EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! (4 page)

3

“Listen, everyone,” Ms. Sanchez calls out two days later. “I’ve decided that this afternoon will be tidying time. I want your cubbies sorted, and the coat closet looking nice, even the lost-and-found box. Oh, and we need all your desktops spray-cleaned and sparkling. I have the supplies over by the sink.”

It is Thursday, P.T.A. meeting day, and we just finished lunch. It started raining again toward the end, so some of the kids who were playing outside—like me and most of the boys—smell like wet sweaters and sweatshirts.

Well, like wet dogs, Cynthia said. And she has a dog, so she should know. A couple of the outside girls are fussing with their damp hair, which seems to have gotten either stringy or frizzy.

What is it with girls and their hair? I don’t see
how they get anything else done in life. You should hear Alfie in the morning, when Mom’s getting her three little braids ready for the day.

“Why?” Jared says, raising his hand a second later. “No one’s gonna see our room, are they?”

“A parent or two might wander by after the meeting,” Ms. Sanchez points out. “And we see it every day, don’t we? Things around here have gotten pretty grubby, if you ask me. Now, let’s all pair up so we can get to work.”

Cynthia raises her hand. “I’ll work with Heather,”
she says after Ms. Sanchez has called on her. “And I think Emma probably wants to work with Annie Pat,” Cynthia continues, as if sorting people out is her job. “And Jared should work with Stanley, because they’re the only ones who can stand each other.”

“That’s just fine,” Ms. Sanchez says, sounding distracted as she heads for the sink. “Keep going, Miss Harbison,” she adds over her shoulder.

“Okay,” Cynthia calls out, looking important. “Well, EllRay should work with Kevin, of course,” she says.

Wait, what?
Of course
? “But I want to work with Corey,” I say, raising my hand—for Cynthia!—and talking at the same time.

See, Corey and I are still playing this game we invented last Saturday, when he spent the night at my house. It’s a version of this really cool hand-held video game we both want for Christmas called
Die, Creature, Die
, only we made up our own story and words and rules. And we were taking turns telling each other more of the made-up story at lunch today. It would be fun to keep on doing it while we
help clean the classroom. Since we have to clean the classroom, I mean.

“But Ms. Sanchez put me in charge,” Cynthia says, like she’s explaining something really obvious. “And you and Kevin
match
, EllRay. You go together.”

We match
.

She means we both have brown skin.

“Now, hold on a second,” Ms. Sanchez says from across the room, actually raising both hands in a
stop-right-there!
kind of way. “No personal comments, if you please.”

She doesn’t just have eyes in the back of her head, she has ears there, too!

“I didn’t say anything bad,” Cynthia mumbles under her breath.

But Ms. Sanchez isn’t letting this one slide. “Using your reasoning, Cynthia, perhaps I should put Corey and Annie Pat together, just because they both have freckles?” she pretend-asks.

And
that’s
not a personal comment?

“Hey,” Annie Pat murmurs, unexpectedly wounded.

WOW!
Didn’t she know she has freckles?

Annie Pat’s cheeks turn pink under the cinnamon sprinkles scattered across her cheeks.

“Yeah,” Emma chimes in. “And I thought Cynthia said Annie Pat was
my
partner. And EllRay wants Corey to be his partner. He just said so.”

Kevin slides me a weird look. I can’t crack the code of it.

Could he have hurt feelings?

But he’s a boy!

It could just as easily have been
Kevin
who came over to spend the night last weekend, only he didn’t. Or Kevin and I could have been the ones playing the made-up version of
Die, Creature, Die
at lunch today. Only we weren’t. Kevin was busy playing Sky-high Foursquare with Jared, Stanley, and Jason Leffer, this other guy in our class. That doesn’t mean we aren’t still friends!

So me wanting to get paired up with Corey today is nothing personal against Kevin. It just happened that way.

Girls always seem sure about who they are friends with, by the way, but it changes a lot. In
fact, they even rank their friends—like who is their first-best friend, their second-best friend, and so on. And the whole class knows every boring detail.
Always
.

With us guys, it’s harder to tell who’s friends or not. But basically, we’re okay with most guys most days. And we all have a couple of friends we really
like
to hang with, like I do with Corey and Kevin.

The three of us are solid. I thought we were, anyway.

There might be some kid one of us is fighting with—but it is always finished in a flash.

Getting over hurt feelings moves faster for boys than for girls, in my opinion. Like water compared to mud.

“Your freckles are absolutely adorable, Annie Pat,” Ms. Sanchez assures her. “I was merely trying to make a point, though I think it got lost somewhere along the way.”

Cynthia whirls to face Kevin. “
Are
you friends with EllRay?” she asks, her hands on her hips. As if that’s the point of this whole thing.

Kevin looks down at his sneakers. “I dunno. I thought so,” he says, but his voice is so quiet that most kids can barely hear it.

I hear it, though. And it makes me feel really bad.

I clear my throat, wondering what I’m about to say.

“Shhh,” Cynthia says, like I’m about to make everything worse—for
her
.

“Hah,” Jared jeers. “Kevin got dumped! Even
EllRay
doesn’t wanna hang with him.”

Hey, wait a second.
“Even EllRay?”

And I didn’t dump anyone!

“They must have had a fight,” Stanley says, jumping in. “Oh, EllRay,” he coos, pretending to be Kevin. “Don’t you
wuv
me anymore?”

“Be quiet,” I tell him. “That never happened.”

I try to catch Kevin’s eye, but no go.

I know Kevin McKinley, though, and I can tell you this much for sure.

In fact, he looks like he’s about to start crying.

And Kevin
never
cries.

How did this hurt feeling stuff happen? So fast, and out of nothing but spray bottles and cleaning rags?

I do not know what to do
.

“This has gotten completely out of hand,” Ms. Sanchez tells us, like we didn’t already know. “But tick-tock, people. We are running out of cleanup time. Kevin, I’m going to ask you to be my special assistant for the afternoon, okay?”

Like that’s supposed to make everything all better.

“Aww,” Cynthia and Heather object at the same
time, because sometimes, being Ms. Sanchez’s special assistant means that you get a Hershey’s Kiss when you’re done. And most girls are nuts for chocolate.

It’s not science, Dad told me once, but it’s true.

“‘Aww,’ nothing,” Ms. Sanchez says, snapping out the words. “Each of you choose a partner
this minute
. And then each of you head over to the sink right now and grab a spray bottle or a cloth. And do a fabulous job.”

“HUP! HUP!”
Stanley Washington says, starting to march in place.

“Stanley,” Ms. Sanchez says, warning him.

“But I meant that in a good way!” Stanley almost yelps.

And you can tell by his face that he’s telling the truth.

“Get going, then,” Ms. Sanchez says, laughing. “Start tidying!”

4

“Tell your mom I’m ready to go, buddy,” Dad tells me on Thursday night, the car keys jingling in his hand. “I don’t want to miss a minute of this meeting.”

Okay. My dad is a big supporter of education,
obviously
, but I think he’s being sarcastic. Having a nice relaxing night at home with the whole family is one of his rules. But tonight, he had to race back early from his college in San Diego and then “bolt down some food,” as he put it, before it was time to leave for the six thirty P.T.A. meeting.

In other words, he wanted to stay home. But when you’re talking parents and schools, here are a few things I’ve been thinking about. It’s my longest list ever.