“But the boys can’t be too strange by now,” Mrs. Jakes said, not giving up. “And it would be nice to get to know them better, wouldn’t it? You used to be friends with lots of little boys when you were in daycare and kindergarten, sweetie,” she reminded her daughter.
Alfie and EllRay swapped glances and tried not to laugh. “That was a long time ago, Mom,” Alfie said. “Second grade is different.”
“And Alfie’s got her hands full with the girls in her class,” EllRay chimed in.
“That’s not true,” Alfie said, frowning. “All the girls are my friends. Basically,” she added, hoping it was true.
“Now, maybe,” EllRay said, a look of doubt passing across his face.
Alfie’s brother sometimes called himself “the voice of experience”—about Oak Glen Primary School, anyway.
The thirteen girls in Alfie’s class had kind of shape-shifted roughly into groups of three, she admitted to herself. But they were friendly groups of three.
No drama.
During these first four weeks of second grade, everything had been pretty chill, as EllRay would say—and fun.
And all Alfie wanted was for things to stay that way forever.
Freeze!
Just like in the playground game.
In her case, she mostly hung out with Arletty Jackson—her old pal from Kreative Learning and Daycare who had brown skin like herself—and with Phoebe Miller, a new girl in class, with whom she and Arletty had made friends.
Phoebe was nice, and she was funny in a quiet way. She had straight blond hair and blushed—a lot. Seeing Phoebe blush was like watching a chameleon change color.
“Do you have everything?” their mom asked Alfie and EllRay, who almost always got himself to school, usually by bike. But today, he was going somewhere after school with a friend. Mrs. Jakes tossed her car keys up and then snatched them out of the air like a race car driver. “Don’t make me drive to school without you,” she teased. “Hanni is waiting for us.”
Hanni Sobel was Alfie’s neighbor-friend, classmate, and carpool buddy. But at school, Hanni hung out mostly with Suzette Monahan and Lulu Marino. That was her “group of three” these days.
“I’m ready, Mom. I don’t want to be late,” Alfie said, her heavy backpack already cradled in her arms. “I want to see if anyone in my class wrote about me on their worksheet.”
She hoped so, if it was something nice. Or funny.
“They probably did,” EllRay assured her as he buckled his seatbelt. “‘Who can be the biggest pain in the neck?’” he said, pretending to read aloud from a worksheet. “‘Who likes to twirl around and get dizzy until they just about hurl?’ ‘Who loves to hog all the cheese?’”
“That’s enough, EllRay,” Mrs. Jakes said from the front seat as she backed out the driveway.
“Yeah, EllRay,” Alfie pretend-scolded, smiling. “Enough, enough, enough.”
This was going to be such a great week!
2 A Secret
“We’re here,” Alfie said.
She and Hanni scrambled out of Mrs. Jakes’ car, eager to get in some playtime before the school day started. Kids had to go through the main door to get to the playground and lunch area, so the girls headed up Oak Glen Primary School’s wide front steps.
As usual, Principal James was there in his suit and tie, greeting each student by name. “Miss Jakes! And Hanni Sobel, as I live and breathe,” he called out, giving them a cheerful wave. He patted the brown mustache Alfie did not like.
She didn’t think men’s faces should be fancy that way.
“Hi,” the girls mumbled back, waving as best they could, given the sagging backpacks they were lugging up the steps.
“Let’s go,” Hanni urged like a small cheerleader as they charged down the crowded hall.
Both the school and the big playground behind it were divided into two parts. Indoors, the two-story main part of the school held all the classrooms—kindergarten through third grade downstairs, and fourth through sixth grades upstairs. A breezeway near the office led to the cafeteria and auditorium.
Outside, in the back, there was a big asphalt playground with basketball hoops, swings, and structures to climb on. The lunch area on the far side of the playground was scattered with picnic tables and a few trees. This was usually where the girls in Alfie’s class gathered each morning. At one end of the playground, a path sloped down to a play area built only last summer.
One or two giggling girls were already eating their recess snacks early at the picnic table. For a moment, the sound of happy chatter seemed to float above the girls like an invisible rainbow.
“Hey, Pheeb,” Alfie said to Phoebe with a smile, flinging her backpack onto the table. “You look cute today. Where’s Arletty?”
“Not here yet,” Phoebe said, tucking a lock of blond hair behind one pink ear. “Maybe she has the sniffles or something.”
“I don’t think so,” Alfie said, thinking about it. “Probably her mom’s just late. Arletty is, like, the healthiest kid I know. That’s why she can run so fast.”
Alfie and Phoebe both took pride in Arletty’s skill, as if their friendship with her had caused Arletty’s talent to rub off on them, somehow.
“What are they talking about?” Alfie asked in a quiet voice, tilting her head toward Hanni, Suzette, and Lulu, who clustered against the chainlink fence behind the picnic tables. They were whispering. Lulu seemed to be doing most of the talking.
“I don’t know,” Phoebe said, shrugging.
Hanni’s wavy dark hair, Suzette’s brown hair, and Lulu’s black hair—with the long, perfectly straight bangs that Alfie suspected Mrs. Marino trimmed every morning using a ruler and tiny golden scissors—seemed to blend together into one big tangled head as they talked.
Lulu saw Alfie looking at them, and she shifted her body as if to give their group more privacy.
And Alfie and Lulu used to be best
