I gasped when I saw Hector Cruz. I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. Very, very wrong. Very, very, very wrong. You get the idea.

Hector Cruz, my best friend, was sitting down during recess. Hector never sat down at recess. Neither did I. At recess we played basketball, soccer, or tag. Sometimes we played all three.

Sometimes we ran away from Nicole Finkle and Buffy Maynard before they could kiss us. But we never sat down.

Owen Leach was sitting next to Hector. This was also very, very, very wrong. Owen Leach also never sat down at recess. He always had kids to play with, because he was the most popular boy in third grade. In fact, there was a waiting list of kids who wanted to play with him.

Owen Leach was much too busy to ever sit down on the playground. Until today.

I rushed over to Hector and Owen. “What happened? Did you break your legs? Should I call for help?” I asked.

They didn’t answer me.

I stared at them, trying to figure out what was wrong. The tips of their fingers were bright and colorful.

I said, “You’re sitting down at recess, you can’t talk, and you have a weird rash on your fingers. Do you have a horrible disease? Were you poisoned?”

Hector finally looked up at me. “Oh, hi, Zeke,” he said. “I didn’t notice you here. I was busy playing with my new Puppet Pals.”

I peered more closely at Hector’s and Owen’s hands. Those weren’t weird rashes on their fingers. Those were felt puppets. I’d seen the commercial for them a lot lately.

Owen started chanting the commercial jingle: “Puppet Pals are so much fun . . .”

Hector joined in, “. . . for just about everyone.”

“Who wants to play basketball?” I asked.

“I—” Hector started to say.

“Not us.” Owen cut him off. “Puppet Pals are much more popular than basketball.” Then he wiggled his index finger, which was covered with a pirate puppet. He said, “Ahoy, matey. Ye olde recess goes great with Puppet Pals.”

Hector wiggled his index finger, which had a Puppet Pal ship on it. He said, “All aboard!”

I wasn’t aboard. I was just bored. “Are you sure you don’t want to play basketball?” I asked.

Owen shook his head.

“No thanks,” Hector said.

Owen said, “Zeke, you’re disturbing our Puppet Pal time.”

I crossed my arms. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll find someone else to play basketball with.”

But it wasn’t fine. I wanted to play with Hector, my best friend.

And I couldn’t even find anyone to play basketball with. Most of the kids in my thirdgrade class were playing with their new Puppet Pals.

Nicole Finkle called out, “We’ll play with you, Zeke.”

“Come over here!” Buffy Maynard yelled.

“Are you going to try to kiss me?” I asked.

Nicole shook her head. “Not today.”

“We want to jump rope,” Buffy said.

I hadn’t jumped rope in a long time. The last time I’d tried, Grace Chang (the meanest girl in school) had tied me to a tree with the rope.

But jumping rope was better than watching people play with finger puppets. So I walked over to Nicole and Buffy.

They each held an end of the rope while I jumped over it. It was fun.

Just as I was thinking that, my feet got tangled up in the rope. I fell down with the rope tied around my feet.

“Here’s our chance,” Nicole said.

“Oh, Zeke, you are so cute,” Buffy said.

Then Nicole kissed my right cheek and Buffy kissed my left cheek.

I felt sick to my stomach. “You said you wouldn’t try to kiss me,” I complained.

“We didn’t try to kiss you,” Nicole said.

“You made it so easy for us, we didn’t even have to try,” Buffy said.

I wiped off my cheeks about a hundred times, rubbed my sick stomach, untangled my feet from the rope, and ran away.

I saw Rudy Morse standing by himself. “Do you want to play basketball?” I asked him.

“No thanks,” he said.

“I mastered that in second grade,” I said.

He frowned. “It’s not nice to brag.”

“Sorry,” I said. “We could do something else together.”

“Do you want to practice burping our ABCs?” Rudy asked.

I had mastered that in first grade. But I didn’t want to brag. So I said, “I’d rather do something that gets us moving around.”

Rudy said, “We can dig in the ground for insects. Yesterday, I found a long, six-legged earwig and a smelly, green stinkbug.”

Finding insects sounded even scarier than being kissed by Nicole and Buffy. Insects terrified me. I kept that a secret. I didn’t want to get teased.

Rudy bent down and dug under the bushes. He pulled out a giant red beetle.

“I have to go,” I said. Then I ran away.

I stopped when I saw Chandler Fitzgerald. He was sitting by himself with his head in his hands.

I said, “Hi, Chandler. Do you want to play basketball?”

A tear fell from his eye. “I’m much too sad to play basketball,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? If you really cared about me, you’d know what made me so upset,” Chandler said. Another tear dripped down his cheek.

“Are you upset about your hair?” I asked. His hair was so greasy it looked wet.

“No.” Two more tears plopped onto the playground.

“Are you upset about your nose?” I asked. He had a big red wart on the tip of his nose.

“No.” His tears kept coming.

“Are you upset about your voice?” His voice kind of sounded like a broken fiddle—all screechy and stuff.

“No.” His tears multiplied.

“I give up. What are you so upset about?” I asked.

“I have no Puppet Pals!” Tears rushed down Chandler’s face like a giant waterfall, but not as pretty.

“That’s no big deal. Puppet Pals are boring,” I said.

“Everyone else has them!” Chandler sobbed.

I looked around. Hector and Owen and almost everyone else in my class were playing with their Puppet Pals.

I suddenly realized that they were a big deal. A very big deal.

I had to get some Puppet Pals.