Ellray Jakes Walks the Plank (7 page)

“No fair,” Kevin shouts to Jared and Stanley. He is still mad about them hogging the kick balls, I guess. “You can’t start playing now, you guys. It’s too late.”

“That’s right, you can’t,” I say, backing Kevin up. “Kids have already been tagged. You have to wait for the next game.”

“Try and stop us, losers,” Jared yells back. “We can play if we want to!”

“Yeah,” Cynthia calls out, kissing up to Jared for no reason—except to be mean to me, maybe. “You’re not the boss of the world, EllRay Jakes.”

Like I want to be!

And
BOOM
. The kids who are left—
and
Jared and Stanley and his freckles—are running across the playground, trying to escape the octopus arms reaching out to tag them.

Stanley is the first one tagged, but Jared is
zigzagging back and forth like a champion football player. He’s pretty far away from me, though.

It will be so not fair if he wins this game of Octopus Tag! I was the one who thought of it, and he cheated by not starting to play until it was almost over.

But here comes Cynthia, and she’s heading straight toward me.

Cynthia, who said Zip was “only a goldfish.”

Cynthia, who said she would never ask me to take care of
anything
.

Cynthia, who told everyone that I was the one who took home
Treasure Island.

Cynthia, who just said, “You’re not the boss of the world, EllRay Jakes.”

And so I decide to stop Cynthia Harbison, no matter what.

I have to, to make things come out even.

All this thinking happens in about two seconds, and—
perfect.
Cynthia’s not even looking at me, she’s so worried about getting tagged by Emma
McGraw. So I reach toward Cynthia as if my arm has sudden elastic super-powers, and—
grab
.

“Gotcha,” I shout, but Cynthia’s not giving in without a fight, even though she’s been tagged. She tries to pull away.

“You didn’t get me,” she says.

Doesn’t she know the rules? I’m still touching her!

“
GOTCHA
,” I say again, not letting go of her pink sweater sleeve, but she starts spinning around and around me. She is still not giving up.

“
Grrr
,” she growls, baring her teeth and everything.

What is her problem?

“I won!” I hear Jared shout in the distance, and that just makes me angrier.

“You’re
got
,” I yell at Cynthia, still not letting go, because she really is the kind of person who might tell everyone that I didn’t tag her at all. And that is not going to happen no matter
who
says he has already won.

There can’t be two cheaters in one game, or what is the point of playing the game at all? Even one cheater ruins things!

By now, though, it’s a tug-of-war between Cynthia and me over her sweater sleeve, which is stretching out with elastic super-powers of its own as we whirl around and around in a circle. “Let
go
,” Cynthia says, gasping out the words. “You never tagged me, EllRay. I was winning!”

“I’m tagging you right now,” I argue, dizzy and panting. “Hold still!”

“Let go!”

And all of a sudden I
do
let go, by accident, and she goes crashing onto the playground pavement.

“Owww,” Cynthia cries, curling up into a ball,
and everyone comes running, including the playground monitor, of course—because Cynthia has become an instant sympathy magnet.

“Oh, you poor thing,” some other girl says.

“Are you okay?”

“What
happened
?” kids are asking as the playground monitor quickly checks Cynthia over—for any cuts needing stitches, or broken bones, I guess.

But there is only a tiny bit of blood on one of Cynthia’s knees. Just a speck or two, really. Not even specks. Dots is more like it.

“Aaack!” Cynthia screams, seeing the blood on her barely skinned knee. “EllRay wrecked me!”

“I did not,” I say, trying to defend myself. “It was an accident! We were playing a game. And you were trying to
CHEAT
.”

“You did
so
wreck her,”
Heather Patton says, trying to show Cynthia how loyal she is. “Now she’ll probably have a scab, and then a scar. And she was
perfect
before. Just perfect! And now she’ll never be perfect again!”

“
Waaah
,” Cynthia cries, hearing this.

I personally think that this is going a little far, saying that Cynthia Harbison used to be perfect,
ever
. But the kids standing around us seem so excited by this drama, and so grossed out by the microscopic blood on Cynthia’s knee, that no one says anything to defend me.

