Ellray Jakes Walks the Plank (6 page)

“The cutest one?”

“
You
know,” Alfie says, sounding sad. “Like, there’s a funniest kid in every class, and a smartest kid, and a best jumper, and the one who’s the cutest?
It’s just the name you get, EllWay,” she explains.

“Oh. Yeah,” I say. “The name you get. Kind of like with grown-ups, and what jobs they have. ‘The teacher.’ ‘The doctor.’ Stuff like that.”

“I used to be the cutest,” Alfie tells me, ignoring what I said about grown-ups’ jobs. “But now, Suzette says I’m the meanest and
she’s
the cutest.”

“Suzette doesn’t get to decide,” I tell Alfie, trying to make her feel better.

“Yes she does,” Alfie says. “Because the other kids do whatever she wants.”

“That makes Suzette the bossiest, not the cutest,” I say, laughing. “But don’t tell
her
that, or you’ll get sent home with another note for sure.”

“Okay,” Alfie says. “I won’t tell her that. I’ll think it, though. And I’ll always get to be the cutest one at home, right?” she asks. “And you can be the cutest one’s brother.”

“Okay,” I say, getting back to my game.

But later that night, when I think about what Alfie said, I think she’s kind of right. Everybody is something.

But it’s more than that.
Who
you are changes depending on
where
you are. Like here at home Alfie is everybody’s “baby girl,” and Mom is the lady who loves us all, no matter what we do, and Dad is the smart, strong guy who needs peace and quiet when he first gets home. He is also strict, but he loves us, too. A lot. And I’m the fun kid who likes to do stuff, and who only
sometimes
gets in trouble.

Everyone likes me at our house. I’m very popular here.

But at school, Jared and Stanley
don’t
like me, at least some of the time, and neither do Cynthia and Heather—most of the time. At least I don’t think they do.

At school, you don’t get to choose the name you get, and you can’t argue about it. It just
is.

In the third grade at Oak Glen Primary School, Jared and Cynthia are usually the mean ones, like I said before, and Cynthia is also the bossy one, so she gets to be two things at school—both of them bad, in my opinion. But at home, Jared’s mom and dad probably don’t think he’s mean. Maybe they think he’s the quiet one in the family, or the
hardest one to wake up in the morning, or something else. The point is, maybe he has a different name there.

I don’t know
what
Cynthia’s parents think. I feel sorry for them, that’s all.

And to give you another example, Kry Rodriguez is the smartest kid in both math and spelling at school, but maybe at home she talks back to her parents or forgets to take out the trash. Probably not, but maybe.

At school, Fiona McNulty is the best artist, and she is also the shyest kid in the third grade—but maybe at home she’s the funniest person in her family, or the loudest.

At school, my friend Corey is the kid who’s the most afraid of math, especially mental math and standing-at-the-board math, but at home he’s the champion swimmer who has to be fed exactly the right food to keep him in smooth operating condition. And he’s brave during swim meets. He never cries. Some kids do, he told me once.

Those are just a few examples of what I’m talking about.

But what about me, when I’m at school? I
have always wanted to be the funniest kid in my class, the boy who other guys wanted to be friends with, since I can’t be the
TALLEST
or the
STRONGEST
—which honestly would be my first choices, if I got to pick. But now, I’m starting to be known as the third-grade kid who messes up.

Like I said before, you don’t get to choose.

Once you’re away from home, stuff chooses you.

I don’t remember what April was like last year, it was so long ago. But this April has been very mixed-up in Oak Glen. Rainy, sunny, rainy, cloudy, windy, rainy, rainy.

And that’s just in the past week!

It’s like they put a little kid like Alfie in charge of the weather.

Today, Thursday, it rained all morning, but now the sun has come out and we get to have our afternoon recess outside.

FINALLY
.

It seems like it has been days since we played outside, and our legs are jumpy. Also, the air in our classroom has been almost used up, in my opinion. What’s left smells like floor cleaner, dry erase markers, pencil shavings, and old tuna sandwiches, all mixed up.

