EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! (6 page)

“There’s EllRay,” Jared and Stanley shout from across the playground on Monday morning, and they charge toward me like football players heading down the field. They’re in the middle of some fantasy game, that’s probably what’s going on.

So I stand there and take it when they slam into me.

It’s not like I’m gonna start
running
from them.

A bunch of girls swarm around us before things can develop any further. “Listen,” Annie Pat Masterson says, her red hair shining in the sun. “My mom told me that the P.T.A. said each class is supposed to decide what they’re gonna do for the assembly this Friday. We’re supposed to brainstorm! That means everyone has to talk at the same time. So should we do a skit? With really cute costumes? I vote yes.”

Annie Pat looks like she’s ready to jump into a costume right now.

Stanley groans.

“Or singing?” Annie Pat’s best friend Emma asks, ignoring the groan. “Only I don’t know what we can sing
about
,” she worries aloud. “Not if we have to take Christmas out of everything. That’s what my mom told me the P.T.A. said we had to do, because of religion.”

“We could sing ‘Frosty the Snowman,’” Kry Rodriguez says, brushing her long bangs to one side. “I don’t think snowmen are against anyone’s religion.”

“But a lot of the little kids at Oak Glen have never even
seen
snow,” Emma points out. “So they’ll just be more confused than they already are.”

“Is Frosty the one who had a very shiny nose?” Fiona McNulty asks. She’s the crayon artist, remember? She says she has weak ankles, even though she walks just fine. So I don’t know.

“I think that was Rudolph,” Kry says. And she’s usually right about things.

“I thought we were just supposed to figure out what to call the
assembly
,” I say. “That’s what my
dad told
me
. But maybe we should leave the word ‘snow’ out of the assembly title, too, like with ‘Christmas,’ since it never snows in Oak Glen, California.”

“It did once, I think,” Kry says, tapping her chin and looking up at the sky through her bangs as if the answer might be written on today’s puffy white clouds. “In the olden days.”

“Dang! And we missed it,” Corey says, kicking some leaves that look like little gold inside-out umbrellas.

“Hey,” I say, giving him a friendly shove. “When did you get here?”

I look around for Kevin, but he’s not on the playground yet.

“There’s a real good song called ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland,’” Emma says, like she’s thinking aloud. “So maybe we should call the assembly that. Because you can have a ‘winter wonderland’ without any snow.”

“How?” Jared asks, his hands on his hips. “The
whole entire song
is about how much fun it is knocking down some dude’s snowman. So
duh
.”

Okay, two things. First, it’s like we are brainstorming without a brain, me included. And second,
I’m pretty sure that’s not the only thing the song ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ is about, but it’s too early in the day to argue.

Especially with Jared.

It’s like Jared eats arguments for
breakfast
, he loves them so much. Arguments give him energy, like a vampire slurping up blood.

Not that that’s a very Christmassy comparison to make.

But in fact, even when everyone is happy and things are going great, Jared sometimes likes to get mad in advance.

Just in case!

“I like that idea,” Kry says thoughtfully, her dark brown eyes shining. “Because ‘winter wonderland’ can also mean sparkly decorations and fun. Without the snow. So that would be a good thing to call the assembly. We just won’t sing the song,” she adds, probably to make Jared feel better.

“If you say so,” he mumbles.

Kry’s about the only kid Jared won’t take on. I think he kind of likes her.

“She just
did
say so,” Emma tells him, fake-innocent.

“So, we’ll tell Ms. Sanchez that ‘Winter Wonderland’ is our suggestion for the assembly title,” Cynthia says, like she’s been taking notes. “But what song are we gonna sing?”

“We’d better figure something out,” Heather says, sounding gloomy. “Or they’re gonna make us sing ‘Jingle Bells’ again, like last year. While we
JANGLE
those old
bells.
”

“And while the boys sing all the wrong words,” Cynthia says, shaking her head in disgust.

I forget the wrong words, except for “Batman smells.”

Maybe this won’t be so bad after all!

“Let’s do that one again,” Stanley says, laughing.

This reminds me to look around for Kevin again. Is he here yet?

Sort of. He has appeared out of nowhere and is sitting on the boy’s lunch table, pawing through his lunch sack, even though school hasn’t started yet.

Us guys do that. That’s why we’re always starving by the time we get home from school.

Kevin is continuing to ignore me—because I embarrassed him in public last Thursday. Accidentally, but what difference does that make?

