EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken Read online

  So, no more playing dolls.

  Alfie is very cute. Everyone says so, especially her, but she probably only says that because she hears it so much. She is golden brown like an acorn, and she wears her hair in three little puffy braids with matching hair-things on the ends. One braid is on top of her head, and there is one on each side.

  I can’t really describe girls’ hair right.

  The only trouble with Alfie is the same thing that is the trouble with me: our names. See, “EllRay” is short for “L-period-Ray,” which is short for “Lancelot Raymond.” And “Alfie” is short for “Alfleta,” which means “beautiful elf” in some language from the olden days. Saxon, I think Mom said.

  My mom wants to be a fantasy writer some day, that’s why we got such goofy names.

  My dad should have told her no. Not about wanting to be a writer, of course, but about the names. It’s too late now, though.

  We have to live with these names forever.

  “I’m back,” I tell Alfie, who is sitting on her rug. She has just finished piling up a stack of doll clothes.

  “Which is cuter?” she asks, holding up two little dresses.

  “I dunno,” I say, trying to settle into my game. “The red one, I guess.”

  “Okay,” she says, and she starts putting the yellow dress on her bare-naked doll.

  “How come you even asked me which one is cuter?” I say, feeling a little mad at her, even though I don’t really care about the dresses, of course. “So you could do the exact opposite?”

  “Nuh-uh,” Alfie says, shaking her head as she tries to cram her doll’s skinny arm through a sleeve. “I just like to hear you talk, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling a little better.

  “Because nobody talks to me at day care anymore,” she says sadly.

  “Oh, c’mon, Alfie. That’s not true,” I tell her—because if there’s one thing about my little sister, it’s that she has a lot of friends.

  Friends are very important to girls, I have noticed. They even keep score about them: how many they have, what their ranking is. Friends are like a girl’s very own personal sports team.

  It’s different for boys, or at least for me. Sure, I want to have at least one or two friends so there will be someone to hang out with and watch my back, especially lately, but I don’t get all bent out of shape about it.

  “Suzette told the other girls not to talk to me,” Alfie says, still looking down at her doll.

  Suzette is this bossy little girl in my sister’s day care who likes to keep all the other little girls scared about whether or not she likes them. Big deal.

  “She told everyone that?” I ask, hating Suzette for one hot second.

  “Well, she told Maya and Joelle not to,” Alfie tells me. “And Suzette’s the boss of our day care, so that’s that.”

  “Aren’t your teachers the boss of day care?” I ask her. “I think you should tell them what Suzette is doing, Alfie, and then maybe she’d stop.”

  “But she might think of something worse,” Alfie says, picking up two little doll jackets. “Which one is cuter?” she asks me.

  The blue one is cuter, but I don’t tell Alfie that. “The orange one,” I say, and sure enough, she starts putting the blue one one her doll.

  I smile and start playing my handheld video game again.

  “Who’s the boss of the world?” Alfie asks me, holding her doll up to admire it.

  I sigh and press Pause. “No one, I guess,” I tell her. “I mean, the world is all divided up, and there are different bosses for different places. The little places, too. Even Oak Glen has a boss, you know.”

  “Huh,” Alfie says, not asking who that boss is—which is a good thing, because I don’t know his or her name. I don’t get to vote yet, that’s why. “Well,” she asks after a couple of minutes, “who’s the boss of our family, at least? I vote for Mommy.”

  And I can’t help but laugh, this is such a crazy conversation. “Why not Dad?” I ask her.

  “Because whenever we go to Target and Mommy wants something, Daddy says, ‘You’re the boss, Louise.’ ”

  “I think he’s just kidding,” I tell her.

  “So Daddy’s the boss?” Alfie asks me.

  “No,” I say. “I mean, they’re both the boss of us. Not of each other, I don’t think.”

  “But you’re not the boss of me, EllWay,” Alfie says, scowling.

  “That’s okay,” I tell her. “Because I don’t even wanna be the boss of you. It’d be too much work.”

