Ellray Jakes Walks the Plank Read Online Free Page B

lunch.
    Corey and Kevin stare at me, then look away, as if they are trying to remember why we are friends.
    “But that means there’s no time for a spelling quiz, either,” Ms. Sanchez tells us, her voice bright. I guess by saying this, she thinks she’s sort of giving everyone an invisible present to keep them from hating me.
    “The buzzer’s about to go off,” Annie Pat says, sounding gloomy, and she puts her hands over her ears in advance. Annie Pat has very sensitive ears.
    “Any second now,” Ms. Sanchez agrees, aiming her tired-looking smile around the room. “So I want everyone to go home and get a good night’s sleep—because tomorrow is another day.
Thank goodness.
”

THE NAME YOU GET
    “Are you still mad at me, EllWay?” Alfie asks that night at home, a doll in each of her hands. I am supposed to be keeping her company while she picks up her room, but at the same time I am sitting on her rug playing
Die, Creature, Die
again. I am still trying to top my personal best—which is not very good.
    “Only a little mad,” I tell her after pressing PAUSE, and I lean back against her bed. “Mostly I’m mad at
me
. You didn’t mean to do anything wrong, Alfie. You were trying to help, but you’re just four.”
    “But why are you mad at
you
?” she asks, sinking down next to me.
    “Because I should have made sure you fed him right,” I say.
    “Yeah,” she says, nodding, and relief spreads across her round face like syrup on a pancake. “Itwas your fault Swimmy died. You messed up, huh?”
    “Yeah,” I say. “I messed up.”
    “But I’m the one who got in trouble at day care today,” she says, staring at one of her dolls as she combs its bright yellow hair with her fingers.
    “I heard,” I say.
    Mom told me that Alfie got sent home with a note—which is
the
bad thing at her day care. Alfie got mad and told Suzette Monahan that she was going to die some day and maybe be buried in thebackyard in a plastic container. Or else flushed.

    Alfie didn’t say whose backyard Suzette might be buried in, but it didn’t matter, Mom says. Suzette was already yelling for the day care teacher before Alfie even finished her sentence.
    Suzette is sometimes Alfie’s friend and sometimes her enemy, and she is always a pain, in my opinion. She came over to our house once to play, and she even tried bossing my mom around about the snack. Big mistake, Suzette. Our mom is not a pushover.
    “I guess I said something bad to Suzette,” Alfie admits, twisting the doll’s yellow hair.
    “Why?” I ask.
    “I don’t know,” Alfie says. “I was thinking about Swimmy, and then Suzette put torn-up pieces of paper in my hair and kids laughed, so the words just jumped out of my mouth. And now Suzette says she gets to be the cutest one in day care.”
    “The cutest one?”
    “
You
know,” Alfie says, sounding sad. “Like, there’s a funniest kid in every class, and a smartest kid, and a best jumper, and the one who’s the cutest?It’s just the name you get, EllWay,” she explains.
    “Oh. Yeah,” I say. “The name you get. Kind of like with grown-ups, and what jobs they have. ‘The teacher.’ ‘The doctor.’ Stuff like that.”
    “I used to be the cutest,” Alfie tells me, ignoring what I said about grown-ups’ jobs. “But now, Suzette says I’m the meanest and
she’s
the cutest.”
    “Suzette doesn’t get to decide,” I tell Alfie, trying to make her feel better.
    “Yes she does,” Alfie says. “Because the other kids do whatever she wants.”
    “That makes Suzette the bossiest, not the cutest,” I say, laughing. “But don’t tell
her
that, or you’ll get sent home with another note for sure.”
    “Okay,” Alfie says. “I won’t tell her that. I’ll think it, though. And I’ll always get to be the cutest one at home, right?” she asks. “And you can be the cutest one’s brother.”
    “Okay,” I say, getting back to my game.
    But later that night, when I think about what