“Are you still mad at me, EllWay?” Alfie asks that night at home, a doll in each of her hands. I am supposed to be keeping her company while she picks up her room, but at the same time I am sitting on her rug playing Die, Creature, Die again. I am still trying to top my personal best—which is not very good.
“Only a little mad,” I tell her after pressing PAUSE, and I lean back against her bed. “Mostly I’m mad at me. You didn’t mean to do anything wrong, Alfie. You were trying to help, but you’re just four.”
“But why are you mad at you?” she asks, sinking down next to me.
“Because I should have made sure you fed him right,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding, and relief spreads across her round face like syrup on a pancake. “It was your fault Swimmy died. You messed up, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I messed up.”
“But I’m the one who got in trouble at day care today,” she says, staring at one of her dolls as she combs its bright yellow hair with her fingers.
“I heard,” I say.
Mom told me that Alfie got sent home with a note—which is the bad thing at her day care. Alfie got mad and told Suzette Monahan that she was going to die some day and maybe be buried in the backyard in a plastic container. Or else flushed.
Alfie didn’t say whose backyard Suzette might be buried in, but it didn’t matter, Mom says. Suzette was already yelling for the day care teacher before Alfie even finished her sentence.
Suzette is sometimes Alfie’s friend and sometimes her enemy, and she is always a pain, in my opinion. She came over to our house once to play, and she even tried bossing my mom around about the snack. Big mistake, Suzette. Our mom is not a pushover.
“I guess I said something bad to Suzette,” Alfie admits, twisting the doll’s yellow hair.
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Alfie says. “I was thinking about Swimmy, and then Suzette put torn-up pieces of paper in my hair and kids laughed, so the words just jumped out of my mouth. And now Suzette says she gets to be the cutest one in day care.”
“The cutest one?”
“You know,” Alfie says, sounding sad. “Like, there’s a funniest kid in every class, and a smartest kid, and a best jumper, and the one who’s the cutest? It’s just the name you get, EllWay,” she explains.
“Oh. Yeah,” I say. “The name you get. Kind of like with grown-ups, and what jobs they have. ‘The teacher.’ ‘The doctor.’ Stuff like that.”
“I used to be the cutest,” Alfie tells me, ignoring what I said about grown-ups’ jobs. “But now, Suzette says I’m the meanest and she’s the cutest.”
“Suzette doesn’t get to decide,” I tell Alfie, trying to make her feel better.
“Yes she does,” Alfie says. “Because the other kids do whatever she wants.”
“That makes Suzette the bossiest, not the cutest,” I say, laughing. “But don’t tell her that, or you’ll get sent home with another note for sure.”
“Okay,” Alfie says. “I won’t tell her that. I’ll think it, though. And I’ll always get to be the cutest one at home, right?” she asks. “And you can be the cutest one’s brother.”
“Okay,” I say, getting back to my game.
But later that night, when I think about what Alfie said, I think she’s kind of right. Everybody is something.
But it’s more than that. Who you are changes depending on where you are. Like here at home Alfie is everybody’s “baby girl,” and Mom is the lady who loves us all, no matter what we do, and Dad is the smart, strong guy who needs peace and quiet when he first gets home. He is also strict, but he loves us, too. A lot. And I’m the fun kid who likes to do stuff, and who only sometimes gets in trouble.
Everyone likes me at our house. I’m very popular here.
But at school, Jared and Stanley don’t like me, at least some of the time, and neither do Cynthia and Heather—most of the time. At least I don’t think they do.
At school, you don’t get to choose the name you get, and you can’t argue about it. It just is.
In the third grade at Oak Glen Primary School, Jared and Cynthia are usually the mean ones, like I said before, and Cynthia is also the bossy one, so she gets to be two things at school—both of them bad, in my opinion. But at home, Jared’s mom and dad probably don’t think he’s mean. Maybe they think he’s the quiet one in the family, or the hardest one to wake up in the morning, or something else. The point is, maybe he has a different name there.
I don’t know what Cynthia’s parents think. I feel sorry for them, that’s all.
And to give you another example, Kry Rodriguez is the smartest kid in both math and spelling at school, but maybe at home she talks back to her parents or forgets to take out the trash. Probably not, but maybe.
At school, Fiona McNulty is the best artist, and she is also the shyest kid in the third grade—but maybe at home she’s the funniest person in her family, or the loudest.
At school, my friend Corey is the kid who’s the most afraid of math, especially mental math and standing-at-the-board math, but at home he’s the champion swimmer who has to be fed exactly the right food to keep him in smooth operating condition. And he’s brave during swim meets. He never cries. Some kids do, he told me once.
Those are just a few examples of what I’m talking about.
But what about me, when I’m at school? I have always wanted to be the funniest kid in my class, the boy who other guys wanted to be friends with, since I can’t be the TALLEST or the STRONGEST—which honestly would be my first choices, if I got to pick. But now, I’m starting to be known as the third-grade kid who messes up.
Like I said before, you don’t get to choose.
Once you’re away from home, stuff chooses you.