EllRay Jakes Stands Tall Read online

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  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

  Text copyright © 2016 by Sally Warner

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Brian Biggs

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  ISBN: 978-0-451-46913-7 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-0-14-751253-6 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-0-698-15329-5 (ePub)

  Version_1

  To Liam and Fynn DiMaio —S.W.

  For Wilson and Elliot —B.B.

  CONTENTS

  Other books about EllRay Jakes

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 ALMOST LIKE B-BALL

  2 PROMISES

  3 REAL LIFE AT OAK GLEN PRIMARY SCHOOL

  4 VOCABULARY BINGO

  5 TACO NIGHT!

  6 NEGATIVE NUMBERS

  7 GOSSIP

  8 PRE-BASKETBALL

  9 COACH

  10 LIKE BIG KIDS

  11 IS THIS HOW IT STARTS?

  12 GETTING IT ALL WRONG

  13 THE MOVING SIDEWALK

  14 HERE WE GO

  15 PLURALS AND DRIBBLE DRILLS

  16 MR. YEAH BUT

  17 FOUL!

  18 THE CHOOSING

  19 TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM

  20 "BEEF"

  21 PAYBACK TIME

  22 SWISH SHOT!

  23 REBOUND

  24 PROUD

  1

  ALMOST LIKE B-BALL

  “Give it here,” I shout to Jared Matthews. He is hogging the basketball, as usual—not that he really knows how to play.

  It is Tuesday afternoon recess on a cool-warm February day that is perfect for running around. Sunshine, wind, and freedom!

  My name is EllRay Jakes, and I am eight years old. I am in Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class at Oak Glen Primary School, in Oak Glen, California.

  And I’m the shortest kid in class.

  All I want is respect, but to get respect you have to be good at something. At home, with neighbor kids and friends, it could be video games and memorizing lists of anime names. But at school, it pretty much has to be sports. For us boys, anyway. And sports means doing stuff.

  But running around is about all we’re doing this recess, because we don’t really know how to play basketball—or “b-ball,” as a couple of the guys in my class call it. Instead, we play something almost like b-ball.

  Because with Jared, b-ball is more like a game of keep-away.

  For Kevin McKinley and Nate Marshall, b-ball always ends up turning into soccer. They either bounce the ball off their heads, or they zig-zag kick it across the playground toward an imaginary goal. They make their own crowd-cheering sounds as they run.

  When Kry Rodriguez gets hold of the ball, she stares at the hoop for so long before she shoots that some kids get bored and wander away. It’s like Kry is doing yoga, something the girls in our third grade class are obsessed with lately.

  Don’t ask. I think yoga is mostly just holding still or lying around. In other words, it is the exact opposite of anything boy.

  Jason Leffer just tucks the basketball under his arm like a football, ducks his head, and starts running.

  Wrong game, dude!

  My friend Corey Robinson is probably the best athlete in our whole school. He is a prize-winning swimmer. But he doesn’t even try to get the ball. He’s just glad to be outside, away from math, the white board, and reading out loud in class.

  My new friend Marco Adair is the only other boy in class who is as bad at b-ball as I am. But Marco is too busy in his secret world of dragons and knights to care.

  Me, I’d just like to get my hands on the ball for once! I can almost smell its weird rubbery sweetness and feel its goose bumps under my fingertips.

  Huh. I wish!

  “Give it here,” I yell again, darting around Nate and Major Donaldson, who are shoving each other in a friendly way that could turn rough, just like that.

  “Come and get it, wuss,” Jared shouts back, like he just won a prize. The prize for embarrassing me, I guess. He doesn’t even care about breaking our school’s no-name-calling rule.

  “You guys are so lame,” Cynthia Harbison shouts from over by the fence. “You don’t even know what you’re doing!”

  “She’s right,” her personal assistant Fiona McNulty says. “I’ve seen real basketball on TV, you guys. With my daddy. And that’s not it.”

  By now, we have three balls going at the same time, one basketball and two kickballs. So Fiona’s at least a little right.

  Jared tosses the real basketball up in the air, then spikes it down hard—volleyball style—in Cynthia and Fiona’s direction.

  Bam!

  “Here! Throw it here,” I shout to Fiona. But she is cringing against the chain link fence like she’s still under attack.

  “Cynthia,” I yell. “Grab the ball and throw it here!”

  “Get it yourself, if you want it so much, EllRay,” Cynthia says, tossing back her hair and grabbing hold of Fiona’s hand so they can storm away better.

  “Yeah, you baby,” Fiona says, mad at me instead of Jared, for some reason.

  Me! And I didn’t do anything.

  I guess I’m not as scary as Jared, that’s all—so Fiona can be braver against me.

  I’m just EllRay Jakes, b-ball loser, who can’t even get his goofy little hands on the ball once, much less shoot a basket.

  And—bzz-z-z-z!

