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  Absolutely Alfie and the Furry Purry Secret

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  Absolutely Alfie and the First Week Friends

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  Absolutely Alfie and the Worst Best Sleepover

  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, 2018

  Text copyright © 2018 by Sally Warner

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Shearry Malone

  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

  HC ISBN: 9781101999929

  PB ISBN: 9781101999943

  EBOOK ISBN: 9781101999936

  Version_2

  To my youngest new friend, Edie Chambers.

  —S.W.

  To Lauren—

  My favorite bookworm, long time friend and supporter. This one's for you.

  —S.M.

  Contents

  Books about Absolutely Alfie

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  (1) Freeze!

  (2) A Secret

  (3) Shared Reading

  (4) Like a Wasp at a Picnic Table

  (5) Pretty Little Princess

  (6) Great Advice

  (7) Miffed, Hurt, Irked, and Furious

  (8) Uh-Oh

  (9) “Meet Your Neighbors!”

  (10) A Pickle

  (11) The Yips

  (12) In a State

  (13) Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

  (14) The Worst Best Sleepover Ever

  (15) Ready for a Party

  (16) Upside-Down Heads

  (17) Even

  (18) The Saturday Morning Jammie Breakfast Party!

  1

  Freeze!

  “I finished that worksheet,” seven-year-old Alfie Jakes told her big brother EllRay on Monday morning, after a drippy bite of cereal. “But I think weekend homework is just mean. Mr. Havens is mean.”

  She was kidding. Mr. Havens was Alfie’s second grade teacher. His nickname was “Coach,” because he taught basketball during recess and after school. All the kids in Alfie’s class liked him—even if they didn’t like his homework assignments.

  Weekend homework least of all.

  It was the fourth week of school, just past the middle of September. Alfie and eleven-year-old EllRay were eating as fast as they could. Their mom was packing snacks and lunches for the day at the kitchen island.

  “You know he’s not mean,” EllRay said. “And if you think that homework was bad, wait until sixth grade,” he added, making a face.

  “I have to wait, don’t I?” Alfie asked. “Because I’m only in second grade now. So duh.”

  Alfie and EllRay liked to tease each other, but they knew they were a team—and their gray kitten, Princess, was the mascot.

  “Was the worksheet hard?” EllRay asked, looking up from the back of the cereal box he was reading.

  “It was no big deal,” Alfie said, shrugging. “It was easy as pie, in fact.”

  “Easy as pie?” EllRay asked, grinning. “What kind of pie? Rock pie? Cement pie? Because you were griping about it like crazy last night.”

  “Not because it was hard,” Alfie said, scooping up another bite of cereal. “I just don’t know that much about the boys in my class, that’s all. Why should I? Or even some of the new girls?”

  Mr. Havens’s weekend worksheet was titled, “You Have a Second Grade Friend Who—”

  Each worksheet had nine boxes in it, and every box included a cute drawing. The drawings had been done by “Mrs. Coach,” the girls whispered, Mr. Havens’s probably beautiful wife. Each box had a description written in it, such as:

  “Who likes to sing!”

  “Who has a dog!”

  “Who plays basketball!”

  Mr. Havens’s students were told to write down the name of a classmate who matched that description.

  They were supposed to know all the kids in class by now, Alfie guessed.

  That was probably the whole point of their weekend homework.

  “So what did you do?” EllRay asked. “Just make stuff up—as usual?”

  “Be quiet. I do not do that,” Alfie said. But she started to giggle.

  “Come on,” EllRay teased in a coaxing voice. “You can tell me.”

  “Okay. Maybe I made stuff up, and maybe I didn’t,” Alfie joked back, keeping her voice low. “I mean, I already know Arletty likes the color red. I know that new girl Bella Babcock has three dogs. And I know Lulu Marino likes fancy clothes. But how am I supposed to know what Scooter Davis and Bryan Martinez like? Not to mention Alan Lewis, who never even talks. I’m not a mind reader.”

  “You could always ask them,” their mother said, hearing all this as she worked at the kitchen island. “But we need to get going, guys. Dishes in the sink, if you please.”

  This was telling, not asking.

  Mrs. Jakes wrote romantic books for ladies about the olden days. That was how Alfie and EllRay had gotten such weird names. For example, “Alfleta” meant “beautiful elf” in some language from more than a thousand years ago. And “EllRay” was short for “Lancelot Raymond,” or “L. Ray.”

  Lancelot was a handsome knight in a famous old story.

  Sometimes her mom got carried away, in Alfie’s opinion. Like with baby names.

  Because Mrs. Jakes was a writer, she worked at home in Oak Glen, California—unlike her husband, who was a geology professor at a college in San Diego. Dr. Jakes left early for work most weekday mornings.

  But even though her mom didn’t have to hurry off to a job, there was always a last-minute rush to school, Alfie knew, carrying her bowl and spoon to the sink. This probably happened even on Mars! Alfie could just picture blobby little Martians leaving behind their field trip permission slips and tiny four-armed sweaters as they rushed out the door of their glowing pod-house each morning.

