Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer (5 page)

“You’re always spraining your stupid ankle,” Stanley Washington says, after chomping down on a big sandwich in a hamburger bun that makes my mouth water just to look at it, even though Stanley and I are not exactly friends lately. You can see pieces of sandwich in his mouth as he talks, but even that doesn’t shut the girls up.

“She is not,” Cynthia says back. “Anyway, you know she has weak ankles. Poor little Fiona,” she adds, patting Fiona’s skinny back.

And Fiona smiles like anything. She holds out a pipe-cleaner ankle for evidence. It has a stretchy tan bandage around it, the kind that is always called “flesh-colored,” only it’s not. Not
my
flesh color, anyway. I’m brown, and so is Kevin, and two of the girls in our class who are friends from church. And so are a lot of people. Maybe not all that many in Oak Glen, California, but Oak Glen isn’t the center of the universe.

Kevin clears his throat, which is a signal that
he’s about to say something. “My personal narrative was about learning to swim really far last summer,” he says.

“Huh. I can already swim far,” Cynthia announces from the girls’ table.

“I wasn’t writing about
you
,” Kevin points out. “I was writing about me. Anyway,” he adds, “Corey can swim farther than everyone in our class put together. So, ha ha.”

It’s true about Corey. He is already a champion swimmer. He sometimes smells like chlorine from his early morning workouts. He has trophies and everything.

“I wrote about cleaning out my aquarium,” Annie Pat says. She is the second-smallest
girl
in the third grade. Like I said before, Emma McGraw is the first-smallest girl. “I was so scared,” she adds, shivering from either the wind or from being scared, who can tell? “Because one of my tropical fish jumped out of the little bowl I put it in while I was scrubbing the aquarium.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t hold innocent animals captive,” Cynthia says, her snooty nose high in the air. I guess she figures that she’s so perfect,
she can start in on correcting all of us, now.

And is a fish even an animal? I don’t know, but Annie Pat gasps. She would never harm an animal
or
a fish. In fact, she wants to be a fish expert when she grows up. I forget the exact name of the job.

Emma, who is best friends with Annie Pat, is all over Cynthia in a second. “She’s not ‘holding them captive,’
Cynthia
,” she says, her cheeks turning even pinker than they already were. “She’s taking care of them. She’s
protecting
them, and it’s a lot of hard work.”

“Yeah,” Annie Pat says, having recovered from Cynthia’s insult. “
Cynthia
.”

“What did you write about for your personal narrative, Cynthia?” Kry asks like she’s really interested, brushing her shiny black bangs out of her eyes.

“I wrote about organizing my closet,” Cynthia announces, chin still in the air.

Okay, now that’s just sad. I mean, I’m not saying it didn’t happen. And I’m not saying there weren’t some details about it, or that it ended. But
writing
about it?

Everyone knows that all you have to do with
closets is to jam your stuff inside and then close the door real fast, before it can tumble back out.

Done!

Even some of the girls over at the girls’ table are looking sideways at each other, hearing Cynthia’s personal narrative topic.

“You should
see
her closet,” Heather says, jumping to Cynthia’s defense so fast that the long, skinny braid she usually wears on top of her hair swings across her face like a pendulum. “It’s the best closet in the world!”

“
Now
it is,” Cynthia says, shrugging modestly. “I even put a little chair in it when I was done, and my daddy built a special rack for all my headbands.”

Cynthia wears a headband to school every single day. She scrapes her hair back like she’s mad at it.

Her father makes the best sandwiches in the world, by the way. Me and my friends
DROOL
when we look at them, sometimes. That’s what she should have written about. I didn’t know Mr. Harbison could build stuff, too.

My college professor dad
hates
doing chores around the house. But he does like working in the garden. The rose bushes that looked like thorny sticks in January have leaves on them now. He checks them every day. I’m not sure what he’s looking for.

“
My
narrative was about the last time this little boy named Anthony came over,” Emma says, starting to giggle. “He’s only four, and he’s really funny.”

Cynthia sniffs, probably still thinking about her organized closet. “I met him once,” she tells us.

“See, we were going to make some peanut butter cookies with fork marks on them,” Emma explains. “Only he—”

“Too bad you don’t have any real brothers or sisters,” Heather interrupts. “Or you could have written about
them
.”

Emma is an only child, see, which I have to admit sometimes sounds pretty good to me. But Heather has this teenage sister she’s always talking about. She must think that earns her special points or something—like she’s an honorary teenager herself, just from living with one.

“Yeah. Too bad,” Cynthia fake-sympathizes.

The girls have hijacked this lunch conversation big-time! They always do that.

“Being an only child wasn’t what Emma was writing about,” Annie Pat argues, sticking up for Emma even if Emma doesn’t need her to.

“But who cares about a four-year-old kid?” Cynthia asks Emma—and me, I guess. Because I wrote about Alfie.

I
care. I care about Alfie, anyway, since I don’t know Emma’s Anthony. I kind of have to care about Alfie, at least until she learns how to take care of herself.

Or until I teach her to.

