Hey. I didn’t say forever. My own game is getting away from me!
But, “Eee-e-e-e-e!” everyone shouts, scattering wide. The girls are laughing and screaming at the same time.
“What’s a zombie?” a little boy asks. He’s a first-grader, I think. What’s he doing over here with us big kids? Is he lost or something?
“Zombie—gonna—get—you,” Jason yells, heading first for the bunch of third grade girls, and then lurching back toward the little boy. “Zombie gonna eat you.”
“Wah-h-h-h-h,” the kid cries. His fists are up against his mouth. He is frozen where he stands.
This kid will be really good at Bubblegum Foursquare some day, I can’t help but think. Only that’s not what we’re playing right now.
This is out of control.
And not in a good way.
“Don’t eat me,” the little guy begs, trying to hide his head with the front of his red zippered sweatshirt. He crumples onto the grass, surrendering.
“It’s only pretend, kid,” I yell as a couple more toilet paper squares flutter to the ground.
Twe-e-e-e-e-t!
A whistle blows about two inches from my ear.
It’s Mr. Havens, the gigantic playground monitor. And boy, does he look mad!
“Exactly what is supposed to be happening here?” he shouts, his big hands on his hips.
And nobody moves, not even the little boy on the grass.
It’s like Bubblegum Recess, we’re all holding so still.
9
EPIC FAIL
“This is all your fault, Mr. Mummy,” Cynthia whispers to Jason—the mummy zombie king—as we file back into Ms. Sanchez’s classroom. It’s like we are cartoon bad guys marching off to jail in black-and-white striped uniforms. Ms. Sanchez is still in the hall talking to Mr. Havens.
I guess this was not his lucky day to substitute.
Join the crowd, Mr. Havens.
Jason shoots me a dirty look, but he doesn’t say anything. There are a couple of squares of TP still hanging from the back pocket of his jeans, but I pretend I don’t see them.
“Yeah, Mr. Mummy,” Fiona echoes, glaring at Jason. “You made that little boy cry.”
“Everyone was having fun until that happened,” loyal Corey points out, giving me a secret nudge of support.
“I didn’t see how it started,” Annie Pat complains. “Where did all that toilet paper come from?”
“It was probably Jared’s bright idea,” Cynthia announces, scowling.
All the boys in our class, even Jared, make a point of not looking at Cynthia—or at me. But they know where that roll of toilet paper came from.
I guess us guys are gonna stick together on this one. We’re like the loyal geese in The Sword in the Stone. For now, anyway.
In terms of making a new spare friend, though, this has to go down as an epic fail. Jason Leffer looks like he’ll never laugh again.
Good one, EllRay. So much for inviting Jason over Friday—to see Alfie’s goofy play, and then maybe have pizza or ice cream, and some sleepover fun.
Ms. Sanchez comes gliding back into the classroom like the ice queen in one of Alfie’s cartoon movies. “Well,” she begins, sitting down. “Imagine my surprise.” She lays her hands flat on top of the desk, which is kind of scary for some reason.
“Us girls didn’t do anything,” Cynthia says, talking and raising her hand at the same time.
“Quiet, please, Miss Harbison,” Ms. Sanchez says, not even looking at Cynthia.
Uh-oh. She calls us “Miss” and Mister” when she’s really angry.
“We have some things to sort out,” Ms. Sanchez says in a solemn voice. “Now, we were going to do some math word problems before lunch,” she continues.
Math word problems are usually pretty fun, unless your name is Corey Robinson. Corey can compete in a swim race in front of one-hundred people, and win, but math makes him panic.
Here is an example of a math word problem, in case you didn’t know:
There are twenty-five (25) students in Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class. Ten (10) of them are boys. One (1) boy hates math word problems. How many boys in Ms. Sanchez’s class don’t hate math word problems?
“And then,” Ms. Sanchez continues, “as a reward for working so hard on your math, I was going to read aloud to you. It was a really funny book, too. But I guess we won’t have time for that, now,” she says, shaking her head.
