Alfie eased herself into the kitchen carefully, so Princess wouldn’t escape, not that the Jakes’ small gray kitten seemed at all interested in getting out.
Princess was a late-summer gift from the Sobels. Alfie and EllRay thought Princess was probably the cutest kitten in the world. Almost thirteen weeks old now, Princess had eyes that had turned from blue to a golden-green, and her ears looked two sizes too big for her silky head.
“Clown-kitty,” EllRay sometimes called her now, teasing.
“Princess!” Alfie called out in the empty kitchen. “Mom, I’m home!”
Where was her welcoming committee?
Her mother’s car was in the driveway, Alfie knew, so she was probably finishing a chapter in the new book she was writing. And Princess was most likely asleep.
Taking naps seemed to be their kitten’s favorite hobby.
But she, Alfie, was starving. Alfie heaved her backpack onto the kitchen island and headed for the fridge.
“Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” she recited to herself. “And an icy-cold glass of milk,” she added, her stomach gurgling.
Out of nowhere, just as Alfie sat down at the kitchen table with her after-school snack, Princess came skidding into the kitchen—as if she had only now learned that Alfie was home. The kitten clawed her way up Alfie’s leggings like she was climbing a tree. “Ouch,” Alfie said, plucking Princess off her leg. She cuddled her close for a moment.
Princess started purring, her kitty motor turned up high.
Purr. Purr-r. Purr-r-r.
“Pretty little Princess,” Alfie said through a mouthful of smooth peanut butter and grape jelly as she munched her way through her first bite of sandwich. Then she hugged her kitty as tight as Princess would allow. Alfie could feel her own heart fill up with something warm and sweet, like hot chocolate with a gooey marshmallow on top.
That’s how good having a kitty made Alfie feel—as if she could tell Princess anything, and the kitten would get it.
“You probably already know this, Princess,” Alfie began, “but I don’t even really like sleepovers. Not since I hurled all over my Fairy Kitties sleeping bag that time. Mom finally had to throw it away, because it wouldn’t wash right,” she told her kitty. “Even though that sleepover was really more of a babysitting night, not a party,” she added, correcting herself. “But I got homesick almost right away,” she confessed into Princess’s soft, gray fur.
Purr. Purr-r. Purr-r-r-r.
Princess loved her no matter what, Alfie thought, relieved.
“So why do I even want to go to Lulu’s goofy sleepover?” she asked aloud. “Two reasons,” she said, as if Princess was waiting for the answer. “First, I want to see why Lulu says this will be ‘the best sleepover ever,’” she told her kitten. “I mean, how good can a sleepover be? And why is it going to be so great? Is she ordering pizzas for everyone? Or handing out really cool party favors?” she asked.
Purr. Purr-r. Purr-r-r-r-r.
“Or maybe there are gonna be some super-fun games,” Alfie said, working her way through her sandwich. “And prizes. Or there might be ghost stories right before going to bed,” she added, shivering with pleasure. “Who knows?”
Princess gazed up at Alfie—like she was asking her a question.
“Okay, okay,” Alfie said, as if confessing a secret. “All that stuff is only kinda true. Because the main thing is, I don’t want not to be invited. That’s all. I mean, if we’re going to be ‘just like the big girls,’ I want in,” she added, trying to make things clearer. “Or else I’ll be o-u-t. And who wants to be left out? Not me.”
Purr. Purr-r. Purr-r-r-r-r-r.
Her kitty agreed with her, Alfie thought, giving Princess a hug that was only a little bit sticky.
Princess understood.
Absolutely.
6 Great Advice
“Knock, knock,” Alfie said after dinner, rapping on EllRay’s bedroom door.
“Come in, I guess,” EllRay called out. “Only you don’t have to knock on my door and say ‘knock, knock,’ Alf,” he added. He was stretched out on his bed, doing his homework. “One of ’em is enough. Two of ’em is one too many.”
“Huh?” Alfie said, peeking around the door.
Her brother was long, skinny, and strong, and Alfie was secretly proud of him. It was like she got extra points at school for having a brother in sixth grade.
“Never mind,” EllRay said, laughing.
“Are you busy?” Alfie asked. She sat down in EllRay’s desk chair, which he almost never used.
“Just hangin’ with a bunch of possessive pronouns,” EllRay said. “Why? Are you having trouble with your dreaded fraction circles homework?”
Alfie had been complaining about it during dinner. At Oak Glen Primary School, the kids were supposed to get ten minutes of homework for each grade they were in. So being in second grade meant twenty minutes of homework a night, not counting reading. Sixth graders had sixty minutes of homework—only it usually ended up being a lot more, according to EllRay.
“The math part of the homework was easy,” Alfie said, picturing the circles on her worksheet. They were divided into two parts, or three parts, or four, five, or six parts each. She was supposed to look at the fraction written next to each circle—½, ⅔, 3⁄5, 2⁄5—and color in that many parts of the circle.
“But math is the whole thing,” EllRay pointed out. “That’s why they call it ‘math homework.’ So what’s the problem?”
“Keeping my colored pencils sharp enough so the little pieces of pie look colored-in just perfect,” Alfie told him.
“That’s not an important part of the homework,” EllRay said, laughing.
“It is for us girls,” Alfie said, giving him a look. “It’ll be like a contest, almost. You should see how good Lulu and Suzette are at shading stuff in. They could do it for a living, they’re so great. They never scribble-scrabble at all.”
“Suzette Monahan?” EllRay asked, frowning. “Is she still around?”
Alfie and Suzette had
