That’s “practicing inside my brain.” Rehearsing her one line.
“Don’t you want to know who I’m bringing?” I ask. “I’ll tell you his nickname,” I whisper, “It’s ‘the armpit noise king.’” And I make the noise with my tongue and lips as quietly as I can.
“Eww,” Alfie says, but she’s smiling big.
And I thought liking stuff like that was just a guy thing! I guess four-year-olds get it, too. “And you’re bwinging Corey?” Alfie asks.
“I already told you, he can’t come,” I say. “This is a new friend.”
I like the sound of those words. “A new friend.” Just like I planned.
Okay, maybe not exactly as I planned—or even close, really. Because as of today, Friday, both Jason Leffer and Diego Romero are farther away from wanting to hang with me than ever before.
But that might change some day. You never know!
And Marco counts, doesn’t he?
Just because I didn’t plan it this way doesn’t mean it’s not cool!
“I see a lellow duck looking at me,” Alfie says.
“That’s ‘yellow,’” I say. “Remember? ‘Yes, yes, yellow.’”
“EllRay,” Mom warns from the front seat as she nears Kreative Learning and Daycare. “Okay, Miss Alfie,” she says a minute later, sounding cheerful and matter-of-fact as can be. “Out you hop.”
“That’s Arletty who gets to hop,” Alfie grumbles as I help her with the seatbelt. “Because she’s the frog. That lucky.”
“Now, I’m picking you up at two-thirty, remember,” Mom tells Alfie, quickly changing the subject. She’s had a lot of practice doing that. “We’ll dash home for a fabulous snack,” Mom continues. “And then you can take a rest before the big show.”
“Where’s her costume?” I ask, looking around the back seat.
“I turned it in yesterday afternoon,” Mom half whispers, getting out of the car. “Miss Nancy is really on top of things this year,” she adds as she opens Alfie’s door.
“But she’s not the boss of me,” Alfie says, scrambling out of her car seat.
“Actually, she is,” I point out. “At school, anyway.”
Alfie had better not make that mistake at Oak Glen Primary School next year!
“Alfie knows that,” Mom tells me, laughing as she straightens my sister’s little pink jacket. She tweaks Alfie’s braids. “She’s only teasing, EllRay.”
But I’m not so sure.
Tonight might be more entertaining than Mom and Dad are thinking it will be.
It’s like I am looking around Oak Glen Primary School with brand-new eyes as I walk onto the sunny playground this morning.
Maybe it’s because I don’t know what’s going to happen today!
I have no secret goal. I am not trying to move other kids around like checkers, making them want to be friends with me. There’s just—right now.
It’s a very relaxing feeling.
I already learned this week that bad things can happen even if you think you have made a really good plan. Surprise!
But now, I know that good things can also happen without me having to come up with some goofy scheme—like my brilliant recess king idea.
Marco Adair wants to be friends with me. I didn’t even have to trick him into it!
“Hi, EllRay,” Corey shouts from way over by the playground shed. It looks like he has been showing off his mad paddleboard skills to Major. Luckily, Mr. Hale is busy at the swings, where someone—Little Miss Nosebleed again?—is having an emergency.
“Hi,” I yell. I toss my backpack onto one of the boys’ picnic tables. Thunk!
I look around with my new eyes. Diego and Nate are huddled together at the end of another picnic table. They are probably talking about cars.
Well, why not? They both like ’em.
I’m not even jealous.
Well, not very.
Behind the picnic tables, Jared, Kevin, and Stanley are hanging from the chain-link fence like bats, only not upside-down. Jared is higher than the other two, of course. But so what? Jared likes to be the boss, and I guess Kevin and Stanley don’t mind being bossed. Every so often, anyway.
Me, not so much.
But it’s like that with us guys. We’re different from the girls in my class. They can take sides, hold grudges, and have invisible wars for days, and not even Ms. Sanchez knows what’s going on.
With us boys, though, our friendships shape-shift and change the way my robotic insect action figure turns into a tank, then back into an attack bug again. And we’re all pretty cool together, no matter how the shape-shifting comes out.
It’s such a relief, being a boy and not a girl!
From now on, I’ll have a new friend to do stuff with when Corey and Kevin are busy. And Major can hang, too, if he wants. And Corey, and Kevin. I like them all.
“Win-win,” as my dad would say.
“Hey, EllRay,” Marco calls out as he bounces onto the playground and heads toward me. “I brought some stuff to show you,” he hollers. He looks around like a not-very-good secret agent.
But Mr. Havens is still busy over at the swings.
“Watcha got?” I ask, going over to meet him halfway.
And it’s really okay if it’s the plastic knights again, I remind myself. I can always teach him how to play Die, Creature, Die some other time.
Like—tonight!
20
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
The big room at Kreative Learning and Daycare is kind of rowdy during the pause before the last part of the show, Alfie’s skit. We have already made it through the two-year-olds’ songs, “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” Those three songs took a surprisingly long time.