  Alfie thinks about this for a minute. “Well,” she finally asks, “who’s the boss of the third grade at school? In your class? Not counting your teacher.”

  “No one,” I say, snapping out the words. But a picture of Jared’s head has floated into my imagination like a big ugly balloon.

  “There’s a boy boss and a girl boss, right?” Alfie asks, trying to work it out.

  “Nobody’s the boss,” I repeat. “But I guess Jared Matthews is the meanest boy, and Cynthia Harbison is the meanest girl.”

  “Then I hate them,” Alfie says, as loyal to me as I am to her.

  “You don’t have to hate them,” I tell her. “But you’re lucky you don’t have to go to school with them, that’s for sure.”

  Alfie plays in silence for a few quiet minutes, just long enough for me to get into my game once more. Then, sure enough, she thinks of something else to say. “But if Jared and Cynthia moved away,” she says, “and so did Suzette, there’d probably just be someone else being the meanest. Or the bossiest.”

  I look up just long enough to mess up my score. “I guess you’re right,” I say, surprised that she could figure something like this out all by herself.

  “’Course I’m right, EllWay,” she tells me. “Because there can’t just be three holes in the world where those mean kids used to be.”

  “I guess not,” I say, giving up and turning off my game.

  Sometimes, when I talk to Alfie, I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round that just keeps spinning, no matter how much I want to get off. “I’m gonna go to bed,” I tell my spacey little sister. “I think I’m getting a headache.”

  “Try sleeping with your feet on the pillow,” she calls after me. “Because maybe then your headache will get mixed up and go someplace else!”

  Let’s hope she doesn’t want to be a doctor when she grows up, be a doctor whe that’s all.

  5

  GLOM

  “You were almost late,” Annie Pat whispers as I slide into my seat on Tuesday morning. Her red pigtails shine like two orange highway cones.

  “I was almost late, but I’m not late. There’s a big difference,” I inform Annie Pat, just as Ms. Sanchez begins to take roll.

  Annie Pat blinks her dark blue eyes once and looks confused. She can usually count on me to make at least one goofy face or blarty noise first thing in the morning.

  Not this week, though.

  See, I have a plan, and this morning I timed things just right.

  What I did was this: I sneaked into school early, and then I washed my hands for ten minutes in the boys’ bathroom so I wouldn’t see Jared or Stanley.

  It wasn’t because I am scared of them, though. I’m just being careful.

  My plan is to avoid trouble all week long by doing something else or being someplace else whenever Jared or Stanley comes looking for me. But it’s just for this week.

  Ms. Sanchez starts announcing stuff, as usual, and I start daydreaming, as usual. But now I have something exciting to daydream about. Disneyland!

  And today, TUESDAY, the world—or at least Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class at Oak Glen Primary School in Oak Glen, California—is going to see me, EllRay Jakes, being a perfect kid.

  “Pay attention, Mr. Jakes,” Ms. Sanchez says, sounding tired already—and it’s not even nine o’clock in the morning.

  “Hurry up, EllRay, or all the kickballs will be gone,” Corey calls out, speeding past me on his way o
ut the door for nutrition break, which is recess with healthy snacks, basically. At least they’re supposed to be healthy.

  “Yeah,” Kevin calls over his shoulder. He is moving as fast as a person can humanly move without actually running, because there is No Running in the halls at Oak Glen Primary School.

  And that is only one of our school’s many, many rules.

  I sneak out the door while Jared and Stanley are still getting their snacks out of their grubby backpacks. Jared and Stanley love nutrition break because they love eating, but Corey, Kevin, and I usually eat our snacks—and some of our lunch, too—before school, so we’ll have more time to play.

  And—I’m out the door, and I’m free!

  Now, the trick will be to glom onto a group of kids so Jared and Stanley can’t yank me aside and grind my ribs, hoist my pants hurting-high, or knuckle my hair.

  And I’ll have to do the same sneaking away and glomming at lunch, too.

  And at recess.

  And after school. For three more days.

