Super Emma (4 page)

EllRay comes up to me in the cloakroom right after the bell rings for lunch. I pretend that I am busy trying to find my lunch in my backpack, but I can see Jared and Stanley watching him from the doorway. EllRay looks nervous, but he straightens his big football shirt and says, “Mind your own business next time, stupid.”

Stupid
. That’s what Jared called EllRay yesterday.

I feel like telling EllRay,
“Sure, I’ll mind my own business—as soon as you stop acting like such a baby around Jared Matthews.”
But I don’t.

I don’t apologize for embarrassing him yesterday,
either—because I don’t feel like it anymore. Who cares if EllRay was embarrassed?

“Did you hear me?” EllRay asks, after a quick look over his skinny shoulder tells him that Jared and Stanley are still watching us.

“Yeah, I heard you,
Lancelot
,” I hear myself say. “And you can save your own doll, next time.”

Wow, I didn’t know I could be so mean! A couple of kids nearby whisper, excited.

EllRay blushes. “Huh. I’d rather be called
‘Lancelot’ than ‘Super Emma’ any day,” he says, which doesn’t make any sense at all. But EllRay
looks
as though it makes sense, or he tries to. “And anyway,” he adds, “it’s not a doll, it’s an action figure.”

“That’s just stupid,” I say, echoing the same word EllRay just used on me.

“You’re the one who’s stupid, stupid,” EllRay zips back.

“No, you are. Why are you so scared of Jared, anyway?” I ask.

Uh-oh. Now, EllRay looks like he
really
hates me. But instead of answering my question, he just whirls around and stomps away.

“Well,
I’m
scared of Jared,” Annie Pat whispers to me. I was so busy fighting that I didn’t even see her standing there.

“Not me,” I say, but it is a lie. Because who wouldn’t be afraid of a kid who makes little kinder-gartners cry, telling them they can’t use the drinking fountain—unless they hop on one leg first?

Or who wouldn’t be afraid of a kid who got sent to the office for coloring the end of Fiona’s long, light-brown braid with a purple felt-tip marker?

Or who wouldn’t be afraid of
a kid who made a first-grader wet his pants because he wouldn’t let him use the bathroom? And then Jared called him “Wetsy” for the rest of the week.

Or who wouldn’t be afraid of a kid who makes you give him your dessert if it looks better than his? I heard he did that to Corey once in the second grade, when Corey brought a piece of birthday cake to school. With a yellow frosting rose on it.

It’s not just that Jared (or Jar-Head, which is my secret name for him) is the biggest and strongest kid in the third grade, even though that is true. But I think he is a kid who likes to do mean things for no reason. It’s as though Jared thinks that other kids are just there for him to have fun with. As if we’re not real or something.

But
I’m
real, so that proves he’s wrong.

“Let’s go eat,” Annie Pat says, nudging me with her freckled elbow.

“Where?” I ask her. Nobody will eat with us now, I guess, so we are running out of places.

“Under the pergola,” Annie Pat says, as if she has been thinking about it all morning long.

The first-graders usually are the ones to eat in the striped shade of the pergola. It’s almost like an invisible playpen, in my opinion.

“They’re little. They won’t bother us,” Annie Pat says as if she is reading my mind.

I sigh. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

I am munching my way through the last part of a spicy salami sandwich when someone taps on my shoulder with a hard, pointy finger. As I look around, I see a bunch of first-graders scatter the way birds do when a cat strolls by.

“Hey, dummy,” Jared says to me. Stanley, EllRay, and Corey are standing behind him like a small flock of silly sheep. Corey looks as if he is about to faint. His face is so pale under his green hair that I bet I could count each freckle on it.

Well, one good thing—at least Jared’s not
calling me “Super Emma.” I try to swallow my bite of sandwich. Across from me, Annie Pat is goggling.

Ms. Sanchez does not like us to say “Hey,” by the way. She says it is vulgar. She has very high hopes for us—including Jared, even.