  Just like that, recess is over.

  2

  PROMISES

  “But Dad promised,” I say to Mom in my darkened room that night. I am under the covers, and she is sitting on my quilt. Only the closet light is still on.

  My dad is on a geology field trip in Arizona.

  “Hmm,” Mom replies. She sounds half-asleep, I think, frowning.

  And this is important!

  It is way past my bedtime, but I can’t fall asleep. My dad’s old orange Garfield clock ticks too loudly. Bare branches scratch at my bedroom window. They sound like the claws of the monster in my favorite handheld video game, Die, Creature, Die. It’s like the monster is trying to get inside my room.

  How does anyone sleep? Ever?

  “Dad said I’d grow taller once the new year started,” I say, hoping to wake Mom up a little. “And it’s already February, but I’m not much closer to that basketball hoop than I was before Christmas. No one ever passes me the ball—even the kickball—unless recess is alm
ost over and it doesn’t count anymore. Or not even then! Not even Corey or Kevin pass to me. And they like me.”

  They are my two best friends at school—plus Marco, but he’s not playing. Kevin is the only other boy in our class with brown skin like mine.

  Why is basketball suddenly such a big deal to me?

  1. For almost all the guys in my class, it’s our latest thing. See, our school got two new basketballs for the playground in January, around the same time they finally fixed the hoops. They even got new heavy-duty nets, so it looks really cool out there.

  2. And we’re not like most girls, who–in my opinion—bounce from one fad to another every week, like the yoga thing I mentioned. This new b-ball thing is gonna stick.

  3. Also, I have brown skin, like most famous basketball players do—which should give me at least a small head start, considering how rare brown skin is around here. Right?

  4. So I should somehow make this thing happen.

  “There are sports other than basketball, you know,” Mom says. “And did your dad really promise you would grow this very year?” she asks, half teasing, as she pets my forehead with her cool fingers.

  “Basically,” I say.

  Mom sighs. “But you must know that your father didn’t mean you’d grow taller right away this year, honey-bun,” she says. “He probably meant over the summer, or in the fall.”

  “I don’t think it’s ever gonna happen,” I say. “I’m getting left behind. That’s the point.”

  And it’s the worst feeling in the world.

  I have to be good at some sport to get respect at school, don’t I?

  And that’s all I really need.

  My best friend, Corey—the champion swimmer—has been looking taller and skinnier than ever since Christmas. And Marco is now taller than his main friend Major. Diego Romero has gotten taller since the holidays, too—and he was pretty tall to start with.

  So unfair.

  Even the girls are growing!

  “I wish I could help you out,” Mom says.

  I scowl up at my bedroom ceiling, where a few fluorescent stars still glimmer: my private constellation. They’re left over from when I was five, the year we moved to Oak Glen, California, from San Diego. It’s an hour away if the traffic is good.

  “Same stars as on the ceiling in your old room,” my dad pointed out after sticking them up. “Same stars in the sky, too.” He was trying to make me feel better about the move, I guess.

  But even Professor Warren Jakes—also known as Dad—isn’t perfect, I remind myself now. He would never lie, but he might have made one of his rare mistakes when he promised I’d grow taller this year.

  After all, Alfie is a shrimp like me, isn’t she? Maybe it runs in the family.

  “Beautiful elf,” her real name—Alfleta—means in some weird language only my mom has heard about, but that no one alive speaks anymore. And Alfie is kind of like an elf, I think, frowning some more. Tiny, stubborn, and all over the place.

  Promises. Grown-ups are always promising something.

  “EllRay, listen,” Mom says, sounding wide awake now. “I’m quite tall, would you agree?”

  I nod. She is taller than a lot of other Oak Glen moms. Prettier, too, I think, with her caramel-brown skin, her floaty scarves, and her perfect smile.

  “And your dad’s very tall,” my mom continues. “And your doctor’s not at all concerned that you won’t grow,” she adds, as if this is the winning argument. “He says you’re perfectly normal, and that you’ll shoot up like a weed when the time comes. Like a weed,” she repeats, sounding impressed already.

  As if weeds are so wonderful. And—she asked my doctor?

  What am I, a medical emergency?

  I think about it. “‘Perfectly normal’ isn’t exactly great, Mom,” I point out. “And weeds aren’t very tall, are they? Most of them barely come up to your knees.”

  “They grow quickly once they get going, that’s the point,” my mom says, getting to her feet. “And you will grow, too.”

  “But when?” I ask.

  Because what good will it be if I don’t grow until I’m, like, seventeen?

  I want respect now!

  I want to be chosen first for stuff like basketball now!

  Or chosen second or third, anyway. Not last.

  “I’ll ask your father to explain it to you again, better, once he gets home from Arizona. Believe me,” Mom says, making the promise as she turns off the closet light.

  “No. That’s okay,” I say, my voice sounding hollow in the dark.