A couple of the boys have ditched the shivering lunch crowd by now, even though the bell hasn’t rung yet. Jared and Stanley are chasing each other around and around. It looks like fun. Why am I still sitting here?

I cram my trash into my lunch sack and stand up. Kevin does, too.

“Good riddance,” Cynthia calls over from the girls’ table.

“Who’s she talking to?” Kevin asks, like he’s really wondering.

“Mr. Nobody,” I say back, laughing.

“And where does Mr. Nobody park his car?” Kevin asks, starting in on a dumb old joke of ours that still cracks us up.

“
IN THE MIRAGE
!” we both shout.

The girls are looking at us like we’re nuts, but who cares?

We’re gone!

7

“Are you still invisible?” I ask Alfie after dinner that night, when Mom and Dad are busy with something else. Paying bills, probably. Alfie and I are in my room, for a change, and Alfie is playing with one of my action figures that changes from a truck to a robot to a killer insect. She has been talking to it in baby talk, which is messed up.

“I’m only invisible at school, not here,” Alfie says, letting the half-changed action figure droop a little. “Mona whispered something to me when we were playing at the dress-up box, but Suzette caught her. So after that, Mona beed quiet.”

“But you’re going to talk to Suzette tomorrow. Friday,” I say like it’s a fact.

Sometimes this works with Alfie, like when I say on a Friday night, “It’s my turn to choose the cartoons tomorrow morning, remember?” Even
though it isn’t really my turn, it’s hers. Only I don’t feel like watching
Pink Princess Fairies
or
Itty Bitty Kitties
. Can you blame me?

“I might talk to her,” Alfie says, shaking my action figure as if that is what makes it change. “Why doesn’t this
do
anything?” she asks, frowning. “And don’t you have any clothes for it? It has to stay
bare
?”

I don’t even bother answering such a goofy question, because—clothes for a killer insect? Or for a robot or a truck, for that matter? What’s it going to wear, pants and a hat?

“You have to talk to her,” I say. “Look, we’ll practice. Let’s pretend you’re you, okay? And I’m Suzette. What are you going to say to me? To Suzette?”

“But I thought you didn’t like playing pretend,” Alfie says, her brown eyes wide.

“I’ll do it just this once,” I tell her. “You have to learn, Alfie. And I guess I’m the one to teach you. Now, you be you, and I—”

“I’m
alweady
me,” Alfie argues. “That’s not pretending.”

“But pretend you’re talking to Suzette.
Go
.”

“
You
go,” she mumbles.

“Okay,” I reply, hiding my sigh. “Hi, Alfie,” I say in a loud and whiny voice. “Why are you still hanging around? Can’t you take a hint?”

“What’s a hint?” Alfie asks me, EllRay, frowning again. “I forget.”

“It’s like a little clue,” I try to explain. “Like if I said you are going to eat something crunchy for breakfast, and it comes in a box. Guess what it is?”

“Toast is crunchy,” Alfie says, thinking about it.

“But it doesn’t come in a box,” I remind her.

“It could,” Alfie points out. “If you put it there. Cereal wasn’t
born
in a box.”

“I’m Suzette Monahan,” I say, trying hard to get back to the point. “And I’m saying, ‘Get lost, Alfie Jakes. You are invisible to me and my friends.’”

“They’re my friends, too,” Alfie argues, finally getting into it. “And they’re only minding you because you’re so mean, Suzette. And you
scratch
.”

“Who cares?” I say in my best Suzette voice. I pretend I am fluffing up my headful of brown curls like I think they’re so great. As if they’re what gives me my dragon powers. I’m glad my friends Corey and Kevin can’t see me! “I’m the boss, and that’s what matters,” I continue, being Suzette.
“Those girls have to do what I say,
or else
.”

“But they already did what you said,” Alfie says, her voice wobbling a little. “Can’t you boss them to do something else?”

“No,” I say, shrugging in that I-don’t-
think
-so way like Suzette did the time when my mom offered her homemade oatmeal cookies instead of saying okay, she would drive everyone to McDonald’s. “I’m not bored yet. I’m having too much fun.”

“But why is making me invisible
fun
?” Alfie says, tears filling her eyes. This makes them look even bigger than they already are, which is huge.

Pretending is harder than I thought. “Don’t cry,” I whisper.

“Are you Suzette now, or are you EllWay?” she whispers back, wiping her eyes.

“EllRay. But just for a minute. Now I’m Suzette again,” I tell her, changing my voice. “It’s fun because it bothers you so much,” I say in my best stuck-up Suzette way. “Why
wouldn’t
I do it? What else is there to do around here? You
care
the most. That’s why it’s fun.”

“I could tell the teacher on you,” Alfie says,
trying to put up a fight, if only a puny one.

“Go ahead,” pretend-Suzette says. “Everyone will think you’re a tattletale, and I’ll say you’re lying.” Now
I’m
getting into it.

“Then I’ll tell my mom,” Alfie says, trying a different idea. “And she’ll call your mom, and they’ll talk.
Then
you’ll be sorry.”

“No, I won’t. Go ahead and tell your mom. I don’t care,” I say with a Suzette sneer. “I can handle
my
mom. Anyway, she’s too busy to care what bothers you.”