Jared is scowling, probably because I have not said anything back to him. “You think you’re so great, don’t you?” he asks me. “Little Emma-Wemma, the perfect girl.”

Stanley snickers when Jared calls me “Little Emma-Wemma.”

“I don’t think I’m so great,” I say. I can hear my own heart beating,
wuh, wuh, wuh
.

“You do too think you’re so great,” Jared says, “calling EllRay ‘Lancelot’ and grabbing things that don’t belong to you.”

And all I can do is stare at Jared, because—because the subsitute was the one who called EllRay “Lancelot” first, and then Jared did. And
he’s
the one who grabbed EllRay’s toy, before I
did. And here he is, picking on me for no reason!

What a coward.

“That’s not fair,” Annie Pat says, almost squeaking. I can’t see her, because she’s behind me now.

“Shut up,” Jared says without even looking at her. “You’re going to be sorry,” he says to me. “You made me look stupid.”

“Well, that’s okay,” I say fast, “because everyone already
knows
you’re stupid.”

What I really wanted to say, though, was that I
am
sorry. Not for making Jared look dumb, and not even for embarrassing EllRay. No, I’m sorry that I didn’t have the measles this week, that’s what I’m sorry about! Then I would have gotten to stay home, and none of this would have happened.

Jared takes a deep, deep breath and seems to swell up even larger than he is, which is plenty big already. But just as he is about to speak, a teacher who is one of the lunchtime monitors
appears, his big face gleaming. “Is there a problem here?” he asks Jared.

The teacher is really saying,
“There had better not be
.”

“No,” Stanley Washington pipes up. “This girl was just bothering us,” he says, pointing to me. “But that’s all right,” he adds in a forgiving way.

Hah!

Just then the bell rings, and it is like a game of musical chairs in reverse, because most of the kids under the pergola get up and run. “Throw your trash away,” the playground teacher calls out, turning away

But Jared’s not going anywhere. “You’re going to be sorry, Super Emma,” he says again, leaning toward me and keeping his voice low. “I’m going to get even with you tomorrow at recess, when everyone on the playground is watching. Everyone!”

“I think I’m getting a sore throat,” I tell my mom while we are eating dinner.

“Oh, no,” Mom says, putting down her fork. My mother works at home, so when I get sick it ruins everything for her. She reaches over and feels my forehead to see if I have a fever. She always frowns and looks up at the ceiling when she does this.

“I was a lot hotter before dinner,” I tell her. I rub the front of my neck the way a person might do if she
really
had a sore throat. I cough a little. “I guess I’d better not go to school tomorrow,” I say, looking weak and sad. I spear a big bite of meat loaf and dip it in a blob of ketchup.

Mom tilts her head and grins at me. “Well,” she says, “you’re sure wolfing down that meat loaf pretty fast for someone with such a bad sore throat.”

Uh-oh. But I wish I
were
a wolf, except for the part where you have to spray your territory. (Look it up. I’m not explaining it any more than I already did.) Wolves are very clever, though. They would never get into this much trouble at school. “I’m just trying to keep up my strength,” I tell her, but I already know that she doesn’t believe me about the sore throat.

“So what’s going on at school tomorrow?” Mom asks. “Let me guess. A spelling test? A math quiz?”

“I
wish
,” I say. I can feel my eyes start to get prickly, the way they do just before tears start to fall. My nose turns pink then, too.

“Emma,” my mom says, looking serious
again, “what’s the matter, honey? You look like you’re about to cry.”

I stare down at my mushed-up baked potato. “I—I
can’t
go to school tomorrow,” I tell my mom. “Because Jared’s going to beat me up if I do.”

Mom’s fork drops with a clunk. “He actually
threatened
you?” she asks me.

Hot tears splash down my cheeks. “Yes,” I tell her. “He said that he was going to get even with me in front of everybody on the playground, and that I would be sorry. I’m
already
sorry, only I won’t tell Jared that. So that’s it for me. Kiss me goodbye!”