“Come
on
, EllRay,”
Corey says, his freckles looking like polka dots on his face, he is so excited. “We gotta grab a kick ball before they’re all gone, for once.”

“Yeah,” Kevin says, with his usual serious look on his face. Kevin and I are alike in many ways. For example, we are the only black kids in our class, not counting two very quiet girls who are friends from church and who pretty much stick together. Kevin is a lot more careful and calm about things than I am, though. He never loses library books or forgets to get permission slips signed, and he has never had to go to the principal’s office in his life. Not once.

But even though we hurry as fast as we can, Jared and Stanley reach the big net of kick balls first. Jared has rounded up all five of the balls like they’re a bunch of red rubber eggs and he is the rooster in charge of guarding them.

“Sorry, losers,” he shouts at us. “But we’re practicing our kicking today, and we need all the balls.” And his friend Stanley grins and gives us the thumbs-down sign with one of his
hands, and the loser sign on his forehead with the other—which you’re not allowed to do at our school, but he does it anyway. And of course no one catches him. The playground monitor is way over at the other end of the playground. She is busy trying to talk on her cellphone and show a bunch of confused-looking first-graders how to play Capture the Flag at the same time, so
she
can’t help us.

“Well, who even cares about kick balls?” Kevin shouts back, even though I know he does care,
because he wanted to practice his kicking, too. I’m not sure why. Probably to improve his soccer skills.

“Yeah,” I yell. “And anyway, we’re gonna play Octopus Tag, and you can’t!”

“Don’t even want to.” Jared’s voice floats back over the heads of the jumping-rope girls, who are chanting “
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
” as they bounce up and down. Boys would get strangled if they tried that. But Jared sounds a little less sure of himself than before, because
OCTOPUS TAG
is our class’s newest fun discovery.

I guess different people play it different ways, but here’s how we play.

1. One person is the octopus, and the other kids stand far away in a line, and then they try to run past whoever the octopus is without getting tagged.

2. Whoever does get tagged has to sit or stand where they were tagged, and not move. Then they try to tag someone else when the kids run by the next time.

3. Pretty soon there are a whole bunch of kids helping
the octopus–they are his or her extra “arms”—and they try to tag the kids who are left as they run by.

4. And the kid who doesn’t get tagged is the winner!

It’s really fun, only the more kids the better.

“Who wants to be the octopus?” Kevin asks, looking around.

“I do,” Corey says, grinning. And so a bunch of kids—including me—run to the other side of the playground. Even some of the jumping-rope girls join us, because this is a perfect day for Octopus Tag. It’s the kind of day when you could just keep on running forever! The clouds are puffy and white, like in cartoons, and the wind is blowing them around. I think the wind is just as happy as we are.

Jared and Stanley watch us get ready to start the game. I guess they’re not having as much fun hogging the kick balls as they thought they would, since nobody else wants them.

“Okay, go!” Corey says, and we run toward him screaming our heads off as we try to get past without getting tagged. But Corey is a very good
athlete—he’s the champion swimmer, remember—and he tags two kids, Kevin and one of the church friends.

By now, Stanley looks like he wishes he could play Octopus Tag, too, but I think he’s scared to leave Jared-the-rooster standing there all alone.

The second time we run screaming across the playground, Kevin almost tags me. He just barely misses my arm, in fact. But Emma, Fiona, and another kid I don’t know very well get tagged, so now the octopus has lots of arms. Twelve, I think.

And I
do
get caught the next time we run across the playground—by Fiona, of all people, who blushes when she touches me and says, “Sorry, EllRay.”

Like I said before, she’s shy.

“That’s okay,” I say, panting a little as I freeze in place.

By now, there are only a few kids left who haven’t been tagged, including Cynthia, Heather, and Kry. But all of a sudden Jared and Stanley are standing with them, getting ready to run.

Oh.
Now
they want to play.