Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer by Sally Warner Read Free Book Online

pretending she’s not about to be robbed by that slimy little dragon, Suzette Monahan, and I’m pretending I don’t care.
    “So, what if
I
start saying you’re invisible, Alfie?” I ask, trying one last time. “Did you ever think of that? And what’ll you give me to stop? See, it never ends!”
    “It
will
end,” Alfie says, stomping her foot hard on the kitchen floor. “It will end tomorrow afternoon, when Suzette comes over to play.”
    “To rob you, you mean,” I say, turning away. “I can’t
see
you!” I sing out, facing the empty corner of the room. “Who’s that talking behind me? Someone invisible? Why, it’s no one at all,” I say, turning around.
    “Liar, liar, liar!” Alfie yells, tears spurting from her eyes as she flees the kitchen.
    Let her cry!
    To
think
I spiked that extreme dodgeball at Stanley Washington’s head because I was mad at him for calling Alfie a waffle! Well, I was mad at Stanley for a bunch of other reasons, too, but I forget what they are right now.
    Us boys don’t really know or care why we get mad at each other, in my opinion. We just do, and fast. Then we either get over it or fight, and that’s that.
    But girls save up every little detail when
they
get mad. Then the girls sit on their hurts like chickens guarding a bunch of golden eggs, and then they cluck about each egg for
weeks
. I’ve seen this happen in my class.
    I don’t remember exactly what it was that made me blow up at Stanley. Being mad at him seemed important at the time, though.
    And it’s all I had to work with back then.

11
BEING PROUD
    Dad and I drive around doing chores on Saturday mornings. It’s “our chance to catch up,” he always says. But it’s more him catching up with me than me catching up with him. The thing is, his geology work is about something called “isotope ratios,” not just which rock is prettiest. So you can see why our catching up is so one-sided. Not even most grown-ups know what he’s talking about.
    I want my dad to be proud of me more than anything, but it’s hard. He’s a professor, which is like an extra-fancy teacher, and I’m just a shrimpy kid who is only medium-good at everything. When I’m even paying attention, that is.
    I have trouble with that, too. There’s a lot going on inside my head.
    But I know this much. I do
not
want to do anything boring like a geology professor when I growup! If I don’t get to be a Laker, I want to be a stuntman, or else just a plain old millionaire, so nobody can tell me what to do. I think if you’re rich enough, no one cares how short you are.
    I will have a giant gumball machine—and the gum will be totally free!—in my fancy front hall that will be so big, you can skateboard in it. Also, I will have every video game known to mankind in my all-glass house. And I’ll be able to eat popcorn whenever I want, even in the middle of the night. Maybe I’ll hire a TV cooking star whose only job is to make really cool snacks for me and my—
    “EllRay?” my dad says, sounding like he’s just asked me something.
    “Sorry,” I reply. “What were you saying?”
    “That we’re almost at the nursery,” he says, sounding happy to share this news with me.
    On our Saturday mornings, we are usually on our way either to the plant nursery—for rose stuff—or to the hardware store. The plant nursery is a zero, in my opinion, except for all the cool poisons in the STINKY aisle. But the hardware store is an excellent place to plan your next Halloween costume. They have all sizes of chains on big spools,though I can’t figure out yet how to use them in a costume. And they also have space invader–type masks, and stretchy vent tubes you could use for robot arms, especially if you spray-painted them silver.
    True, it is only April, but you cannot start planning too soon for Halloween.
    At our hardware store, there is also a big gray cat with a chewed-up ear living there who likes to sleep on top of a big stack of doormats.