Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer (6 page)

“Then she’s mean, too,” Alfie says, slamming my action figure to the ground so hard that I almost forget for a second to be Suzette Monahan.

POOR TECHNO-ROBO-BUG!

Alfie’s really angry, I can tell. Electric sparks are practically coming out of her soft, puffy black braids, she’s so mad. But angry is better than droopy any day of the week, I remind myself.

“That’s good, Alfie,” I tell her.

“Be quiet, Suzette!” Alfie yells.

“No. I’m EllRay again,” I say quickly, trying to calm her down before Mom and Dad come pounding
up the stairs to see what’s wrong. “Can’t you pretend you don’t care?” I suggest.

“I am a good pretender,” she says, smiling. “It’s one of the things I love best about me.”

“Me too,” I say, laughing. “So are you gonna say something to Suzette about not caring? Tomorrow morning? First thing? And get this whole disaster over with?”

“Maybe,” Alfie says, cautious once more.

But I can tell that I’ve at least planted the idea in her head.

And best of all, she thinks it’s
her
idea—which makes me a pretty good teacher, right? And a very good big brother?

You’re welcome, Alfie!

8

“My shoes got wet on the way to school,” my friend Corey complains the next morning. It is Friday, the third-worst day of the week for rain to happen. The first and second worst days are Saturday and Sunday, of course, because who wants to spend the weekend indoors?

Mr. Nobody, that’s who. The guy who parks his car in the mirage.

“You’re wet all the time anyway, Corey, ’cause you’re alway in the pool, aren’t you?” Kevin points out as we stash our backpacks in our cubbies, which they call “cubicles” in the third grade. Only really, they’re the same as they were in kindergarten.

Just the word has changed.

There are probably lots of things that are like that.

“Sneakers are different,” Corey says in his gloomiest voice. “You can’t get ’em dry. I’m
SQUELCHING
.”

Around us, the girls in our class are chattering like crazy. It’s as if the April rain has revved them up in some weird way. “Ooh! Darling boots,” Annie Pat is saying to Emma, who is holding out one of her legs for inspection.

They’re lime green. The boots, I mean.

Girls have completely different clothes for when it rains. Most boys just put on another layer, and they always forget their umbrellas, if they even have umbrellas in the first place. Jared Matthews—who can be kind of bossy, remember?—is peeling off a damp brown sweater that looks like a layer of bark or lizard skin. His face is turning red, he’s wrestling with that sweater so hard.

“Come on, everyone,” Ms. Sanchez calls out from her desk, which is like Army headquarters for her. “We have lots of work this morning. It’s personal narrative day!”

“We already did that,” Cynthia Harbison tells her, raising her hand while she’s already talking.
“We corrected them for homework last night,” she adds as she takes her seat, neat as can be. Have I mentioned how clean Cynthia is? It’s actually kind of creepy.

“Thank you, Miss Harbison. I realize that,” Ms. Sanchez says. “But today, we’ll read a few of them aloud. That’s an entirely different skill set.”

“We have to read in front of the whole class?” Corey cries out, unable to control himself. Corey hates doing
anything
in front of the class, even taking something up to Ms. Sanchez’s desk. Even though it’s not that big a class, and everybody likes him.

That’s weird, isn’t it, how scary it can be to have to stand up in front of people, even when you know them? I guess it’s because nobody wants all those eyeballs staring at them. Or maybe they’re afraid they’re going to make fools of themselves. I should say of
himself
, because some of the girls in my class are looking excited at the idea of reading their narratives aloud. A couple of girl-hands have already shot into the air.

“We’ll get started right after I take attendance,”
Ms. Sanchez says. “I’ll decide who to call on then.”

Not me, not me, not me
, I think, squinching my eyes shut to help make my wish come true.