Including Kevin, Corey, Emma, or Annie Pat.

And including me.

Because—what is there to say?

I messed up again.

“You two sit there,” the playground monitor says to Cynthia and me, sounding both angry and worried as she points to two chairs outside the principal’s office. The principal’s door is open, but he’s probably in the hallway, jumping out and saying
“Hi!”
to unsuspecting kids coming in from lunch. “Mrs. Tollefsen can slap a bandage on that knee for you when she gets back from the ladies room,” the monitor tells Cynthia, talking about our school secretary. “The nurse isn’t here on Thursdays.”

It is obvious from the look on her face that Cynthia does not like this news about the missing school nurse one bit. “She’s
not
?” she squawks. “But this could be serious!”

Yeah, right. A “serious” skinned knee with three tiny dots of blood on it. Okay, maybe four.

“I think you should call my mom,” Cynthia says, tears filling her eyes again.

My dad calls this “turning on the waterworks” when Alfie does it.

“We’ll let Mrs. Tollefsen decide about calling your mother,” the playground monitor tells Cynthia, peeking at her watch. “I have to get to class. Do you think you two can control yourselves for a couple of minutes?”

“Yes,” I mumble.

“I guess,” Cynthia says, scootching her chair away from mine an inch or two—so she won’t be infected by my badness. Or in case I start whirling her around again.

And all of a sudden we are alone.

Cynthia turns and stares at me. “You are in so much trouble, EllRay Jakes,” she says. “Hitting a girl so hard that she falls over and bleeds.”

WHAT?

“I didn’t hit you, and you know it,” I say, because somebody has to tell the truth around here. “Just saying stuff doesn’t make it true, Cynthia. We were playing Octopus Tag. I tagged you,
but you wouldn’t stay tagged. That’s all that happened.”

“Nuh-uh,” Cynthia says, shaking her head. “You went after me for no reason, and you hit me so hard that I fell on the ground. And
now
look at me,” she says in a wobbly voice, pointing to her knee. “I’m wrecked, just like Heather said. And so is my poor, stretched-out pink sweater, which was brand-new last year. You
owe
me.”

“You know it didn’t happen like that, Cynthia,” I say, trying to keep my own voice steady. “I never went after you. And I
had
to tag you. We were playing Octopus Tag!
That’s why they call it tag
. You were running right at me. You didn’t see me, that’s all.”

“Well, but you didn’t have to hold onto my sweater the way you did,” Cynthia says, petting its saggy sleeve like it’s a little lost kitten.

“But you were gonna cheat,” I argue. “You kept saying I never tagged you!”

“So what?” Cynthia says. “Making someone bleed is a lot worse than not playing some stupid game right,
EllRay
.”

“I didn’t make you bleed,” I say. “You fell. It was an accident, and you know it.”

“
They
won’t know that,” Cynthia says, her voice very loud and clear, and I can feel my heart slither down to my shoes, because—the grown-ups might believe her.
Everyone
might believe her sooner or later, even the kids who saw the real thing happen with their own eyes.

I’m starting to think that’s the way things are in the world.

“
Who
won’t know that it was an accident, Miss Harbison?” a man’s voice asks, and Cynthia and I both look up.

It’s the principal, and he’s been in his office the whole time! And the door was open!

He heard
everything
.

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

Cynthia jumps to her feet, even though no one told us yet that we could get up. “This bad boy was mean to me on the playground for no reason,” she says, pointing her finger at me.

Okay. Cynthia knows the principal heard what she said, but she still thinks she might pull this off.

“Look,” Cynthia says to the principal, showing him her skinned knee—as if it must be proof of
something
.

“Mrs. Tollefson will take care of that scrape in a minute or two,” the principal says, barely giving Cynthia’s knee a glance. “Why don’t you two come into my office and sit down?”

This sounds like a question, but it isn’t. So Cynthia and I don’t make any suggestions of
different activities to do. We follow the principal into his office.

I already know the way, unfortunately, but I think this is Cynthia’s first time—unless she’s been there to get a medal for being perfect or something.