EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! (13 page)

And I think, for one crazy second, of telling
Stanley
about my dad’s “Mr. G,” and how Stanley should have stuck a G at the end of “nothing,” since we supposedly paid for all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

But I don’t.

I may be doomed, but I’m not
nuts
!

And anyway, Mr. G is Dad’s thing.

Not mine.

17

It is almost time for me to introduce the third grade class. I feel sick to my stomach, knowing the terrible thing that I am supposed to do, only I won’t.

I am sitting on a folding chair backstage next to Miss Myrna, the lady who organizes things that happen in the auditorium. She suspects nothing.

The kindergartners were cute singing “Jingle Bells.” The first-graders did okay singing “Frosty the Snowman,” except before they started, one little guy was so scared that he refused to go onstage. So I let him sit and cry on my folding chair until his class’s song was done. And then he ran onstage to take a huge old bow.

It was like he’d been the star of the show!

Now the striped-muffler-wearing second-graders are finishing their song, “You’re a Mean One, Mr.
Grinch.” The whole audience is laughing, because Mr. Havens—the second grade teacher—is onstage wearing a Mr. Grinch costume. And the littlest girl in their class is dressed up as Cindy Lou Who. They even got her hair right.

The lyrics to that song are really hard, so the second-graders get to hold them while they sing. But during the entire song, Mr. Havens has been creeping around, pretending to scare kids or steal their mufflers or grab their music, while tiny Cindy Lou Who skitters after him.

“Aww,” Miss Myrna coos, clasping her hands as she watches Cindy Lou Who skip across the stage.

This will be a hard act for us third-graders to follow! And
An Oak Glen Winter Wonderland
is already running twelve minutes late. Getting all the kids out of their auditorium seats, up onto the stage, and then back into their seats is what has chewed up the time.

In the front row, Principal James keeps looking at his watch.

You think you have problems
now
, Principal James? What if I was about to break every law in the school system—and maybe the universe—by
shouting out a swear at the very end of the show?

It would be like a meteor crashing through the atmosphere to Earth right here in Oak Glen, California! And becoming a meteorite. Remember?

Only I will never get credit for
not doing
something. Which is not fair.

Maybe I
should
do it? My friend problems would be over if I did.

But my grownup problems would be just beginning.

Also my me problems. They count, too.

Because shouting out the swear would just be
wrong.

Poor Kevin, I think, feeling sorry for him in advance. I mean, he got me into all this. But when I don’t yell out the swear, Jared and Stanley won’t be friends with him anymore. For a while, at least. It will blow over, though.

But—I already did three challenges, right? And I
told
Kevin no dares!

Anyway, Kevin didn’t even come up with this one. It was Jared and Stanley all the way.

Oops. The pre-recorded “Grinch” music is finishing up, even though each kid seems to be singing
a different line. But at least it’s coming to an end.

And the audience
WHOOPS
, claps, and yells like crazy while the second-graders bow funny, fist pump, or curtsey, depending on the kid.

I peek out from behind the curtain and see Ms. Sanchez trying to get our class lined up in the aisle, so they’ll be ready to sprint up to the stage after I announce the final song. The girls are tying the bell straps to their ankles as quietly as they can.

Which isn’t very quietly.

Miss Myrna jabs me between my shoulder blades with a surprisingly sharp finger, which means it’s time for me to do my emcee thing again. I get to my feet and stagger Frankenstein-like to the microphone standing in the middle of the stage.

Talk about not blending in!

“And now,” I say into the mic, “I present to you Ms. Sanchez’s awesome third grade class singing ‘Jingle Bell Rock.’ Come on up, third-graders!”

I’m supposed to join them after they’re all onstage, and then step forward when we’re done, so I can tell the audience good-bye.

Time
finally
seems to switch into slow motion
as my classmates stomp and jangle their way up to the stage. Miss Myrna quickly wrangles the boys—including me—into a line in the back, and she herds the jingly girls to the front. Then she scurries backstage to start our music.

