Excellent Emma by Sally Warner Page A

worse. And crying is something I could never live down at school.
    It isn’t even eight thirty in the morning yet! This is going to be a lo-o-o-ong day.
    “Hey, what’d I do?” EllRay asks, confused. “You can have it back if you—”
    “I said, leave me alone ,” I shout, and I start running as fast as I can toward the school’s front steps.
    And that’s pretty fast!

2
    Typical Boy Behavior
    “Why can’t you come to my birthday party? I don’t get it,” Jared says to Corey on the playground that same afternoon. But he sounds mad, not sad. Sad is definitely the way a girl would sound in the same situation.
    It is recess, but my best friend, Annie Pat Masterson, and I didn’t feel like running around on the still wet playground or hanging on the cold, drippy chain-link fence like the other girls in my class, even though most of them are nice, especially Kry Rodriguez. Instead, we are practicing making faces at each other at the third-grade picnic table. But the boys are goofing around and talking under a nearby tree, so we have also been listening to what they’re saying.
    As future nature scientists, Annie Pat and I have noticed that a group of boys can easily ignore one or two girls, but three or more girls make them nervous. Then, they become as alert as a herd of zebras when a bunch of lionesses go strolling by.
    It is windy and cool out today, the first Monday in December. I am wearing my new green sweater, and Annie Pat is wearing her very cute red hoodie, which matches her hair almost perfectly, but the boys are not noticing us at all. Eavesdropping conditions are ideal!
    “Why won’t you come to my birthday?” Jared asks again, scowling at Corey.
    “I told you,” Corey says, sounding nervous. “I have swim practice that afternoon. There’s this big meet coming up in January. My mom says we’re still gonna get you a present, though, so don’t worry.” He ruffles his hand through his white-blond hair.
    “But you always have swim practice,” Jared argues, ignoring the part about the birthday present.
    “Yeah,” Stanley chimes in, loyal as ever to Jared. “Why do you have to keep practicing and practicing? Don’t you already know how to swim? My mom says I’m a real good swimmer, and I’m going.”
    Stanley might know how to swim, but it’s different for Corey, I’m pretty sure. He is already a champion swimmer, and he’s only going to get better as he grows up, our parents say. Although what you would do all day long as a grown-up swimming champion, I don’t know.
    “Hey, Stanley,” EllRay Jakes says. “Can you stick your tongue out like this? Like a tube? Watch me!”
    Boys like to try to do crazy things with their bodies. Annie Pat and I look at each other and start to crack up—but silently . We don’t want to waste this opportunity to study another species at close range.
    “No, I can’t,” Stanley says, not even trying. “But I can wiggle my ears and bend the tops of my fingers funny.”
    “I can stick out my tongue like a tube,”
    Corey tells them.

    “Shut up,” Jared says, still angry about the party. “You think you’re better than us, just because you win prizes for swimming, and—”
    “You shut up,” EllRay interrupts, even though Jared wasn’t talking to him, and even though EllRay is small and Jared is big. But EllRay and Corey are friends.
    “My cousin broke two of his fingers playing basketball,” Kevin reports. This news comes completely out of nowhere. “And now one of them is bent funny forever .”
    “You liar,” Jared says. “You don’t even have a cousin who plays basketball.”
    “Yeah, I do,” Kevin tells him, almost apologetic. “He lives in Idaho, dude. His name’s Bryan McKinley, and I can prove it. Ask my mom, if you don’t believe me.”
    “Well, how come I never met him?” Jared asks, outraged.
    “There’s dinosaur tracks in Idaho,” EllRay says, excited. “Or somewhere like Idaho. I saw a picture once.”
    Now, this