  “No offense, Mom,” Alfie said, dragging her mind back to planet Earth as she sloshed water in her empty cereal bowl. “But I’m not about to ask some strange boy if he’s scared of the dark, or if he loves the color orange. And anyway,” she added, taking the lunch and snack bags her mom was handing her, “I didn’t have any boys from my class hanging around the house this weekend. Luckily,” she added under her breath. “So there was no one to ask.”

  “But the boys can’t be too strange by now,” Mrs. Jakes said, not giving up. “And it would be nice to get to know them better, wouldn’t it? You used to be friends with lots of little boys when you were in daycare and kindergarten, sweetie,” she reminded her daughter.

  Alfie and EllRay swapped glances and tried not to laugh. “That was a long time ago, Mom,” Alfie said. “Second grade is different.”

  “And Alfie’s got her hands full with the girls in her class,” EllRay chimed in.

  “Tha
t’s not true,” Alfie said, frowning. “All the girls are my friends. Basically,” she added, hoping it was true.

  “Now, maybe,” EllRay said, a look of doubt passing across his face.

  Alfie’s brother sometimes called himself “the voice of experience”—about Oak Glen Primary School, anyway.

  The thirteen girls in Alfie’s class had kind of shape-shifted roughly into groups of three, she admitted to herself. But they were friendly groups of three.

  No drama.

  During these first four weeks of second grade, everything had been pretty chill, as EllRay would say—and fun.

  And all Alfie wanted was for things to stay that way forever.

  Freeze!

  Just like in the playground game.

  In her case, she mostly hung out with Arletty Jackson—her old pal from Kreative Learning and Daycare who had brown skin like herself—and with Phoebe Miller, a new girl in class, with whom she and Arletty had made friends.

  Phoebe was nice, and she was funny in a quiet way. She had straight blond hair and blushed—a lot. Seeing Phoebe blush was like watching a chameleon change color.

  “Do you have everything?” their mom asked Alfie and EllRay, who almost always got himself to school, usually by bike. But today, he was going somewhere after school with a friend. Mrs. Jakes tossed her car keys up and then snatched them out of the air like a race car driver. “Don’t make me drive to school without you,” she teased. “Hanni is waiting for us.”

  Hanni Sobel was Alfie’s neighbor-friend, classmate, and carpool buddy. But at school, Hanni hung out mostly with Suzette Monahan and Lulu Marino. That was her “group of three” these days.

  “I’m ready, Mom. I don’t want to be late,” Alfie said, her heavy backpack already cradled in her arms. “I want to see if anyone in my class wrote about me on their worksheet.”

  She hoped so, if it was something nice. Or funny.

  “They probably did,” EllRay assured her as he buckled his seatbelt. “‘Who can be the biggest pain in the neck?’” he said, pretending to read aloud from a worksheet. “‘Who likes to twirl around and get dizzy until they just about hurl?’ ‘Who loves to hog all the cheese?’”

  “That’s enough, EllRay,” Mrs. Jakes said from the front seat as she backed out the driveway.

  “Yeah, EllRay,” Alfie pretend-scolded, smiling. “Enough, enough, enough.”

  This was going to be such a great week!

  2

  A Secret

  “We’re here,” Alfie said.

  She and Hanni scrambled out of Mrs. Jakes’ car, eager to get in some playtime before the school day started. Kids had to go through the main door to get to the playground and lunch area, so the girls headed up Oak Glen Primary School’s wide front steps.

  As usual, Principal James was there in his suit and tie, greeting each student by name. “Miss Jakes! And Hanni Sobel, as I live and breathe,” he called out, giving them a cheerful wave. He patted the brown mustache Alfie did not like.

  She didn’t think men’s faces should be fancy that way.

  “Hi,” the girls mumbled back, waving as best they could, given the sagging backpacks they were lugging up the steps.

  “Let’s go,” Hanni urged like a small cheerleader as they charged down the crowded hall.

  Both the school and the big playground behind it were divided into two parts. Indoors, the two-story main part of the school held all the classrooms—kindergarten through third grade downstairs, and fourth through sixth grades upstairs. A breezeway near the office led to the cafeteria and auditorium.

  Outside, in the back, there was a big asphalt playground with basketball hoops, swings, and structures to climb on. The lunch area on the far side of the playground was scattered with picnic tables and a few trees. This was usually where the girls in Alfie’s class gathered each morning. At one end of the playground, a path sloped down to a play area built only last summer.

  One or two giggling girls were already eating their recess snacks early at the picnic table. For a moment, the sound of happy chatter seemed to float above the girls like an invisible rainbow.

  “Hey, Pheeb,” Alfie said to Phoebe with a smile, flinging her backpack onto the table. “You look cute today. Where’s Arletty?”

  “Not here yet,” Phoebe said, tucking a lock of blond hair behind one pink ear. “Maybe she has the sniffles or something.”