And some little Anza-Borrego earthquake fault splits open in my brain, and I see that this is just one of probably a million times in my life when I will have to make a decision like this.

And each decision I make will belong
only to me
, if I have anything to say about it. Which I will.

My decisions won’t belong to my mom and dad. Not to Corey or Kevin, either. And for sure, not to Jared.

Also, some of those decisions—like this one, maybe?—will be very important.

But the weird thing is, I have a feeling that you can’t always tell at the time how important a decision will be. You can only see it when you look back! So you gotta make each one
on purpose
.

And I have made the right decision.

I wriggle in next to Kevin, changing places with Corey. “Listen, Kev,” I whisper to Kevin. “I want us to be friends again, but I’m not gonna yell out a swear. And you shouldn’t have asked me to, because I already did three challenges.”

Kevin gapes at me. “But EllRay. You have to do it, or else—”

“And this last one wasn’t even your idea,” I interrupt. “And—and
Alfie’s wearing a brand-new angel sweatshirt
,” I say, the words tumbling out of nowhere. “She was dancing in the aisle during the
last song, dude! She thinks she’s at a
rock concert
.”

Kevin has a soft spot for Alfie. Don’t ask me why.

“
Shhh
,” a few girls say, half-turning to glare at us as we wait for the music to begin.

“I just wanted to give you a heads-up, Kev,” I tell him. “Out of my complete and total respect for you.”

But he just looks at me like all hope is lost.

Sorry, Kevin. It’s been fun being friends with you, dog. And I was looking forward to teaching you
Die, Creature, Die
, so we could all play it together.

Our music starts.

18

“Hey, buddy,” Dad says, poking his head into my room at ten-thirty p.m. on Christmas Eve. “Too excited to sleep? I can hear the wheels turning in here.”

This means he can supposedly hear me thinking. Of course he can’t, but it’s true that my brain is buzzing. Today has been packed so full that I am numb.

And it’s true, I cannot fall asleep.

It rained all day, but that didn’t slow us down much—though Alfie worried aloud about Santa’s reindeer slipping tonight on our wet tile roof. Dad didn’t calm her down any when he joked that Santa might sue us if he fell.

“Don’t say that, Dad,” she said. “He might be
wistening.
”

Which is Alfie-speak for listening.

“I guess I’m excited about Christmas,” I tell my dad. “But I also feel kind of—”

“Sad? Nervous?” Dad says, trying out a couple of sentence endings for me.

I nod my head the best that I can on my pillow.

It’s hard to explain my mixed-up feelings. But my dad seems to understand.

“I remember that feeling,” Dad says. “You’re nervous that maybe you won’t get what you want tomorrow. Or even if you do, you’re sad in advance because Christmas morning will be over so fast.”

“And I’m
not
sure about what I got for Mom,” I tell him. “That napkin holder with the chickens painted on it, remember? I don’t think it’s good enough.”

“Listen, son,” my dad says, sitting on the edge of my bed. “Nothing is good enough for your mom, because she’s the absolute best. She’s our queen. But she’s going to love it. It will go right on the kitchen table, just you wait and see.”

“She would pretend, though,” I say. “I want her to
really
like it.”

“Well, you have no control over that, EllRay,”
Dad says, laughing. “None of us does. But that’s Christmas for you! Maybe all we can do is to try hard, and then
hope
for the best. Did I ever tell you about my most perfect Christmas ever? The year I got exactly what I wanted, and then some?”

“Nuh-uh,” I say, shaking my head in the dark as Dad settles in next to me, on top of the covers.

I love my dad’s stories about when he was a kid.

“It must have been, oh, when I was nine years old, just a year older than you are now. And the biggest ‘wow’ toy that Christmas was the Nintendo Entertainment System.” He sighs, remembering. “It was really expensive,” he says. “Something like one hundred and fifty dollars, which was a
lot
back then. And the games were forty or fifty dollars each. I don’t know.”

“That’s a lot even today,” I point out. “I mean,
really
a lot.”