EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken (6 page)

“Enlighten” sounds like Ms. Sanchez wants Heather to make us all turn white, which most of my class already is, basically, except for me, Kevin, and two very quiet girls who go to the same church, not mine.

Or else it sounds like our teacher wants Heather to make us light as feathers so we could float up to the ceiling, which would be cool, but no such luck. That's not what Ms. Sanchez means. What “enlighten us” really means is to shine a light on something, only a pretend light, not a real light. In other words, she wants Heather to explain to us what silt is.

I know this, but I do not raise my hand. I don't want to make Jared and Stanley any madder at me than they already are, which they will be if they think I'm showing off by acting smart in class.

“I don't know,” Heather mumbles again.

“Anyone?” Ms. Sanchez asks, but no one raises their hand. Not even Kry.

Ms. Sanchez starts to pull her big blue dictionary from the shelf.
“Look it up!”
she usually says when a strange word comes along.

Like every minute, practically.

But all of a sudden, Fiona McNulty slowly raises her hand. This is something that she hardly ever does, because she is the shyest kid in class.

“Yes, Fiona?” Ms. Sanchez says, trying to hide her surprise.

Fiona closes her eyes before she speaks, as if she is about to get a shot at the doctor's office. “Silt is like this teeny tiny dirt that the water moves around, and when the water goes away, the tiny dirt kind of piles up all over the place,” she says, squeaking out the words. “My grandpa lives near the Colorado River,” she adds, opening one eye as she explains how she knows such an unusual thing.

“Well, that's basically correct,” Ms. Sanchez says, after checking her notes once more. “Very good, Fiona.”

Fiona blushes.

“And so here is our experiment, people,” Ms. Sanchez says. “We have eight glass jars with lids, filled up almost to the top with water, and we have eight mystery soil samples to work with.”

Teachers always use words like “mystery” when they are trying to make something boring sound interesting.

“But—there are twenty-four kids in our class,” Cynthia objects, looking around.

“So how many students will be on each mudshake team?” Ms. Sanchez asks, peeking at her watch. “Tick-tock, people.”

“Tick-tock” means “hurry up,” when she says it like this.

We all look at Kry. “Three,” she says.

“Correct,” Ms. Sanchez tells us. “So listen as I call out the teams.”

“Emma, Jared, and EllRay,” she finally says.

Well, it could have been worse, I remind myself. It could have been Stanley, Jared, and EllRay.

“I want each team to carefully pour its mystery soil sample into its water jar,” Ms. Sanchez calls out, still reading from her notes.

We let Emma do the pouring, of course, because she's a girl, and girls are always neat. Neater than boys, anyway.

“Now,” Ms. Sanchez says, “I am going to come around and add a spoonful of alum to each jar before you start shaking it.”

“
AL
-
um
,” she pronounces it.

Across the room, Annie Pat raises her hand. “Why?” she asks. “What's alum?”

Like I said before, Annie Pat and Emma love science, and they are always full of questions whenever our class does something the least bit scientific.

But that's okay, because it uses up the time.

Ms. Sanchez sighs, as if she was afraid Annie Pat or Emma would ask this question. “Alum has something to do with aluminum,” she says. “And for some reason, it makes the soil samples separate more easily into their varying layers of sand, silt, and clay, which will help our experiment. But I'd appreciate it if you'd look up ‘
alum
' for us tonight, Annie Pat, and fill us all in first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” Annie Pat tells her, looking important as she writes down her own personal assignment.

Ms. Sanchez adds a spoonful of white stuff—alum—to each glass jar. “Now stir,” she tells us, and Emma hands me the Popsicle stick as if stir- ring things up is obviously my kind of job. So I do it, because who cares?

“Lids on,” Ms. Sanchez says, “and shake!”

That's going to be
Jared's
job, of course. Jared the mighty, Jared the strong.

In about two seconds, he crams the lid on the jar wrong, turns toward me, and starts shaking the mud-filled jar hard, hard, hard.

He practically aims it at me.

Without holding down the lid.

And—FLOOIE! There is mud—components of soil, I mean—all over my best, almost-new T-shirt that has a San Diego Padres logo on it and everything. San Diego is the largest city near Oak Glen.