I don’t blame him for being mad, now that I think about it. Someone can
accidentally
knock you over during recess, can’t they? And it can hurt just as much as if they aimed themselves at you with a giant slingshot.

“C’mon,” Emma says through a tangle of wind-blown curly hair. “We have to come up with something
good
to sing this year. We don’t want to just stand there shaking a bunch of rusty old bells. That’s so babyish.”

“Yeah,” Annie Pat says, seconding her. “And the assembly is this Friday, in only four more days. And we want to look good,
whatever
we do.”

“We should dance,” Kry says, inspired.

Yeah.
That’s
gonna happen.

Jared makes a few hurling sounds, and Stanley pretend-dances to them.

“The girls, anyway,” Emma says, seeing the expression on my face. “But what kind of dance?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Cynthia says, and Heather gets ready to back her up no matter what. You can see it happen. “My mom listens to this old song called ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’” Cynthia tells us, “and it’s really cute. We can tell Ms. Sanchez we want to do that
one—before she sticks us with ‘Jingle Bells’ again.”

“I think I know that song,” Kry says, beaming at her. “And it’s
adorable.
Good one, Cynthia.”

“Thanks,” Cynthia says, looking surprised and bashful at the same time.

Everyone likes Kry. I don’t know how she does that!

“I don’t wanna do
anything
‘adorable,’” Corey mutters in my ear. And I kind of agree.

But I don’t have any better ideas, and the buzzer just sounded.

I feel myself being pulled along with the crowd of kids as we make our way toward the school building.

“Dude,” a voice behind me shouts, cutting through the noise around us.

Kevin
.

“Hey,” I say over my shoulder. I attempt a smile. “Listen, Kev. I’m really—”

“I decided you owe me, EllRay,” Kevin says. “
Big-time
.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“I’m talkin’ about makin’ things even,” he says.
Talkin’
and
makin’
?

But I decide not to say anything to Kevin about ‘poor Mr. G,’ to use Dad’s expression. Not that I would.

“I’ll tell you the rest later,” Kevin adds as we push our way past the heavy door to Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class. “After I figure it out.”

He’ll tell me the rest later
.

Lucky me.

But at least Kevin’s talking to me again!

7

“You boys go straight to Principal James’s office, give him this, then come right back,” Ms. Sanchez tells Kevin and me an hour later at her classroom door. She hands me an envelope that I guess is full of our brainstorm ideas for the assembly title and the song we would not refuse to sing, “Jingle Bell Rock.”

“That’s okay. EllRay can go alone,” Kevin tells her.

“That’s okay,” she echoes, smiling. “But no, he can’t. You’re going together. And
now
would be good.”

“She didn’t lick it shut,” Kevin tells me as we head off down the empty hall.

Down the rabbit hole.

I started calling it “going down the rabbit hole” last year, the few times I was allowed out into the empty hall during class hours, usually to deliver a message to the office or to use the restroom. Mom was reading Alfie and me
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
at the time, which is definitely not just a girl book, by the way. I think I got the words “hole” and “hall” mixed up.

But being alone in an empty school hall seemed strange to me back then, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. That’s my point. One minute, normal. Next minute, weird.

The hall seems weird today, too, even though I’m with Kevin. It’s like I can still hear the ghosts of sneakers squeaking and kids shouting, even though there’s nobody here except Kevin and me—and about a hundred brightly colored construction paper snowflakes pinned to the wall.

A few of them are fluttering for no reason, which is
also
weird. And a little scary.

Emma McGraw was right. Those fake snowflakes—and the smallest one is the size of a Frisbee—are the closest lots of kids here in Oak Glen, California, have ever been to snow. So far,
anyway. They’ve probably seen real snow in movies, but maybe even
that
wasn’t real. Maybe—

“I
said
, Ms. Sanchez didn’t lick the envelope shut,” Kevin repeats, interrupting my thoughts. “So we could look inside.”

“We’d better not,” I tell him. “We already know what’s in it, don’t we? And there are probably security cameras all around us.”

This seems to impress Kevin. “
Dude
,” he whispers, darting nervous glances at the red fire alarm boxes on the walls and the emergency sprinklers on the ceiling. The sprinklers here at Oak Glen Primary School look like little upside-down space capsules. They could
definitely
be hiding security cameras inside.

“So, listen,” Kevin whispers, giving up on us snooping inside the envelope. “Like I said before school, you
owe
me. You know, for throwing shade last week.”