  My dad loves explaining things, true. He is a college teacher, after all. But sometimes he explains things for so long—and in so much detail—that I actually forget what the question was. Or that I’m sorry I asked it in the first place.

  And words alone—even really, really smart ones like my dad’s—will never make me grow.

  Neither will wishes. I’ve already tried wishing. Upon a star, even.

  “Night, Mom,” I say.

  “Night,” Mom says from the doorway. “See you in the morning.”

  “Yeah, the morning,” I say to the now-empty room. “See you shortly.”

  Well, of course.

  EllRay “Shortly” Jakes. That’s me.

  3

  REAL LIFE AT OAK GLEN PRIMARY SCHOOL

  “It’s a blustery day, so bundle up,” Mom tells me the next morning, Wednesday, after she has dropped off Alfie at Kreative Learning and Daycare and driven me to school. I’m backing out of the car behind-first, like a dung beetle. Emma McGraw told me this is something they do. She wants to be a nature scientist when she grows up, so she knows weird stuff like that.

  “Dung” means “poop,” by the way. I am just reporting the facts.

  “That jacket isn’t only for show, honey-bun,” my mother calls out as I haul both it and my backpack from the car.

  Mom humor.

  “I know. Bye, Mom,” I say, glancing down the sidewalk. If Jared or Jared’s sidekick Stanley Washington hears her calling me “honey-bun,” that will be my new nickname for a solid week.

  At least.

  Like the time Ms. Sanchez goofed and called me “sweetie” before Christmas. I’m still recovering from that one. I feel my cheeks get hot just thinking about it.

  “Ooh, it’s Sweetie. Smoochy-smooch,” Stanley said to me for days, slobbering over his hand as he pretend-kissed it. Even Jared finally told him to give it a rest.

  I stand tall, as tall as possible, anyway, and put on my jacket. I hoist my bulging backpack over one skinny shoulder, and I lurch toward the playground.

  With any luck, there will be no basketballs being used this morning.

  “Dude,” Corey calls out from the boys’ picnic table, where he is eating a protein bar his mother packed—probably for his lunch. But lunch is many hours away.

  Each picnic table is officially open to both boys and girls, of course. But it doesn’t work out that way in real life at Oak Glen Primary School.

  I head toward Corey, who has close to three hundred freckles on his face. We tried to count them one rainy recess. I nod hi at Marco and Major as I pass.

  “M and M,” Ms. Sanchez sometimes calls them, they are so tight. But like I said, Marco is friends with me now, too. They’re on the grass, playing olden days—dragons and knights—with some plastic figures Marco sneaked to school. Not that we usually break school rules such as “No toys from home,” by the way. We only break the really goofy ones, the rules that make you start to wonder about the good ones—such as “No running in the halls,” which just makes sense.

  Have you seen how big some sixth-graders are? A third-grader could get smooshed! Not to mention a kindergartner.

  But here is an example of an Oak Glen rule that does not make any sense. We are allowed to run on the playgro
und when we are playing kickball or basketball, but we are not supposed to run just for the fun of it—because they say we might get hurt.

  See what I mean?

  “Hey,” I tell Corey, giving him a friendly shove.

  “Mmm,” Corey greets me, his cheeks bulging. “Bring something fun?” he mumbles through his early morning snack.

  “Not today,” I tell him.

  I was too busy getting mad about being short last night to figure out anything to bring. I would never sneak Die, Creature, Die to school, though. I could not risk having that confiscated—which means taken away from you by a grown-up. Maybe forever. Just the thought of everyone in the principal’s office playing with my game makes me feel woozy.

  I don’t want them messing up my score, for one thing.

  “What about playing rock-paper-scissors?” Corey asks after swallowing his mouthful of crumbs. “Best out of four. One, two, three, go.”

  1. First game: Me, scissors. Corey, rock. Rock smashes scissors. Corey wins.

  2. Second game: Me, paper. Corey, rock. Paper wraps rock. I win.

  3. Third game: Me, rock. Corey, rock. Again. So that one’s a tie. Next one is the decider.

  4. Fourth game: Me, scissors. Corey, paper. Scissors cut paper! I’m the ultimate winner!

  Now, all I need is about a dozen more games you can play sitting down. Because then, tallness doesn’t matter.

  “Good one, EllRay,” Corey says, smiling. He and Kry are the best sports in our third grade class. Emma and her friend Annie Pat Masterson are tied for third place in that category. Most of us other kids either pretend to be good sports, which Mom says is a perfectly fine thing to do, or else we “get our grouch on,” as Ms. Sanchez sometimes says.

  That means we get mad—and stay mad. For a while, anyway.

  Girls stay mad the longest, in my opinion. It’s like they have an extra gigabyte in their hard drives just for hurt feelings.

  And speaking of Ms. Sanchez . . .