“What happened?” Emma and Annie Pat ask me first thing during nutrition break—which at Oak Glen Primary School is morning recess with healthy snacks.
Supposedly healthy snacks.
We’re also supposed to get what Ms. Sanchez calls “fresh air and exercise” during nutrition break, which is why we have it outside on the playground, with kick balls and everything. But today, even though we are all outside, I don’t think we’ll be getting much exercise or nutrition.
Jared is chewing strips of red licorice, and Fiona is eating barbecue-flavored corn chips. Stanley is sharing a box of leftover yellow Peeps with Corey, and Kry is dipping her hand into a little bag of plain chocolate chips, which she likes to eat without any cookie involved. She says it’s quicker that way.
And all the third-graders in my class, even the ones who happen to be eating healthy snacks, are gathered in front of me as I lean against the icy cold chain-link fence.
My stomach is gurgling like crazy for its own morning snack, which today is little sandwiches made from saltine crackers with almond butter glue holding them together, since it’s “No Peanuts!” at our school in case of allergies, which some kids have. But I guess I won’t get a chance to eat my crackers, not with all the explaining I have to do.
One thing for sure, I have decided not to tell anyone Alfie was the one who accidentally killed Zip. She feels bad enough already. I will take the blame.
Alfie’s my little sister, no matter what.
“What happened is that the lid came off the fish food container while I was shaking out the food,” I tell Emma and Annie Pat, making up the lie on the spot. “And it all dumped in at once. And there was nothing I could do, because Zip died instantly. And painlessly,” I add, hoping this will make everyone feel better.
Annie Pat shakes her head, and when she does, her twin red pigtails shake too. “But I have an aquarium at home,” she says. “And the fish food lid does not come off that easily.”
“And anyway,” Emma says, frowning, “the whole story doesn’t make any sense. I’m not saying you’re a liar, EllRay. You must have forgotten some of the details, that’s all. Zip would not have died instantly. So why didn’t you take him out of the bowl and give him CPR, and then clean every-thing up and start over?”
Emma and I are almost friends, and so I know that she is not trying to make me look bad. She just wants to know what happened, that’s all.
Emma’s like that.
Forty-two eyes—three kids are absent today—stare hard at me as I try to ooze backward through the chain-link fence. “I’m just saying what happened,” I tell everyone, wishing I was anyplace else but here—even at the doctor’s, about to get a shot. And that’s my worst thing. “I can’t help it if your fish food jar is different from Ms. Sanchez’s,” I say to Annie Pat. “She’s the one who bought it.”
“Well, I guess I believe EllRay,” my friend Kevin says slowly, as if he’s had to give it a lot of thought.
“Yeah,” Corey says. “No matter what really happened.”
Thanks a lot, guys.
Cynthia flips up the collar on her fuzzy red jacket and shrugs. “Well, who cares what happened, or how it happened?” she asks. “It was only a goldfish.”
“Yeah. We’re sorry for Ms. Sanchez and everything, but it was,” her friend Heather chimes in, trying to be loyal to Cynthia but nice to our teacher at the same time. Heather wants everyone to like her.
Good luck with that, by the way.
“My neighbor has a fish called an oscar in his aquarium,” Jared says, his gums and tongue all red from the licorice. “And it eats goldfish. My neighbor buys ’em ten at a time! He calls them ‘feeder fish,’ and he doesn’t even give them names. So what’s the big deal about one dead goldfish, even if it was a prize?”
“That’s so sad that the poor little things don’t even get to have names,” Fiona says, ignoring the part about how the other fish eats them. She’s got that orange dust they put on barbecue chips all around her mouth.
“Eww. A cannibal fish named Oscar. Gross,” Cynthia and Heather say with twin squeals, but Annie Pat looks interested. Remember, she’s the one who wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up.
“Is it a tiger oscar?” she asks, her dark blue eyes shining with excitement. “They live in the Amazon River, in South America.”
“I’m never swimming there,” Cynthia says to Heather, and Heather nods her head in agreement.
Heather always sides with Cynthia. I think she’s scared not to.
I can’t help but feel a little happy that this terrible conversation has moved so far away from what a mess-up I am for supposedly killing Zip, our new class mascot, Ms. Sanchez’s prize goldfish. In fact, the talk has moved all the way from Oak Glen, California, to the Amazon River, in South America. That’s pretty far! Maybe I’ll get a chance to eat a cracker or two after all. I start to relax.
“Where did you bury Zip, EllRay?” Kry asks, after popping another chocolate chip into her mouth.
And—WHOOSH, we’re back in Oak Glen with a dead fish.
“In my backyard,” I say, trying to look serious and sad at the same time.
Don’t tell anyone, but really, Zip’s funeral was a little bit funny. Here is what happened.
1. It was still raining the morning when we buried him, but we each had an umbrella. Well, everyone except Zip.
2. And we couldn’t find a little box to put him in, so Alfie stretched Zip out on a blue plastic doll bed from this set she has. Then she covered him with a Kleenex pretend-blanket, and she put an ivy leaf over his face so she wouldn’t have to look at it again, because that was the part of Zip that looked the most dead. The rest of him almost looked okay.
3. Then Mom put Zip and the bed into a plastic container-like he was some really weird leftover.
4. Then I dug a muddy hole in the backyard with Mom’s small gardening shovel.
5. And then we put the plastic container in the hole, and my mom said some nice stuff about Zip, even though she barely knew him.
6. Then Alfie said her prayer, only it got so long that Mom had to say “Amen!” just to give Alfie an excuse to stop talking. Or to shut her up, I don’t know which.
7. I wanted to say something nice about Zip too, because after all, I was the one who really knew him–and who was responsible for him. But I didn’t want to start crying, not that anyone would even have noticed with all the rain.
That last part about Zip’s funeral wasn’t funny, but the rest of it was. Kind of.
It’s confusing how something can be sad and funny at the same time. Or funny and sad.
“Well,” Cynthia says, smoothing back her already-smooth hair. “Remind me never to ask you to take care of anything, EllRay Jakes.”
And Heather gives Cynthia an admiring grin. “Yeah,” she agrees.
“Like I would,” I say back to both of them.
But really, I don’t blame Cynthia and Heather for saying what they did.
Zip was my job.
I wouldn’t ask a mess-up like me to take care of anything, either.