Corey’s hand inches up. “What do we have to do instead?” he asks in a nervous voice after Ms. Sanchez calls on him.
He’s probably worried it’ll be something even worse than math word problems.
Like taking out our own tonsils, maybe.
“I’m so glad you asked, Mr. Robinson,” Ms. Sanchez says. “First, you will all write notes of apology to Iggy Brown.”
“Who’s Iggy Brown?” Emma asks, not even raising her hand first. She sounds one-hundred percent (100%) confused.
“Iggy Brown is the little first-grade boy who got knocked down by a bunch of stampeding third-graders at morning recess,” Ms. Sanchez says, her voice cool.
“Nobody knocked him down,” Jason mumbles. “He collapsed.”
“Did you say something, Mr. Leffer?” Ms. Sanchez asks.
“Nuh-uh,” he says, shaking his head.
“Good,” Ms. Sanchez says. “Because poor little Iggy was really scared. His mama is having to leave work to bring him a change of clothes, so he can finish out the day.”
“It wasn’t that dirty on the grass,” Marco says, his voice low—but not low enough.
“Do you have something to contribute, Mr. Adair?” Ms. Sanchez asks.
“Nope,” Marco says, sounding hopeless.
“Me neither,” Major chimes in.
He’s the other M in “M and M,” remember?
“Iggy wet his pants because of the mummy,” Fiona loud-whispers. “I saw. It was sad. Poor little guy.”
“Poor little guy,” the other girls echo.
And I kind of agree with them. Because what if it had been my little sister Alfie, and not Iggy, who wandered over to the wrong area of the playground? She gets lost all the time! And what if she had been the one to wet her pants at school?
The world would come to an end. Her world, anyway. For a while.
I feel really terrible now.
I never meant for this to happen. But it happened anyway!
“It’s okay,” Marco Adair whispers to me. “You didn’t know.”
“Ms. Sanchez, Ms. Sanchez,” Cynthia says, waving her hand in the air as if she has something really urgent to say.
Ms. Sanchez sighs. “Yes, Miss Harbison, Miss Harbison?”
“Iggy probably can’t even read,” Cynthia says, like she just won an argument. “Anyway, he’s the one who strayed into our herd.”
She said “our herd!” Maybe while I’ve been reading about Merlyn and the geese, as well as all the other cool animals in The Sword in the Stone, Cynthia’s been reading some other animal book. Probably about magic ponies or something.
“And us girls didn’t do anything wrong,” Cynthia finishes, folding her arms across her chest. “So I think the boys should write the I’m-sorry-letters, and us girls can hear the funny story.”
“It’s ‘we girls,’ not ‘us girls,’” Ms. Sanchez informs her. “You would say, ‘We can hear,’ not ‘Us can hear,’ wouldn’t you? That’s the test. But sorry, ladies. It’s not going to work that way. This class is a unit—or ‘a herd,’ if you prefer. It’s not two teams, the boys against the girls. So get out your best pens, if you please, and I’ll pass out some nice paper for you to write on. Iggy’s parents can read him your notes, if he can’t read them himself. I’ll write a few vocabulary words on the board to help get you started,” she adds.
My d
ad would call that “throwing us a bone.”
“And then lunch?” Jared Matthews asks, sounding hopeful.
“Oh. About lunch,” Ms. Sanchez says, as if Jared just reminded her of something important. “You are all marching out onto that playground as soon as the lunch buzzer sounds, and you’re picking up every scrap of toilet paper you can find. And any other litter, as well. After that, you can wash your hands thoroughly, and then eat your lunch.”
“But the best food will be gone in the cafeteria,” Kevin cries.
“That’s true,” Ms. Sanchez says in a thoughtful way, as she examines her shiny fingernails. “I’m sure there will be something left, though. No one will starve.”
And she’s usually so nice.
This is all my fault—no matter what Marco says.
And my stomach is already growling!
“Iggy,” Ms. Sanchez writes on the white board. “Apologize.” “Sincerely.”
The entire third grade flock, or herd, sighs as if it were one giant creature.
