EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! Read Free Page A

Cynthia!—and talking at the same time.
    See, Corey and I are still playing this game we invented last Saturday, when he spent the night at my house. It’s a version of this really cool hand-held video game we both want for Christmas called
Die, Creature, Die
, only we made up our own story and words and rules. And we were taking turns telling each other more of the made-up story at lunch today. It would be fun to keep on doing it while wehelp clean the classroom. Since we have to clean the classroom, I mean.
    “But Ms. Sanchez put me in charge,” Cynthia says, like she’s explaining something really obvious. “And you and Kevin
match
, EllRay. You go together.”
    We match
.
    She means we both have brown skin.
    “Now, hold on a second,” Ms. Sanchez says from across the room, actually raising both hands in a
stop-right-there!
kind of way. “No personal comments, if you please.”
    She doesn’t just have eyes in the back of her head, she has ears there, too!
    “I didn’t say anything bad,” Cynthia mumbles under her breath.
    But Ms. Sanchez isn’t letting this one slide. “Using your reasoning, Cynthia, perhaps I should put Corey and Annie Pat together, just because they both have freckles?” she pretend-asks.
    And
that’s
not a personal comment?
    “Hey,” Annie Pat murmurs, unexpectedly wounded.
    WOW! Didn’t she know she has freckles?
    Annie Pat’s cheeks turn pink under the cinnamon sprinkles scattered across her cheeks.
    “Yeah,” Emma chimes in. “And I thought Cynthia said Annie Pat was
my
partner. And EllRay wants Corey to be his partner. He just said so.”
    Kevin slides me a weird look. I can’t crack the code of it.
    Could he have hurt feelings?
    But he’s a boy!
    It could just as easily have been
Kevin
who came over to spend the night last weekend, only he didn’t. Or Kevin and I could have been the ones playing the made-up version of
Die, Creature, Die
at lunch today. Only we weren’t. Kevin was busy playing Sky-high Foursquare with Jared, Stanley, and Jason Leffer, this other guy in our class. That doesn’t mean we aren’t still friends!
    So me wanting to get paired up with Corey today is nothing personal against Kevin. It just happened that way.
    Girls always seem sure about who they are friends with, by the way, but it changes a lot. Infact, they even rank their friends—like who is their first-best friend, their second-best friend, and so on. And the whole class knows every boring detail.
Always
.
    With us guys, it’s harder to tell who’s friends or not. But basically, we’re okay with most guys most days. And we all have a couple of friends we really
like
to hang with, like I do with Corey and Kevin.
    The three of us are solid. I thought we were, anyway.
    There might be some kid one of us is fighting with—but it is always finished in a flash.
    Getting over hurt feelings moves faster for boys than for girls, in my opinion. Like water compared to mud.
    “Your freckles are absolutely adorable, Annie Pat,” Ms. Sanchez assures her. “I was merely trying to make a point, though I think it got lost somewhere along the way.”
    Cynthia whirls to face Kevin. “
Are
you friends with EllRay?” she asks, her hands on her hips. As if that’s the point of this whole thing.
    Kevin looks down at his sneakers. “I dunno. I thought so,” he says, but his voice is so quiet that most kids can barely hear it.
    I hear it, though. And it makes me feel really bad.
    I clear my throat, wondering what I’m about to say.
    “Shhh,” Cynthia says, like I’m about to make everything worse—for
her
.
    “Hah,” Jared jeers. “Kevin got dumped! Even
EllRay
doesn’t wanna hang with him.”
    Hey, wait a second.
“Even EllRay?”
    And I didn’t dump anyone!
    “They must have had a fight,” Stanley says, jumping in. “Oh, EllRay,” he coos, pretending to be Kevin. “Don’t you
wuv
me anymore?”
    “Be quiet,” I tell him. “That never happened.”
    I try to catch Kevin’s eye, but