  “I don’t think so,” Alfie said, thinking about it. “Probably her mom’s just late. Arletty is, like, the healthiest kid I know. That’s why she can run so fast.”

  Alfie and Phoebe both took pride in Arletty’s skill, as if their friendship with her had caused Arletty’s talent to rub off on them, somehow.

  “What are they talking about?” Alfie asked in a quiet voice, tilting her head toward Hanni, Suzette, and Lulu, who clustered against the chainlink fence behind the picnic tables. They were whispering. Lulu seemed to be doing most of the talking.

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe said, shrugging.

  Hanni’s wavy dark hair, Suzette’s brown hair, and Lulu’s black hair—with the long, perfectly straight bangs that Alfie suspected Mrs. Marino trimmed every morning using a ruler and tiny golden scissors—seemed to blend together into one big tangled head as they talked.

  Lulu saw Alfie looking at them, and she shifted her body as if to give their group more privacy.

  And Alfie and Lulu used to be best friends just last year, in first grade! A hundred years ago, Alfie thought now.

  Somebody had a secret, she knew. And suddenly, this was no longer the perfect September morning she had hoped it would be.

  Even though it was warm, Alfie shivered.

  The invisible rainbow above the girls’ heads had turned into a stormy little cloud.

  The newest girl in class sidled up to Alfie and Phoebe like a spy. It was Bella Babcock, the girl with three dogs.

  Bella had joined Mr. Havens’s class two weeks late. Alfie remembered the exact moment she decided to give her a personal tour of Oak Glen Primary School. Bella was eating her recess snack all alone, as if that were the most important job in the world. Her only job.

  No talking, no laughing, no smiling, even.

  And Alfie had suddenly thought, What if that was me? What if I was the new kid at a brand-new school?

  “Wanna hang out?” she had asked Bella, who seemed suddenly to melt a little, hearing her words. “I can show you around if you want.”

  “I guess,” Bella had said, shrugging—but smiling, too, as she ducked her head. “I mean, okay. I don’t mind.”

  “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t?” Alfie had teased.

  “I don’t mind,” Bella had said, laughing. “Let’s go!”

  Bella was nice. She had a short, tufty haircut that looked cute on her, a wide smile, and freckles scattered across her nose like a dash of cinnamon.

  “I think someone’s giving a party,” Bella murmured now in an excited, husky voice, glancing over at Hanni, Suzette, and Lulu, who were still whispering. “That girl Lulu, I think it is. A sleepover.”

  She said the last word as if it were a very special thing.

  “Great,” Phoebe said, breaking into a smile. “Because my cousin goes to sleepovers all the time, and she loves them. It sounds like fun.”

  “But you told me your cousin’s in fifth grade,” Alfie reminded Phoebe. “We’re only in second grade. Have you even gone to a sleepover yet, Pheeb?”

  Alfie had, in first grade—though it had been more an overnight babysitting thing than the real deal. And it had not ended well.

  First, Alfie had gotten homesick—after only half an hour.

  Then her stomach started to hurt.

  Then the worst had happened. Blarrrt! All over her brand-new pink and purple Fairy Kitties sleeping bag, which was not as washable as the label bragged it
was.

  “Lulu says it’s gonna be the best sleepover ever,” Bella reported. “Like the big girls have. And it’s this Saturday night! But Lulu’s not inviting everyone. Only her best friends.” She sounded as if she really wanted to go.

  “It’ll be fun, if it really happens,” Phoebe said again. But she sounded a little less sure of herself this time.

  “And if we get invited,” Alfie pointed out—because Lulu Marino was an up-and-down kind of girl when it came to being, and staying, friends.

  “My special darling,” her mom called her, Lulu bragged.

  “Well, Lulu said she’s deciding this week who she’s gonna ask,” Bella said.

  “But the rule at Oak Glen Primary School is that you have to ask everyone in class, if you have a party,” Phoebe pointed out, the usual blush flooding her cheeks. “Or else you aren’t allowed to talk about it at school at all. So Lulu’s breaking the rules. She could get in trouble.”

  “But if we tell on her,” Alfie said, “we won’t get invited for sure.”

  “Yeah. You’re right,” Phoebe said, her blue eyes wide with alarm. “And anyway, who would we tell? Mr. Havens?” she asked as the warning buzzer sounded, and most of the girls started gathering their things.

  Alfie, Phoebe, and Bella stared at each other for a moment. To the second grade girls’ surprise, they all liked their “boy teacher” just fine, they had slowly agreed over the past four weeks. But he hadn’t really been tested yet.

  Did he “get” girls?

  Not to mention important girl-stuff such as sleepovers?

  And how would he handle a big deal like this, if someone tattled on Lulu?

  “We’d better keep our mouths shut,” Alfie said as they hurried across the playground toward the main school building.

  “I guess you’re right,” Phoebe agreed. “Because I want to go to that party, even if Lulu doesn’t really know me yet. I’ll make her know me,” she vowed.

  Wow! Phoebe was gutsier than she thought, Alfie told herself.