Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer Read Free Page B

September. Maybe that’s why she has never been in the middle of any of our battles.Kry’s shiny black bangs go almost all the way down to her big brown eyes.
    “No last-minute buzzing,” Ms. Sanchez says, still sounding playful, but about at the
end
of playful, if you know what I mean. “We have work to do. Language Arts, to be precise.”
    Ms. Sanchez is always precise. That means exact, with no messing around.
    “Settle,” she says in a different voice, and we do, because you can’t push it with Ms. Sanchez. If you really goof up, which Jared Matthews did just once, the whole class has to copy out an article from
Fascinating Facts for Young People
. Word for word. And those facts aren’t all that fascinating, believe me.
    So even Jared settles down, because he doesn’t want everyone to be mad at him again.
    Next to me, Annie Pat Masterson lines up two sharp pencils, in case pencil number one breaks, I guess. But she’s okay. She likes fish—
alive
ones—and has bouncy red hair. Her best friend is Emma McGraw, the second-littlest kid in Ms. Sanchez’s class.
    Guess who is number one? Me. EllRay Jakes. But I’m gonna start growing pretty soon, and then watch out! I might even be a Laker some day. The tallest one.
    “We will be writing a personal narrative today,” Ms. Sanchez says. “That means you will tell a story in writing, but in an organized way.”
    She says “in an organized way” as if she doesn’t really think it will come true, but she has her hopes—like when Mom tells Alfie, “You’ll finish those peas and you’ll like them, young lady.”
    “We’ll start with a helpful worksheet so you can stay on track,” Ms. Sanchez says, looking for someone to help her pass stuff around. Two hands shoot up into the air: Cynthia Harbison and her friend Heather Patton, who says she’s allergic to coconut.
    Cynthia is the bossiest—and cleanest—girl in our class.
    “Okay, Cynthia,” Ms. Sanchez says with a very small sigh, and she hands Cynthia the papers. Cynthia passes them around like she’s handing out parking tickets.
    I look at the paper. It has five questions on it.
What happened?
When did it happen?
Where did it happen?
Can you give us some details about it?
How did it end?
    She left out “
Why did it happen?
” which I think can be the most interesting part of anything, even if sometimes you don’t
know
why something happened. For instance, I don’t know why that mean dragon Suzette Monahan is picking on Alfie. But it’s happening anyway.
    “Are you listening, EllRay?” Ms. Sanchez is asking, which means—I guess—that she’s been saying something.
    “DOINK! DOINK! DOINK !” Stanley says under his breath, and Jared smirks.
    “Uh, sorry. No,” I say, because I have learned the hard way that it’s better to tell the truth when this happens, or else your teacher might ask you to explain things again to the whole class, since you’ve been listening so well. And then what?
    “I was telling the class that I want you tothink of something that happened in your life recently,” Ms. Sanchez says. “Not a huge event, just a small one. And then use this worksheet to write about it. And use your friend the comma correctly, please.”
    Heather’s hand shoots up into the air once more. I think she was born that way. “Can I put unicorns in mine?” she asks. “Real ones, not stuffed animals?”
    Okay, now that’s just goofy, because—
real unicorns
?
    “
Bogus
,” Jared Matthews cough-says into his big freckled hand. Jared is the boy version of Cynthia in my class, meaning he’s bossy. Not that he’s like a girl.
    Ms. Sanchez taps her foot. She always wears fancy shoes. My mom says she doesn’t know how Ms. Sanchez can stand in them all day, especially the ones with pointy toes, but the girls in my class love them. I’ve actually heard them talk about it. Which is also goofy.
    Ms. Sanchez clears her throat. “If you’ve had a recent, real-life experience involving a