EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! by Sally Warner Read Free Book Online Page B

get to the other side.
    It’s more fun than it sounds, which is true of most things us kids like to do.
    But Kevin doesn’t want me to swing my way
across
the overhead ladder. He wants me to swing my way to the middle and then stay there, holding on like crazy. The only problem will be that other kids—mostly first- and second-graders—are already using it. So I get in the line and wait my turn to swing to the middle and hold on, no matter what.
    Okay.
It’s my turn.
    And—I’m up the side rungs.
    I grab hold of the first top rung—it’s cold!—and start swinging toward the middle rung. I can almost taste the cold metal in my mouth, which is weird.
    Swinging, swinging, swinging, swinging, STOP .
    And—I’m hanging, holding on with my too-small, puny hands.
    Little hamster paws, they feel like.
    And that’s when the “hold on, no matter what” part turns out to be harder than I thought. Because once I’m hanging there, the little kids keep trying to swarm past me.
    They don’t get it yet, that this is a big-deal, third grade challenge!
    1. One chunky first-grader with red hair comes chugging past like I’m invisible, his legs flailing as he kicks my shins. Not on purpose, but it still hurts.
    2. Two tiny girls swing right by me, one on either side, chattering the whole way. They couldn’t stop talking for a minute, even? Why do girls talk so much? At least it’s not just Alfie who does it! I was starting to think there was something wrong with her.
    3. A feisty second-grader with a mean glint in his eye swings his way toward me from the wrong direction, and then tries to go through me, basically. “Move it! Move it!” he keeps yelling as he kicks at me, even though I’m older than he is. “You’re hogging the whole thing! No fairsies!”
    Meanwhile, down on the sand, Kevin, Corey, Jared, and Stanley are watching me. Corey looks like he’s counting under his breath. His lips are moving. And then up come Emma, Annie Pat, and Kry.
    Oh, great, I think, as my hands start to sweat and burn at the same time, and as my head starts to feel like a water balloon about to explode.
    Witnesses.

12
TICKLISH?
    A-million-and-one.
    A-million-and-two.
    A-million-and three.
    That’s what it seems like, anyway.
    At least I don’t have to use the restroom!
    And the second I think that, I
do
need to use the restroom. Why does that always happen?
    Think of something else, I order myself.
Anything
else. Think about the broiling hot Anza-Borrego desert in the summer, or Christmas morning, or decorating cookies with a whole bottle of sprinkles—and then eating them. Think about being a superhero in the game of
Die, Creature, Die
, and about staying up late, and
no school.
    Do not think about having to use the restroom.
    Do not think of how much your hands hurt.
    I already have calluses, sure. But they’re tiny, the size of Alfie’s fingernail clippings.
    My arms feel hot and heavy, and my feet are numb. I’d kick them, just to get them back to normal, but then I’d fall to the ground for sure.
    And so I just hang there.
    A-million-and-twenty.
    A-million-and-twenty-one.
    Jared’s getting bored, I can tell. And then he gets this look on his face. “I wonder if EllRay’s ticklish?” he asks no one in particular.
    But he asks it
loud.
    And he shoves to the front of the little-kid-line, climbs up a rung, then grabs on to an overhead rung with both gigantic hands. He swings my way. “Here I come, EllRay,” he calls out. “Are you ticklish, dog? TICKA, TICKA, TICKA ! And you’d better hang on, or your stupid, show-off trick—whatever it is—won’t count. And you’ll have to start
all over
.”
    Start all over? No way! But I’m too worn out to argue.
    Now Jared is hanging at my side. I can smell bologna on his breath.
    He lets go of the rung with one hand and reaches his grimy fingers toward my poor, defenseless armpit.
    Okay. I’m not gonna lie, I’m
extremely
ticklish. As in laugh-like-a-little-girl ticklish. I