It is the very same T-shirt I was supposed to wear to the Sycamore Shopping Center this afternoon with my little sister Alfie and my mom, who was going to buy me a corn dog because I got almost all of my Monday spelling words right, for once.

It is the T-shirt Jared looks at with hungry eyes whenever I wear it.

“Oh, no!” Emma cries, holding her cheeks with both hands like the kid in that old movie.

“Oops,” Jared says, with the happiest look in the world on his big dumb face. “Sorry, EllRay.”

And it's only Wednesday
morning.

It is now noon, and even though the top half of me is covered with mud, or—excuse me—
soil
, I have made it almost halfway through the week without getting into trouble.

Disneyland, here I come!
Maybe
.

“Did Jared throw mud at you this morning on purpose?” Kevin McKinley asks me.

“Huh?” I say. We are the only ones sitting at the third grade boys' lunch table so far. When the bell rang, I ran outside fast, so I could finish my lunch early and then go wash my hands for half an hour.

I guess Kevin was just hungry.

Kevin takes a big bite of his big sandwich, chews slowly, swallows the bite, and then takes a long swig of his chocolate milk without even using a straw.

Milk dribbles down my shirt whenever I try that, but I guess today it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Kevin clears his throat. “Corey said that Emma told him it looked like Jared threw that mud on you on purpose during the experiment,” he says, and he gets ready to take another bite of his sandwich.

Wow! I didn't know news traveled so fast around here. Or that boys listened to girls. “Why would Jared do that?” I ask, not really answering Kevin's question.

“'Cause he's mean?” Kevin guesses, his mouth full again.

Corey slides onto the bench. “Who's mean?” he asks, opening his lunch sack and peering eagerly into it—even though he's already eaten half of what was inside. All that's probably left is a sack of carrot sticks and the same box of raisins his mom keeps packing every day, even though Corey never eats them.

Those raisins are practically
antiques
.

But don't worry, we'll share our food with him.

“News flash. Jared's mean,” Kevin says, filling him in.

“Duh,” Corey says, making a face. “Emma says she thought you were going to sock Jared right in the mouth this morning, EllRay.”

“Only he's so short he couldn't
reach
my mouth,” Jared said, flinging himself so hard onto the bench on the other side of the table that everything shakes: table, benches, antique raisins, little sacks of carrot sticks, us. “EllRay socking me,” he sneers in a loud voice. “Like that's gonna happen. Right, Stanley?”

“Right,” Stanley says, sliding in next to him.

“You sound kind of like a robot, Stanley,” Kevin says thoughtfully, after taking another slurp of his chocolate milk.

Everyone at the table—even Jared and Stanley—is quiet for a second, because Kevin is nearly as big as Jared, so what does that mean in terms of a possible fight? And Kevin is one of those guys who almost never gets mad, but when he does, watch out.

“You got a problem with me, McKinley?” Jared finally asks, because everyone is waiting for him to say
something
.

“Not yet,” Kevin says calmly, and he takes another bite of his sandwich.

I wish I could say something like that. Maybe if I was bigger, a
lot
bigger, like half a person bigger, I could.

This talk between Kevin and Jared was almost worth sticking around to hear, but my plan to avoid getting whacked on Wednesday has now been ruined—because I'm sitting here with Jared Matthews and Stanley Washington instead of being in the bathroom washing my hands, and Kevin McKinley can't be
everywhere
, not for the whole rest of the day.

Or the two school days left in the week.

“Oops,” Jared says, and then—
after
he says “
Oops
”—he knocks his open carton of milk in my direction. The milk splashes on my peanut butter sandwich and floods the table. It creeps toward the edge of the table—where it will look like I wet my pants if it dribbles onto my lap.

And so even though I don't want to, I scramble to my feet to get out of its way.

“Look at EllRay run,” Jared says, laughing, even though I haven't run anywhere—
yet.

Everyone waits for me to say something or do something to get even with Jared, but I just clamp my mouth shut and think about Disneyland.

It better be worth it
.

“
BUK, BUK, BUK,
” Jared murmurs softly, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Dude, you owe him lunch,” Kevin says, and
SWOOP!
He grabs the sandwich from Jared's big square paw and hands it over to me.