EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken

“Play dolls with me, EllWay,” my little sister says a few minutes later, popping her head out of her room as I walk down the hall. She pronounces some words a little bit wrong, but that’s okay, because she’s only four years old.

“No way, Alfie,” I say. “But me and my video game will keep you company.” And I go get Die, Creature, Die, which my mom thinks is too violent, but it’s not.

Last summer, when I was still trying to be nice about playing dolls, mostly to keep Alfie out of my room, a doll head came off in my hand for no reason, and she freaked, like I’d done it on purpose. And I was just trying to be nice.

Alfie is very cute. Everyone says so, especially her, but she probably only says that because she hears it so much. She is golden brown like an acorn, and she wears her hair in three little puffy braids with matching hair-things on the ends. One braid is on top of her head, and there is one on each side.

The only trouble with Alfie is the same thing that is the trouble with me: our names. See, “EllRay” is short for “L-period-Ray,” which is short for “Lancelot Raymond.” And “Alfie” is short for “Alfleta,” which means “beautiful elf” in some language from the olden days. Saxon, I think Mom said.

My mom wants to be a fantasy writer some day, that’s why we got such goofy names.

My dad should have told her no. Not about wanting to be a writer, of course, but about the names. It’s too late now, though.

“I’m back,” I tell Alfie, who is sitting on her rug. She has just finished piling up a stack of doll clothes.

“I dunno,” I say, trying to settle into my game. “The red one, I guess.”

“Okay,” she says, and she starts putting the yellow dress on her bare-naked doll.

“How come you even asked me which one is cuter?” I say, feeling a little mad at her, even though I don’t really care about the dresses, of course. “So you could do the exact opposite?”

“Nuh-uh,” Alfie says, shaking her head as she tries to cram her doll’s skinny arm through a sleeve. “I just like to hear you talk, that’s all.”

“Because nobody talks to me at day care anymore,” she says sadly.

“Oh, c’mon, Alfie. That’s not true,” I tell her—because if there’s one thing about my little sister, it’s that she has a lot of friends.

Friends are very important to girls, I have noticed. They even keep score about them: how many they have, what their ranking is. Friends are like a girl’s very own personal sports team.

It’s different for boys, or at least for me. Sure, I want to have at least one or two friends so there will be someone to hang out with and watch my back, especially lately, but I don’t get all bent out of shape about it.

“Suzette told the other girls not to talk to me,” Alfie says, still looking down at her doll.

Suzette is this bossy little girl in my sister’s day care who likes to keep all the other little girls scared about whether or not she likes them. Big deal.

“She told everyone that?” I ask, hating Suzette for one hot second.

“Well, she told Maya and Joelle not to,” Alfie tells me. “And Suzette’s the boss of our day care, so that’s that.”

“Aren’t your teachers the boss of day care?” I ask her. “I think you should tell them what Suzette is doing, Alfie, and then maybe she’d stop.”

“But she might think of something worse,” Alfie says, picking up two little doll jackets. “Which one is cuter?” she asks me.

The blue one is cuter, but I don’t tell Alfie that. “The orange one,” I say, and sure enough, she starts putting the blue one one her doll.

“Who’s the boss of the world?” Alfie asks me, holding her doll up to admire it.

I sigh and press Pause. “No one, I guess,” I tell her. “I mean, the world is all divided up, and there are different bosses for different places. The little places, too. Even Oak Glen has a boss, you know.”

“Huh,” Alfie says, not asking who that boss is—which is a good thing, because I don’t know his or her name. I don’t get to vote yet, that’s why. “Well,” she asks after a couple of minutes, “who’s the boss of our family, at least? I vote for Mommy.”

And I can’t help but laugh, this is such a crazy conversation. “Why not Dad?” I ask her.

“Because whenever we go to Target and Mommy wants something, Daddy says, ‘You’re the boss, Louise.’ ”

“No,” I say. “I mean, they’re both the boss of us. Not of each other, I don’t think.”

“But you’re not the boss of me, EllWay,” Alfie says, scowling.

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “Because I don’t even wanna be the boss of you. It’d be too much work.”

Alfie thinks about this for a minute. “Well,” she finally asks, “who’s the boss of the third grade at school? In your class? Not counting your teacher.”

“No one,” I say, snapping out the words. But a picture of Jared’s head has floated into my imagination like a big ugly balloon.

“There’s a boy boss and a girl boss, right?” Alfie asks, trying to work it out.

“Nobody’s the boss,” I repeat. “But I guess Jared Matthews is the meanest boy, and Cynthia Harbison is the meanest girl.”

“Then I hate them,” Alfie says, as loyal to me as I am to her.

“You don’t have to hate them,” I tell her. “But you’re lucky you don’t have to go to school with them, that’s for sure.”

Alfie plays in silence for a few quiet minutes, just long enough for me to get into my game once more. Then, sure enough, she thinks of something else to say. “But if Jared and Cynthia moved away,” she says, “and so did Suzette, there’d probably just be someone else being the meanest. Or the bossiest.”

I look up just long enough to mess up my score. “I guess you’re right,” I say, surprised that she could figure something like this out all by herself.

“’Course I’m right, EllWay,” she tells me. “Because there can’t just be three holes in the world where those mean kids used to be.”

Sometimes, when I talk to Alfie, I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round that just keeps spinning, no matter how much I want to get off. “I’m gonna go to bed,” I tell my spacey little sister. “I think I’m getting a headache.”

“Try sleeping with your feet on the pillow,” she calls after me. “Because maybe then your headache will get mixed up and go someplace else!”

Let’s hope she doesn’t want to be a doctor when she grows up, be a doctor whe that’s all.