I don’t remember what April was like last year, it was so long ago. But this April has been very mixed-up in Oak Glen. Rainy, sunny, rainy, cloudy, windy, rainy, rainy.
And that’s just in the past week!
It’s like they put a little kid like Alfie in charge of the weather.
Today, Thursday, it rained all morning, but now the sun has come out and we get to have our afternoon recess outside.
FINALLY.
It seems like it has been days since we played outside, and our legs are jumpy. Also, the air in our classroom has been almost used up, in my opinion. What’s left smells like floor cleaner, dry erase markers, pencil shavings, and old tuna sandwiches, all mixed up.
“Come on, EllRay,” Corey says, his freckles looking like polka dots on his face, he is so excited. “We gotta grab a kick ball before they’re all gone, for once.”
“Yeah,” Kevin says, with his usual serious look on his face. Kevin and I are alike in many ways. For example, we are the only black kids in our class, not counting two very quiet girls who are friends from church and who pretty much stick together. Kevin is a lot more careful and calm about things than I am, though. He never loses library books or forgets to get permission slips signed, and he has never had to go to the principal’s office in his life. Not once.
But even though we hurry as fast as we can, Jared and Stanley reach the big net of kick balls first. Jared has rounded up all five of the balls like they’re a bunch of red rubber eggs and he is the rooster in charge of guarding them.
“Sorry, losers,” he shouts at us. “But we’re practicing our kicking today, and we need all the balls.” And his friend Stanley grins and gives us the thumbs-down sign with one of his hands, and the loser sign on his forehead with the other—which you’re not allowed to do at our school, but he does it anyway. And of course no one catches him. The playground monitor is way over at the other end of the playground. She is busy trying to talk on her cellphone and show a bunch of confused-looking first-graders how to play Capture the Flag at the same time, so she can’t help us.
“Well, who even cares about kick balls?” Kevin shouts back, even though I know he does care, because he wanted to practice his kicking, too. I’m not sure why. Probably to improve his soccer skills.
“Yeah,” I yell. “And anyway, we’re gonna play Octopus Tag, and you can’t!”
“Don’t even want to.” Jared’s voice floats back over the heads of the jumping-rope girls, who are chanting “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack” as they bounce up and down. Boys would get strangled if they tried that. But Jared sounds a little less sure of himself than before, because OCTOPUS TAG is our class’s newest fun discovery.
I guess different people play it different ways, but here’s how we play.
1. One person is the octopus, and the other kids stand far away in a line, and then they try to run past whoever the octopus is without getting tagged.
2. Whoever does get tagged has to sit or stand where they were tagged, and not move. Then they try to tag someone else when the kids run by the next time.
3. Pretty soon there are a whole bunch of kids helping the octopus–they are his or her extra “arms”—and they try to tag the kids who are left as they run by.
4. And the kid who doesn’t get tagged is the winner!
It’s really fun, only the more kids the better.
“Who wants to be the octopus?” Kevin asks, looking around.
“I do,” Corey says, grinning. And so a bunch of kids—including me—run to the other side of the playground. Even some of the jumping-rope girls join us, because this is a perfect day for Octopus Tag. It’s the kind of day when you could just keep on running forever! The clouds are puffy and white, like in cartoons, and the wind is blowing them around. I think the wind is just as happy as we are.
Jared and Stanley watch us get ready to start the game. I guess they’re not having as much fun hogging the kick balls as they thought they would, since nobody else wants them.
“Okay, go!” Corey says, and we run toward him screaming our heads off as we try to get past without getting tagged. But Corey is a very good athlete—he’s the champion swimmer, remember—and he tags two kids, Kevin and one of the church friends.
By now, Stanley looks like he wishes he could play Octopus Tag, too, but I think he’s scared to leave Jared-the-rooster standing there all alone.
The second time we run screaming across the playground, Kevin almost tags me. He just barely misses my arm, in fact. But Emma, Fiona, and another kid I don’t know very well get tagged, so now the octopus has lots of arms. Twelve, I think.
And I do get caught the next time we run across the playground—by Fiona, of all people, who blushes when she touches me and says, “Sorry, EllRay.”
Like I said before, she’s shy.
“That’s okay,” I say, panting a little as I freeze in place.
By now, there are only a few kids left who haven’t been tagged, including Cynthia, Heather, and Kry. But all of a sudden Jared and Stanley are standing with them, getting ready to run.
Oh. Now they want to play.
