EllRay Jakes and the Beanstalk

1
KEVIN, COREY, AND ME
“Kevin rode his skateboard to school again. With Jared,” my friend Corey Robinson tells me in a gloomy voice a few minutes before school starts. It is Friday, and we are standing together on the playground. It is a cold April day, and a few spatters of rain hit our faces.
“No big deal,” I say, trying to shrug like I mean it. Corey’s voice sounds funny when he’s telling me about Kevin McKinley and Jared Matthews, because Jared has been kind of like our ENEMY for two years now. The enemy of Kevin, Corey, and me, I mean, because the three of us are best friends. We are all in the third grade at Oak Glen Primary School.
I’ve known Kevin since first grade, when my family moved to Oak Glen from San Diego. He showed me how to use the pencil sharpener. I still remember how the shavings smelled. He and I were–and still are–the only two boys with brown skin in our class, but that’s not why we’re friends. Well, it’s not the only reason. The point is, we go “way back,” as my dad sometimes says. And things should stay the same.
This is hard to explain, but it’s embarrassing to me that Kevin is suddenly good at skating when I haven’t even started learning yet. And I’m secretly hating that he’s hanging out with Jared, who has done lots of stuff to embarrass me in the past.
I don’t know why Jared does it. Teasing me is kind of like his hobby.
It’s not official or anything about Kevin, Corey, and me being BEST FRIENDS, by the way. It’s not like with the girls in my class, who say, “Heather’s my first best friend, and Kry’s my second best friend,” as if each girl in my class is keeping her eye on a race that nobody can see. No boy, anyway.
But with us three boys, we just like to hang together, that’s all. And some guys are easier to hang with than others. Like I said, Jared can be kind of a pain. His best friend and loyal stooge has always been Stanley Washington, but right now, Jared and Kevin are together, putting their skateboards away in the pen in the corner of the playground. I don’t see Stanley anywhere.
The pen is where bikes and boards are locked up during the day–since the teachers don’t want kids skating out of class when things get dull, I guess.
The rule at Oak Glen is that starting in third grade, you can ride your bike, scooter, or skateboard to school if you wear a helmet. Since my friends and me are in the third grade, this has been a big deal for some of us this year. So far, though, I’ve only ridden my bike to school four times. But that’s because getting up, washing, dressing, eating, then finding my homework, helmet, and bike lock, and still leaving on time for school is too hard for me to pull off.
I’m not that great early in the morning.
And once, when I did manage to ride my bike to school, I forgot all about it! I walked home, leaving it locked up and lonely all night long. I got scolded by our school’s grouchy custodian, too. You usually only see him when somebody hurls in class and he has to show up with his bucket of sawdust, broom, and dustpan.
That’s gotta be one hard job. Corey could never do it. He’s so sensitive that he starts to throw up just thinking about somebody else doing it. And once, when Fiona McNulty cried in class because someone “looked at her funny,” which isn’t even a real thing, in my opinion, Corey started crying, too. I also saw him cry at the movies, when a dog died. He had to blow his nose on his sleeve.
Now, when somebody cries in class, which hardly ever happens because Ms. Sanchez is on top of stuff like that, Corey told me he pinches his leg real hard and stares out the window until the other person has mopped up their tears. Her tears, usually.
Corey even YAWNS when anyone else yawns, but so does everyone, just about. My dad says there is a scientific reason for yawning-something about people cooling their brains. You might think he’s making it up, but maybe he isn’t. He’s a scientist. He teaches geology-that’s mostly about rocks-at a college in San Diego.
Corey is a lot nicer than me, I think. Maybe Corey is nicer than Kevin. I’ll never have to worry about him dumping me as a friend just because I can’t do some random thing like ride a skateboard.
“Dude. They do live kind of close to each other,” I point out to Corey, watching Kevin and Jared laugh and shove each other as the prickly rain gets its act together and starts to fall a little harder. “And they both have boards. So I guess…”
My voice trails off, because I can’t think of how to end my sentence.
“I guess Kevin forgot about that time Jared tried to beat you up,” Corey says, like he’s finishing my sentence for me. “And it’s more like Kevin and Jared are scooters, not skaters,” he adds, scoffing.
I think Corey is hoping to make us both feel better when he says this-because he is training to be a swimming champion, so his mom and dad don’t want him “risking life and limb” on a skateboard, as they put it. And I don’t even have a board. Not yet.
My new neighbor Henry has one, though. And he has a friend named Fly who’s a great skater.
“Huh?” I say, having missed a few words.
“It’s not like they can actually do any tricks,” Corey explains again. “They just push themselves down the sidewalk with one foot. Any baby could do that.”
I can’t. Not yet. “It’s still faster than walking,” I say, turning away as the buzzer sounds and the rain really starts to fall. Us boys will be steaming in Ms. Sanchez’s toasty class with its clanking radiators as our clothes dry, but we don’t care.
And I don’t care if Kevin has a new friend, I tell myself as Corey and I walk to Ms. Sanchez’s class. People make new friends all the time. That it doesn’t mean we aren’t still friends.
Does it?

2
A WONDERFUL NEW ASSIGNMENT
“Settle down, ladies and gentlemen. No matter how damp you may be, nobody’s going to melt,” Ms. Sanchez calls out as she prepares to take attendance.
Ms. Sanchez is the prettiest teacher at Oak Glen Primary School. The girls in our class voted about that once. Ms. Sanchez always smells good, too, like those little white flowers that grow on orange trees. She is going to get married someday to a man named Mr. Timberlake, but he’s not the famous one from the movies. It’s another Mr. Timberlake, one who runs a sports supply store.
The famous Mr. Timberlake lost out, in my opinion.
I don’t know what Ms. Sanchez and her Mr. Timberlake are waiting for. How hard can it be to get married? You just say yes or no, and that’s it.
The girls in our class all want to be Ms. Sanchez’s flower girls when she finally does get married, but good luck with that. It would be like a NASCAR race, with each girl trying to be first in line. They would wreck the wedding.
I take my seat at the same time I’m avoiding looking at Kevin. He’s been waving his arms, trying to get my attention-to say hi late, I guess.
Say hi to Jared, Kevin-if he’s such a great new friend of yours.
“Settle down,” Ms. Sanchez says again, and she starts calling our names.
Stanley Washington is out sick today, it looks like. Ms. Sanchez frowns-but in a pretty way-as she makes this special mark in the attendance book she sometimes calls her “work of art.” I accidentally spilled water on it once, but she still likes me.
“We are starting a wonderful new assignment today,” she tells us after the usual boring morning announcements have been made. “I got the idea for it when I was reading fables and folk tales last weekend, including some by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.”