In fact, it already feels like tomorrow.
Then we watched the three-year-olds’ performance of “The Gingerbread Man,” read aloud by Miss Nancy herself.
Gingerbread? It’s following me around!
I half expected Jared to come bursting through the door, demanding his share.
And now it’s almost Alfie’s turn. Dad is checking something on his cell, but Mom looks nervous as the voices around us grow louder.
I give Marco a look. “Dude,” I tell him. “Noisy, huh? And wait until you meet Alfie after the show. She’s like the princess of noisy. She’s gonna be the red bird in this skit,” I explain in advance.
“The red bird,” Marco says, like he’s memorizing it.
“She wanted to be the goldfish, but it didn’t work out,” I explain.
“Huh,” Marco says. He looks confused.
I think maybe he’s an only child.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” a dad behind me says, and his wife shushes him.
“Hello, everyone,” Miss Nancy calls out again from the stage, which is really just the back part of the room marked off by blue tape. She claps her hands a few times to get our attention, and everyone in the audience settles down.
“Oh, here we go,” Mom whispers. Dad puts away his cell.
Miss Nancy clears her throat, and the microphone squeals. “Next, we have our four-year-olds’ spirited version of that beloved children’s book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The book was written by Bill Martin Junior, and illustrated by Eric Carle,” she says. “And here’s our cast!”
The four-year-olds march out dressed in their costumes. My dad nods his approval of Alfie’s fluttering red feathers and yellow beak-nose. He gives Mom a thumbs-up. Everyone cheers and claps.
I clap too, because this might be as good as it gets.
I know this book very well. It goes through a whole bunch of animals seeing each other. Nine of them, Mom said. It ends with the last one—the goldfish Alfie wanted to be—seeing the teacher, who then sees all the kids.
In this skit, Mom told me that Miss Nancy is going to read the first line of the verse for each animal, asking, “What do you see?” Then the kids are supposed to say they see the next animal, and so on. It’s better than I’m making it sound.
Miss Nancy clears her throat, then she asks the kid playing the brown bear what he sees. And unfortunately, when the bear steps up to the microphone, he says he sees the red bird. Alfie.
Then Miss Nancy asks the red bird what she sees.
And Alfie just stands there, staring out at the audience. Her eyes are huge.
It’s as if my little sister didn’t realize anyone would be watching the skit—even though she said she wanted to be the goldfish so she’d get all the clapping!
It feels like everyone in the audience is holding their breath.
Marco nudges me. “Dude,” he whispers. “Is Fluffy supposed to be doing that?”
“It’s Alfie, not Fluffy. And nuh-uh,” I whisper back.
On the stage, Miss Nancy is nodding her head at Alfie, encouraging her to say her one line so the show can go on. So everyone can go home tonight. I can tell the teacher is about to repeat the opening question—which will not help Alfie one little bit.
I know my sister, see.
This is going to end in tears, or with a public meltdown. Either way, the next couple of weeks are going to be a disaster around our house.
Alfie might be small, but her temper is large.
The audience is murmuring now, but anything anyone does will only make things worse.
Almost anything.
“Do it,” I tell Marco, giving him a look.
“Do what?”
“Your armpit thing. And quick,” I whisper.
“You mean it?” Marco asks. He looks like he’s about to faint.
“Hurry,” I say, nodding. “Don’t even think about it. Just do it.”
Luckily, Marco already took off his jacket. And he is wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt.
He wipes his hands on his pants. Then he makes a cup shape with one hand and slides it under the opposite shirt sleeve. He puts it really tight over his armpit, with no air holes allowed, he told me once. He bends that arm, lifting it up like a chicken wing. And then really fast, he lowers his elbow, flattening the cupped hand.
Flirrrrppt!
The armpit noise echoes throughout the room. It’s like it’s bouncing off the walls and onto the stage! Alfie jumps as if she just got a shock—and then she starts to laugh.
She knows it was Marco! She’s looking right at us!
Corey had better watch his back, because I think Marco’s her hero, now.
And I’m not jealous, even one little bit.
“That boy’s full of surprises,” Dad murmurs to Mom, who has both hands over her face.
“He’s full of something,” she mumbles through her fingers.
Alfie strides up to the microphone, flaps her fluffy red wings, and says her line nice and loud. “I see a yellow duck looking at me!”
No baby talk “lellow.” No whispering into the microphone. It was perfect.
Yay, Alfie!
She steps back and bows.
And everyone claps and cheers again, this time just for her!
The show can’t continue until things calm down.
Mom and Dad still look like they’re in shock, after that astounding flirrrrppt. But basically, if Alfie’s happy, they’re happy.
And Alfie is definitely happy.
“Thumbs up, dog,” I say, giving my talented new friend Marco a nudge in the ribs—and a great big smile. “I owe you one.”
“Nah. We’re good,” Marco says, grinning back at me.
And I realize that the remainder of the skit, and tonight—and the whole rest of the semester, for that matter—are gonna go great.
I just know it!
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