next to the front door, so the frazzled teacher with the clipboard can check off their names and then watch them gostraight out to their car, or you have to walk all the way in and find the right little kid yourself. And then you have to sign them out, but only if you’re on the approved list. That means parking the car, though, not waiting in line at the curb. And today, my mom’s afraid to turn off our car.
When I grow up, I want to be so rich that I can buy a new car every time I get close to needing a new battery. Car batteries are boring things to buy.
“EllRay.
Move
,” Mom says, her voice growing sharp.
And my mom is usually a very quiet lady.
“Okay, okay,” I say, turning off my game and sliding it under my backpack so no bad guy can leap into the car and steal it when I’m gone.
It’s my favorite thing!
“And make sure Alfie doesn’t forget her new pink jacket,” Mom tells me.
“She hasn’t taken it off in three days,” I remind her as I wrestle myself out of my seat belt. “I don’t see how she could forget it.”
And into Kreative Learning and Day Care I go.
I can’t see Alfie anywhere in the main playroom—
naturally
, like my mom said. So I head out back. The whole rear play area is more like a giant cage with a fence around it than it is a playground, only there are so many fun things to do there that the kids don’t notice.
I was hoping my sister would be in the covered patio where the battered playhouse and most of the girls are, but oh, no. And Alfie isn’t on the slide or the swings, either. Those are pretty much being swarmed by leftover day care boys, including the kid who bit his friend that other time. A second teacher is trying to keep the boys from clogging up the slide. “One at a time!” she keeps calling out.
There’s a job I never want to have.
“Alfie!” I call out, but she doesn’t answer.
I search the playground with my LASER-BEAM EYES , the ones I use to score so high
in Die, Creature, Die
. And there she is with three other girls, over in the far corner of the yard,
of course
, by the tree, the bush, and the rabbit hutch. Alfie’s golden-brown face has a funny expression on it.
I start to yell for her again, so I won’t have to walk all the way over there to get her, but then I stop to watch, because I can’t figure out what’s going on. At first, it looks like all four girls are playing together. But then I see that it’s really
three
girls who are together, with Alfie on the side, near the hutch. It reminds me of when my mom says, “Dressing on the side, please,” when she’s ordering salad in a restaurant.
The tallest of the three clumped-together girls is Suzette Monahan, who is a real pain, in my opinion, even though Alfie thinks she’s so great. Suzette came over to our house one day, and my mom’s still talking about it.
To say that Suzette is used to getting her own way is putting it mildly.
Today, Suzette has a long arm slung over each of the other two girls’ necks. Alfie is turned away from them, staring down at the ground. Her shoulders are slumped. She’s kicking at the dirt like that’s the most interesting thing in the world to do, and some stuff goes flying through the air.
And I suddenly remember my old nursery school in San Diego, and the rabbit hutch we had there, andFuzz-Bunny, who was so kicky and grouchy that no one could even go near him. Hutches use heavy screens instead of regular hard floors on the bottom, so the rabbit poop—little pellets—just drops down onto the ground, where it’s easy for teachers to rake it up. Rabbits’ tidy poop is probably the only reason they are such popular day-care pets.
You’re not supposed to
play
with the pellets, though. Or even kick them around.
And Alfie is usually so easily grossed-out. What’s the deal?
One of the girls who has Suzette’s arm hooked around her neck has a fluffy halo of brown hair. She reaches out toward Alfie, and she starts to say something.
When I grow up, I want to be so rich that I can buy a new car every time I get close to needing a new battery. Car batteries are boring things to buy.
“EllRay.
Move
,” Mom says, her voice growing sharp.
And my mom is usually a very quiet lady.
“Okay, okay,” I say, turning off my game and sliding it under my backpack so no bad guy can leap into the car and steal it when I’m gone.
It’s my favorite thing!
“And make sure Alfie doesn’t forget her new pink jacket,” Mom tells me.
“She hasn’t taken it off in three days,” I remind her as I wrestle myself out of my seat belt. “I don’t see how she could forget it.”
And into Kreative Learning and Day Care I go.
I can’t see Alfie anywhere in the main playroom—
naturally
, like my mom said. So I head out back. The whole rear play area is more like a giant cage with a fence around it than it is a playground, only there are so many fun things to do there that the kids don’t notice.
I was hoping my sister would be in the covered patio where the battered playhouse and most of the girls are, but oh, no. And Alfie isn’t on the slide or the swings, either. Those are pretty much being swarmed by leftover day care boys, including the kid who bit his friend that other time. A second teacher is trying to keep the boys from clogging up the slide. “One at a time!” she keeps calling out.
There’s a job I never want to have.
“Alfie!” I call out, but she doesn’t answer.
I search the playground with my LASER-BEAM EYES , the ones I use to score so high
in Die, Creature, Die
. And there she is with three other girls, over in the far corner of the yard,
of course
, by the tree, the bush, and the rabbit hutch. Alfie’s golden-brown face has a funny expression on it.
I start to yell for her again, so I won’t have to walk all the way over there to get her, but then I stop to watch, because I can’t figure out what’s going on. At first, it looks like all four girls are playing together. But then I see that it’s really
three
girls who are together, with Alfie on the side, near the hutch. It reminds me of when my mom says, “Dressing on the side, please,” when she’s ordering salad in a restaurant.
The tallest of the three clumped-together girls is Suzette Monahan, who is a real pain, in my opinion, even though Alfie thinks she’s so great. Suzette came over to our house one day, and my mom’s still talking about it.
To say that Suzette is used to getting her own way is putting it mildly.
Today, Suzette has a long arm slung over each of the other two girls’ necks. Alfie is turned away from them, staring down at the ground. Her shoulders are slumped. She’s kicking at the dirt like that’s the most interesting thing in the world to do, and some stuff goes flying through the air.
And I suddenly remember my old nursery school in San Diego, and the rabbit hutch we had there, andFuzz-Bunny, who was so kicky and grouchy that no one could even go near him. Hutches use heavy screens instead of regular hard floors on the bottom, so the rabbit poop—little pellets—just drops down onto the ground, where it’s easy for teachers to rake it up. Rabbits’ tidy poop is probably the only reason they are such popular day-care pets.
You’re not supposed to
play
with the pellets, though. Or even kick them around.
And Alfie is usually so easily grossed-out. What’s the deal?
One of the girls who has Suzette’s arm hooked around her neck has a fluffy halo of brown hair. She reaches out toward Alfie, and she starts to say something.
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