  Glomming is going to take all my attention. I sure hope Ms. Sanchez doesn’t expect me to learn anything new this week!

  6

  BUK, BUK, BUK

  “Ooo,” Jared whispers at lunch. “Here he is, finally. What’s the matter, EllRay? Scared to be alone with us?”

  “Yeah,” Stanley chimes in, his voice soft. “BUK, BUK, BUK!”

  This is his idea of how a chicken talks, I guess, which is just dumb, because chickens do not talk. But basically, Stanley is saying that I’m chicken.

  “Shut up,” I tell him out of the side of my mouth.

  I suddenly realize, though, that I am sitting at the end of the picnic table bench, not somewhere safe in the middle—like between Corey and Kevin, for example. Or even between two girls, if girls sat at our table—which they don’t, lately, ever since the food fight.

  But that’s a whole different story.

  Uh-oh. I have made a b-i-i-i-g mistake.

  Jared makes a knuckly fist and secretly starts twisting it into my ribs, which are still aching from yesterday’s knuckle-grinding. He smiles at everyone else in a fake-friendly way while he is doing it, so they won’t know something bad is happening.

  Stanley stands back and watches the knuckling, and his eyes are nervous and bright behind his smudged glasses. They look even more lizard-like than usual.

  Every single rib I have on that side burns, and I try not to cringe, but I can feel myself starting to get mad.

  Okay. When I lose my temper, three things happen:1. First, I can feel all the juices inside my body start racing around really fast.

  2. Then my heart starts pounding so hard I can barely hear people talk.

  3. And then my hands get clenchy.

  Orange sparks may fly out of my ears, for all I know!

  Seated across from me, Kevin does not know why I am leaning over so far. “Hey, EllRay, you’re going to fall,” he says, giving me a friendly smile. Then he goes back to eating his sandwich, a gigantic grinder with pink flaps of meat hanging out. Kevin’s hand grips the roll as if it might try to escape from him at any moment.

  It would if it could!

  “Yeah. Stop crowding, EllRay,” Jared tells me, giving me an extra-hard knuckle twist.

  “Yowtch! Quit it, Jared,” I yell.

  “‘Quit it, Jared,’” Stanley says in a whiny voice, trying to copy me—even though I didn’t really whine. Like I said, I yelled. In a manly way.

  I try to count to ten, which is what my mom says to do when I start getting mad. One, two, three, four. My lips move a little as I silently run through the numbers.

  “Oh, look. He’s gonna cry. The widdle baby’s sad,” Jared says, sounding happy. Then he throws back his head and gives his famous HAW—HAW—HAW laugh.

  “I’m not crying,” I say, trying to get to my feet.

  I do not want to get into trouble, even at lunch, because the lunch monitor would tell Ms. Sanchez. Then Ms. Sanchez would call my parents, and bye-bye Disneyland on Saturday.

  But do I want to go through the rest of my life saying, “BUK, BUK, BUK”?

  No way!

  7

  IT’S DIFFERENT WITH MY MOM

  My mom thinks there is always a reason when people—especially kids—are mean, but even though I am only eight years old, I know better.

  I think some people—especially kids—are mean for no reason.

  What about when a mean person shoves someone in the hall? Or “accidentally” knocks the back of that person’s head when he is drinking at the water fountain? Or grabs his lunch and plays keep-away with it?

  That person does it because he can.

  But I don’t tell my mom that, because it would only make her sad. Even though she likes to write books about pretend-wonderful things that could have happened in a long-ago time, in real life she is a little bit of a worrywart when it comes to Alfie and me. She wants us never to get hurt.

  Just as I think this thought, Mom pops her head around the door to my bedroom. “Can I tuck you in, EllRay?” she asks, smiling.

  “Sure,” I tell her, scootching over in bed to make room for her to sit next to me. “Good,” my mom says, settling in for a before-bedtime visit, which is secretly one of my favorite things, because:1. It’s not like when I’m at school, where I can never really relax because I don’t know what’s gonna happen next.

