Ellray Jakes Walks the Plank (3 page)

“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.”

“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
.”

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
!