EllRay Jakes Is Magic (3 page)

“Or else we can be absent that day,” Fiona says, probably thinking aloud.

“No fair, Fiona,” I tell her. “Even girls with weak ankles can be talented at
something.
And if you’re not here, we’ll nominate you for the tryouts for sure. We’ll say you want to—to
juggle
for the
tryouts. Juggle raw eggs! And then you’ll have to do it! And clean up afterward, too.”

“Cool,” Stanley says, laughing.

“That’s just mean,” Fiona says, tears springing into her eyes—which
is
one of her talents, come to think of it. But, like doing good art or bending your fingers funny, crying wouldn’t show up very well in our auditorium.

Which, remember, will be full of possibly whiskery sixth grade boys.

I am the shortest kid in our class, by the way, and I look
TINY
next to those guys. My dad keeps promising that I’ll grow, but
when
?

“So show up,” I tell Fiona. “And everyone think of some fake talent you can do. Then five people can sacrifice themselves for the tryouts—but not the talent show, don’t worry—before school starts Monday morning.”

“Are we gonna draw names out of a hat?” Corey asks, his brow wrinkling. He’s kind of a stressball sometimes, but like I said, he’s cool. And he’s my best friend. He has three hundred freckles, he told me once.

“If we have to,” I say. “At least that way we’ll be
the ones in charge. That’s the important thing.”

“If you say so, EllRay,” Corey says, trying to be loyal.

“
Doink, doink, doink
,” Jared whispers again, fiddling with his—
my
—invisible crown.

“You got a better idea?” I challenge him.

“I guess not,” Jared admits, shrugging.

“Then put on your thinking cap this weekend,” I say as the buzzer sounds, using one of Ms. Sanchez’s favorite expressions. “If you even have one, that is.”

“Excellent,” Corey murmurs, low-fiving me as we head for class like those little iron filings being pulled by a magnet, which we did in Science Activities once. I forget why.

We’re the iron filings in this comparison, and Ms. Sanchez’s class is the magnet.

But this time, the iron filings are going to be in charge—for once.

3

Alfie and I get up early on Saturday mornings and eat cereal in front of the TV while Mom and Dad sleep late. We take turns choosing DVDs or TV shows. Today it is Alfie’s Saturday to choose, which is why we are watching
Pink Princess Fairies.
I’m just glad Jared and Stanley can’t see me now. I would never live this down.

Alfie frowns. “I think I saw this one before,” she says, pointing at the TV screen with her dripping spoon.

“How can you tell? They’re all the same,” I say, after slurping down the last of my cereal milk from the bowl.

“They’re
not
all the same,” Alfie argues, scowling.

“Sure they are,” I say. “The littlest pink princess fairy always gets into trouble, and the bigger ones
save her. And that baby dragon always shows up, too.”

“But it’s different
kinds
of twouble,” Alfie points out. “And the fairies wear different outfits every time.”

“But they’re always pink and sparkly outfits,” I say.

“Or else they wouldn’t be
pink princess fairies
,” she explains. “Duh!”

Alfie is four years old, and she is my one and only sister. Her real first name is Alfleta. That is
the Old Saxon word for “beautiful elf.” Why Old Saxon, which my father told me hasn’t been spoken in more than a thousand years? It’s because of my mom and those romantic books she writes. And when Alfie was born—I was four years old—Mom said that was her new baby girl’s name, period.

I think a lady who has just had a baby gets the biggest vote on what to name it, so my dad didn’t argue.

And Alfie
did
look like a golden brown elf. She still does, a little. She’s really cute, but I don’t tell her that very often. She’s bad enough. Besides, my mom says girls shouldn’t only get praised for being cute.

“Anyway,” Alfie says, as if that’s what we’ve been talking about all along, “I’m going out with you and Dad this morning when you do your chores.”

“You’re not,” I say, keeping my voice matter-of-fact and calm, which usually works with her. “You and Mom do girl chores on Saturdays, and me and Dad do—”

“You have to let me come with you and Daddy, EllWay, or it’s against the law,” Alfie says. “You can’t
gang up against girls. Suzette Monahan says so.”

Suzette Monahan is one of Alfie’s best friends and worst enemies at Kreative Learning and Playtime Daycare. And yes, I know they spelled “creative” wrong.