  2. And it’s not like when I’m with Alfie, where I always have to watch her to make sure she doesn’t try to fly down the stairs or something crazy like that.

  3. And it’s not like when I’m with my dad, where he is either trying to keep me from messing up in the future or scolding me for messing up in the past. Sometimes I think I must be a disappointment to him, he is so important and smart. And strong. And tall.

  It’s different with my mom. My mom is usually a very relaxing person, and she likes me no matter what. She even likes the old EllRay Jakes.

  “Your daddy told me about your Disneyland deal,” Mom says, arranging my covers more neatly under my chin. “I guess you’re pretty happy about that, hmm?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “If I don’t mess it up for everyone. Don’t tell Alfie about it yet, okay? Just in case.”

  “Okay,” Mom promises. “But I know you can do it, honey bun.”

  “It’s—it’s kind of like a bribe, though, isn’t it?” I ask. “Us getting to go to Disneyland, but only if I’m good. And I thought you guys said that bribing people was wrong. Even bribing kids.”

  My mom laughs a little. “I might have handled things differently,” she says quietly. “But whatever works, EllRay—because I want everyone at Oak Glen Primary School to see the same wonderful boy I see whenever I look at you.”

  “I’m not always wonderful,” I admit in the dark.

  “To me you are,” Mom says. “Deep down inside. But—what’s going on?”

  “Like, in the world?” I ask, pretending I don’t know what she means.

  “Not in the world,” she says. “Just in your world.”

  “My world’s fine,” I lie.

  But it’s the kind of lie that is meant to keep someone from feeling bad, like if a person asks, “How does my new haircut look?” and you say, “Perfectly normal,” instead of “Like somebody went after you with broken kindergarten scissors .”

  “Oh, come on,” Mom says in her softest voice. “I know you better than that, EllRay Jakes. And something is troubling you. Is it your progress report?”

  “Yeah, it’s that,” I say, taking the easy way out—because she offered it to me.

  Mom leans over to kiss my on my forehead, which is all wrinkled from fibbing. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much,” she tells me. “Time passes, doesn’t it? I’ll bet your work has already improved since Ms. Sanchez wrote that report.”

  “But it’s hard,” I say, telling the truth for the first time since she sat down.

  “What’s hard?” Mom asks.

  “Paying attention in clas
s,” I tell her. “And remembering all the rules. And sitting in my chair without wiggling. And not bothering my neighbor, even when she wants to be bothered. And not getting mad on the playground. It’s hard just being me, Mom.”

  “Oh, EllRay, I know it is,” she says, scooping me into a hug. “But like I said before, being you is also a wonderful thing, honey bun.”

  “Not so far it isn’t,” I try to say, but my mouth is smooshed against her sweater and she probably doesn’t even hear me.

  Mom kisses me on my forehead again and pulls the covers up to my chin. “Well, nighty-night,” she says, as if every problem in every world, not just mine, has now been solved. “Close your eyes and go to sleep,” she tells me. “Because tomorrow’s going to be a beautiful day, EllRay.”

  Today has been a nervous Tuesday for me, I think, lying in the dark, especially because of what happened at lunch. But Mom has made it better, somehow. And I did make it through the afternoon without getting twisted, pounded, or whomped again.

  So that’s been one whole day without getting into trouble.

  Maybe Mom is right. Maybe I can do it!

  8

  MS. SANCHEZ SAYS

  “Quiet, ladies and gentlemen,” Ms. Sanchez says on WEDNESDAY morning from the front of the class, and she taps her solid-gold pen on her desk.

  We all try to look as if we are paying attention, even though half of the class feels like falling asleep because the room is so hot, and the other half—the half with me in it—wants to run outside and play.

  It is a beautiful day, just the way Mom said it would be.

  “Pay attention, please,” Ms. Sanchez says, tapping her pen again. “I have an announcement. We’re going to do a science experiment. It’s Mudshake Day!”

  “But I thought we only had to do science on Tuesdays,” Heather Patton says in a really loud whisper, because you’re not supposed to talk out loud in class without raising your hand first.