

  Half the kids in our class look at Zip’s empty fish bowl and the purple ice plant flowers when she says this, and half the kids look at me. I don’t look anywhere.

  “So I have decided to toss out our schedule for the rest of the afternoon,” Ms. Sanchez says, “and give us all a much-needed break. An extra little vacation—on Treasure Island.”

  Okay. Ms. Sanchez has been reading us this great book called Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, on Friday afternoons. “I think it’s the first pirate story for children there ever was,” she told us before she started. And even though this book was written more than a hundred years ago, it’s pretty cool. VERY COOL, in fact, although it is a hard book to read alone when you’re only eight years old. It has been hard for me, anyway. But the thing about books is that you can skip over the hard parts and still get the idea.

  Time changes when Ms. Sanchez starts to read to us, and we change, too.

  1. Emma and Annie Pat chew on their knuckles during the scary parts, which so far is most of the book.

  2. Fiona bites her lip and draws pictures of whatever Ms. Sanchez is reading. Fiona is the shyest kid in our class, but she’s a really good artist.

  3. Stanley closes his eyes, and Jared and Kevin look at nothing, but they tilt their heads like they are listening in on someone.

  4. And even though some part of me notices the other kids, all I am really seeing is Jim Hawkins, the boy in the book.

  I think Jim Hawkins is pretty much like me, only white. Well, maybe he’s white. And he’s a few years older than I am, and probably taller. Most kids are. But differences like that don’t
matter, not with books.

  I really like Treasure Island.

  In fact, I like it so much that I took it home over spring break, because aboard the ship Hispaniola, Jim Hawkins had just overheard Long John Silver—who was supposed to be the ship’s cook—say he was going to kill everyone on the ship who wasn’t a secret pirate. I couldn’t wait a whole week without knowing what was going to happen next, could I?

  How was I supposed to sleep at night?

  So I asked Ms. Sanchez in a quiet voice if I could borrow the book over vacation, and she said yes, which is why Treasure Island is now sitting on the chair next to my bed.

  That’s right. I forgot to bring Treasure Island back to school today.

  I was kind of busy with a couple of other things, remember?

  “Let’s see. Where could that book be?” Ms. Sanchez says, thinking out loud as she searches her shelves.

  Wriggling around, my class makes an excited rustling noise that sounds like the wind blowing through tree branches on a stormy day. Kids are silently high-fiving each other on this piece of surprise good luck: being read to on a Monday afternoon, instead of having to take a spelling test.

  But of course I sit frozen in my seat.

  “Where did I put that book?” Ms. Sanchez asks herself, tapping her chin with her solid gold pen.

  And all of a sudden, she remembers. “Oh,” she says, and she slides a quick glance in my direction—then looks away.

  Don’t tell, don’t tell, I think as hard as I can, hoping the words will somehow jump into Ms. Sanchez’s brain, because this would just be one bad thing too many for the kids in my class to forgive. Ever.

  Even Kevin and Corey. They will be ashamed they know me.

  Killing Zip, the class mascot, and messing up a surprise story time?

  No way!

  I feel like I am about to WALK THE PLANK.

  I guess Ms. Sanchez gets my silent message, because she says, “Oh, dear. I must have left Treasure Island at home. Silly me. Sorry, everyone. I guess we’d better take that quiz after all. Just a short, fun version of it, though.”