And we start to write our notes to poor wet Iggy.
10
UH-OH
I jump into the back seat of Mom’s car about three minutes after school lets out. There is a long line of cars waiting at the curb. They all have their lights on and wipers going, even though it’s still daytime. It has just started to rain.
I am so glad Mom said she would pick me up today. I didn’t want the guys in my class griping again about what happened this morning.
I’m gonna end up with no friends, at this rate.
“Don’t get me wet, EllWay, or you’ll be sowwy,” Alfie warns.
That’s “you’ll be sorry” in Alfie-speak.
“What’s your problem?” I ask, wrestling with my seat belt. “What’s her problem?” I ask Mom when Alfie doesn’t answer me.
My sister looks like a grouchy cartoon character with a little black storm cloud over her head—which matches today perfectly, now that I think about it. Alfie’s arms are folded across her chest. She is slumped in her car seat like a rag doll. She kicked off one of her sneakers, too.
Uh-oh. That’s never a good sign. I hope it didn’t go out the car window.
“Talk to your brother, Alfie,” Mom says, signaling to pull into the traffic. “I’m too busy trying to drive in this crazy rain to explain what happened.”
“I wanna go home,” Alfie says, trying to kick the back of Mom’s seat, which luckily is a good eight inches from Alfie’s toes. “No chores! No chores, Mom,” she says, wriggling in her car seat. She aims another kick Mom’s way.
“Don’t do that,” I tell Alfie. “It’s dangerous. And you’re acting like a baby.”
That’s the worst insult you can give her.
“You can’t tell me what to do, EllWay,” Alfie says. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“I don’t even want to be the boss of you,” I inform her. “Where are we going?” I ask Mom. I’m hoping for a surprise trip to a drive-through, but that hardly ever happens.
Mom and Dad want us to have all kinds of experiences. Even fast food ones.
Only not very often.
“We’re headed back to the arts and crafts store, and then I need to swing by the library,” Mom says, not even looking at me in the rear view mirror. That’s how nervous she is about driving in the rain—or how angry she is at having to return to that store. It drives Mom nuts how messy the shelves are. She’s a very neat lady.
She could organize the world if she ever got the chance.
“But I thought you got everything you needed for Alfie’s goldfish costume,” I remind her. “You already started making it, didn’t you?”
“Miss Nancy decided Alfie would do better in another role,” Mom tells me, her voice sounding a little tight. “Our Miss Alfie was saying everyone’s lines for them, it seems. And she had some trouble settling down.”
“Yeah. Miss Nancy cheated the rehearsal,” Alfie says, pouncing on Mom’s words.
“Cheated at the rehearsal,” I correct her. “Because you can’t cheat a rehearsal, Alfie. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“EllRay,” Mom says to me from the front seat. “You’re not helping.”
“Did that stuff really happen?” I ask Alfie. “You saying other kids’ lines?”
I’m pretty sure she’s ready to talk now. Getting her to stop up will be the hard part.
“Well, I knowed ’em all, and the other kids didn’t,” my sister says. “Not fast enough, anyway. So Miss Nancy said I have to be the red bird,” Alfie tells me, almost spitting out the last two words. “Just because I was saying all the lines, and maybe bothering my neighbor. It’s so she can keep an eye on me, Miss Nancy says. But I don’t wanna be the red bird. The red bird comes first, and then she just stands there like—like a baby. I wanna be the goldfish and come last.”
“I think you ‘just standing there’ is the idea, Alfie,” Mom says. “And it’s not up to you. It’s up to Miss Nancy,” she adds—from the safety of the front seat, remember.
Thanks, Mom.
“There are nine characters,” Mom continues. “Not counting the teacher and the children in the story. So you’re lucky you’re in the skit at all, especially after disrupting the rehearsal the way you did.”
“What’s a skit?” Alfie asks, starting to get mad all over again.
“It’s, like, a little play,” I tell her. “A short one.”