“You’re up next, EllRay,” Ms. Sanchez says as Cynthia takes her seat before nutrition break. “And Cynthia,” she adds, “I’m sure we’ve all learned something valuable about organizing a closet. Also, thank you, Emma, for telling us the terrible tale of that forty-five-dollar library book about amphibians that you lost. You had us all shivering in our boots. Thank goodness you finally found it. And now, I present Mr. Jakes, who is going to tell us what it’s like being a big brother. EllRay?”

Someone groans. Probably Stanley, and for no reason.

“But is there enough time?” I ask, like my narrative is so interesting and exciting that I don’t want to cut it short because of mere nutrition break, or like I don’t want everyone’s stomach growling while I’m trying to read my personal narrative. My
private
personal narrative.

As if there’s such a thing as privacy around here!

I would have written about almost stepping on a rattlesnake once in Arizona if I’d known we were going to have to read our narratives aloud!

I will never live down this wimpy, way-too-personal narrative.

“There’s time,” Ms. Sanchez says, nodding. So I plod to the front of the class and stand at the corner of her desk. “Nice and loud, EllRay,” she reminds me. “No mumbling.”

Mumbling is a big no-no with Ms. Sanchez. “Stand up, speak up, and look people in the eye,” she always tells us.

“Okay,” I say, and I clear my throat in a Kevinlike way. “Being a Big Brother, by EllRay Jakes,” I begin.

“Louder, please,” Ms. Sanchez tells me. “Speak to the very back row, EllRay.”

“Okay,” I say again, and I start reading.

When I have finished, I tuck my chin down and scurry back to my seat, hoping no one will have
the chance to ask any questions or give me advice about how to be an even better big brother. Some girls in my class have a lot of advice to give, I have noticed.

But it turns out I don’t have to worry about that—inside the classroom, anyway—because it’s finally, finally time for nutrition break.

And I have earned my snack today, believe me.

9

“We can go outside. It stopped raining,” Jared Matthews announces, sounding proud, like he personally changed the weather for us. He is pawing around in his lunch bag for his snack, which will be a large one. Like I said, Jared is the biggest kid in our class.

The whole cubicle room smells weird, like a mixture of food, floor cleaner, and wet jackets, but everyone is still hungry.

“And Jared and me, we’re in charge of the kickballs,” his friend Stanley says, his glasses gleaming. He is wearing
two
plaid shirts today—layers, see?—even though Cynthia once said the shirts he wears makes him look like a walking picnic blanket. But then the girls voted and decided that wasn’t very nice, so Cynthia took it back.

But I gotta tell you, Stanley Washington has
been getting on my nerves lately. Maybe it’s the way he’s always mooching around Jared, acting like the two of them are so much tougher than Corey and Kevin and me.
And
he’s sarcastic.

“Who says you’re in charge?” my friend Kevin asks, challenging Stanley as the rest of the kids churn around them, pushing to get their snacks and escape outside. “You’re not the boss of the kickballs, Stanley.”

“He is if I say he is,” Jared says, standing in the middle of the cubicle room like a rock sticking out of the ocean waves. “Anyway, what do you guys care?” he adds, including me in his glare, even though I haven’t said a word. “You’re gonna be too busy talking about how great
little sisters
are to play anything.”

“Ooh,” Stanley says, laughing. “Cute little Waffle.”

“Her name’s Alfie,” I say, clenching my fists.

Waffle! That’s it for me and sarcastic Stanley.

“Whatever,” Jared says, shrugging as we make our way down the hall. “Sorry, but you guys are just too wimped-out to play with the kickballs today. Especially when we’re playing Extreme Dodgeball, dudes.”

Okay. Plain dodgeball is a real game. Everyone knows that. It has rules and everything, even though the rules can change from place to place. I happen to know this, because the official way we play it at Oak Glen, when we’re being supervised by a playground monitor—and there’s only one now— is not the same way they play it in high school, or even in middle school, for that matter. At Oak Glen, we use soft, bouncy kickballs, not real dodgeballs, and we follow the simplest rules. If you’re hit full-on, without the ball bouncing first, and nobody on your team catches the ball before it hits the ground, you’re o-u-t, out. For good.