Suzette is what my mom calls “a real handful.” “Nobody is ganging up on anyone around here,” I tell my sister, stacking our cereal bowls. “You and Mom do fun girl stuff on Saturdays, and Dad and I do . . .”

I don’t finish my sentence, because I can’t exactly claim that what Dad and I do on Saturday mornings is
FUN
. We do not have a lot in common. My dad is a college professor and a geology scientist, see, and his brain is usually busy thinking about stuff like radio isotopes, which he says tell us how old rocks are. And I’m just an eight-year-old kid. I think about my two favorite basketball teams, the Lakers and the Clippers, and scoring snacks, and funny videos starring cats and dogs. We can’t have a pet because Alfie’s allergic.

We try to have fun, though. And I like hanging out with Dad. I kind of spy on him, in fact—but not
in a creepy way—to see how a man does things.

My dad never loses stuff, for example. I’m exactly the opposite.

But even a brainy geology scientist has other things to do. We almost always do three errands and then have one secret Saturday treat. We usually go to the hardware store, because my dad likes to fix stuff, and the plant nursery, because he grows roses, and then we go to a yard sale or two. My dad says you never know when someone’s going to toss out some interesting rocks or crystals.

Once, Dad even found a little meteorite mixed in with a bunch of marbles and stuff in a shoe box lid on a card table! That was cool, because meteorites are pretty rare. The meteorite Dad found was the size of a peanut. It looked like a twisted piece of rusty metal. But instead, it was basically a visitor from outer space, Dad said. Only luckily, not the
DROOLLY
kind with fangs you see in scary movies I sort of like.

See, my dad told me once that a meteorite is a natural object that falls to earth from outer space, which is enough all by itself to make a person nervous. I’m never telling stressball Corey about rusty
peanut-shaped meteorites falling from outer space, that’s for sure!

Meteorites can either be “falls” or “finds,” my dad says. A “fall” is a meteor you actually see falling from the sky, and they are pretty rare—which is good or else you might get bashed when it comes down. A “find” is a meteorite that came down sometime in the past, maybe hundreds of years ago. Or thousands.

Or yesterday, if you live in Siberia, even though Dad says it’s just a coincidence that so many land there.

The secret treat my dad and I get every Saturday is one doughnut each, which is the reason Alfie can’t come with us. She could not keep quiet about eating a doughnut for more than a minute, tops, and my mom’s really into healthy foods.

Well, my dad and I are too, officially. But this is only once a week. It’s a guy thing we do together, and I want to keep it that way.

I go out alone with Mom sometimes, too, usually to lunch or to a movie that she doesn’t want Alfie to see. And Alfie sometimes goes out with Dad. She gets all dressed up, too. You should see her.

“You and Dad eat cookies when you go out,” Alfie says like she’s accusing me,
Pink Princess Fairies
forgotten for the moment. “There was chocolate on your shirt when you came home last week, EllWay.”

My sister the master detective!

My sister the chocolate hound is more like it. Chocolate is Alfie’s favorite food group.

“Okay, maybe we had
a cookie
,” I fib, pretending to admit it. “One cookie, Alfie, with chocolate on top. But if we ever do it again, I’ll bring one home for you.”

“Me and Mom have to go to the farmer’s market,” Alfie says with a pout, not giving it up. “And all I get is fwee samples of fwoot.”

That’s “free samples of fruit,” in Alfie-speak.

“Listen, Alfie,” I tell my little sister. “I promise I’ll bring home something good for you today, okay? From one of Dad’s yard sales?”

“But not a rock,” Alfie warns me.

“Not a rock.”

“Something chocolate?” Alfie asks, hope making her shiny brown eyes look even bigger than they already do.

“Or even something
Barbie
,” I promise. “Or some jewels.”

Alfie is big into used jewelry these days, the junkier and shinier the better. She likes to glue it on stuff. My mom says she’s being creative.

“You won’t forget?” she asks.

“Nuh-uh,” I say, getting ready to bail on
Pink Princess Fairies
once and for all.

There’s usually a tangle of messed-up jewelry somewhere at a yard sale.

“Then okay,” Alfie says. “And I’ll bwing you fwoot.”

“Deal,” I tell her, and we shake hands on it.

4