“But this is gonna be a big play,” Alfie argues as Mom pulls into the arts and crafts store’s shiny black parking lot. “And I’m not gonna be the red bird. I’m telling you that much wight now.”
Right now.
“Then close your eyes when we get to the red tissue paper aisle, young lady,” Mom tells her, handing me a ladybug umbrella. Like that’s gonna happen. “Because I don’t want any unpleasant scenes in the store.”
“Then I’ll make a pleasant scene,” I hear Alfie mutter once Mom is out of the car.
Uh-oh, part two.
Dad gets home late from work a couple of Wednesday nights each month because of some meeting they have in the geology department of his college. Tonight he has gotten home even later than usual, because rain messed up the traffic.
It’s almost my bedtime, and I’ve been looking at this really cool book Mom let me check out of the library this afternoon. The book is the equipment for my Diego Romero Spare Friend Plan that I’m gonna try to pull off tomorrow at school.
If anyone is still speaking to me, that is.
Dad has just finished eating the dinner Mom heated up for him. But instead of watching the news, he wants to talk to me. I guess I’m the news, tonight.
Uh-oh, part three.
“Come on down to my office, son,” he has just called up the stairs.
About ten maybe-bad things I’ve done leap into my brain—and also one or two for-sure-bad things. I did them by accident, but what difference does that make to Dad? They still happened.
“Ooh, busted,” Alfie says from her darkened room, as I walk past her partly open door.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” I inform her.
“I’m too angwy to sleep,” she says.
Angry.
“You think you have problems now,” I say over my shoulder, because—I’d give anything to have a Brown Bear, Brown Bear kind of problem.
Being a red bird instead of a goldfish? Big deal!
Wait until she learns about the real world.
“Take a seat, EllRay,” Dad says from behind his desk, which has several large sparkling rocks sitting on it. It’s like he’s a king sitting on his throne, surrounded by a wall of crystals.
Wait. Those rocks aren’t that big.
I know I’m in some kind of trouble, though. Mom probably heard about all the stuff that happened today at school but decided t
o let Dad handle it when he got home.
That must be it.
Things will go better for me if I take the first step, I decide. “Look,” I say to my dad, gripping the arms of my chair like that’s going to save me. “Is this about the punishment we got at lunch for making that big mess in the playground during recess? Is that why you wanted to see me? Because we picked it all up. Every scrap of paper.”
Dad looks at me, his head tilted a little.
“No, wait,” I say quickly. “Is this about Iggy getting so scared that he wet his pants? Because we apologized for that. We wrote him twenty-five fancy I’m-sorry letters, with correct spelling and everything. Even though he probably can’t even read. Well, twenty-four letters,” I correct myself. “Because one of the girls was absent today. I forget her name.”
Now, Dad’s looking a little confused. Like—Iggy? Iggy who?
So that’s not it. “Is this about the Curse of the Mummy Zombie thing?” I babble on, as if my mouth is not connected to my brain in any way. “Because I didn’t make up the ‘curse’ part, Dad. That was Major’s idea. And it wasn’t ‘curse’ like a swear. I did make up the mummy zombie thing, but I had a really good reason. I had good intentions,” I add, remembering an expression Dad sometimes uses.
Parents like it when you quote what they say, even though they’ve already heard it before. Obviously.
By this point, the expression on Dad’s face is impossible to read. It almost looks like—like he’s about to laugh? But that can’t be right.
“Wait. Is this about the toilet paper I took to school?” I ask, using up my last idea. “Because I can pay for it out of my allowance!”
“The toilet paper?” Dad echoes. “You’d better just stop talking, son. I only wanted us to catch up a little. We haven’t had any time alone together in days. But obviously, there’s been a lot going on.” And he leans back in his chair, inspecting me like I’m some surprising new specimen.
What have I done?
“We don’t really need to talk,” I jibber-jabber, wishing I could delete the past few minutes from my dad’s memory bank. Wipe it clean. “Everything’s good. Really! At school, I mean. And at home. It’s good everywhere, in fact. Good, good, good!”
EllRay Jakes The Recess King! Page 4
