Super Emma (8 page)

Or
almost
normal, because the whole playground is buzzing with news about the big fight. Kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders
are looking at EllRay and me as if we are the king and queen of Oak Glen Primary School. They have been bullied by Jared for so long—for years!—that EllRay and I are now their champions.

But we are trying to be modest about the whole thing. Because that’s the best way for heroes to be.

Heather offers me some of her cheese and crackers. “I was so scared during the fight,” she says, pulling her jacket close around her.

“Me, too,”
I feel like saying, but I don’t.

People don’t like their champions to be fraidy-cats.

Annie Pat nibbles at a corner of her sandwich, then says, “But Emma, do you think Jared is going to try to get you again? He still looks so mad!”

“He looks so
silly
,” Fiona corrects her, “with his lip all puffed up and everything.”

The girls all gaze at me admiringly for a moment, even though it was EllRay who socked Jared in the mouth. I just pulled out some of his hair.

“Jared’s not going to be starting any more fights,” Cynthia says, sounding wise.

“How can you be so sure?” Annie Pat wants to know.

“Because he knows that the whole entire class will hate him if we have to spend another morning making ways-to-solve-problems lists on the board,” Cynthia says smugly.

Good point. Sometimes, in spite of everything, Cynthia can be pretty smart.

It is bedtime now, and Mom smoothes the hair back from my forehead and tucks the quilt up under my chin. “I love you, Emma,” she says into the darkness.

“Me, too,” I say.

She
knows what I mean.

“Well …” she says, and she starts to stand up.

“Mom?” I ask quickly. “Is anybody
really
brave?”

Mom settles back down. “What do you mean, honey?” she asks.

I think for a second. “The first time kids thought I was brave, it was only because I got mad,” I say. “And the second time I acted brave, I was really just scared. And the third time kids thought I was brave, which was today, I was only trying to keep from getting trashed.”

Mom leans over and gives me a squeeze when she hears these last words.

“It’s kind of like what EllRay told me this morning, after he hit Jared,” I murmur. “He said he just couldn’t figure out what else to do. That’s the way
I
feel. But is that the same thing as being brave?”

“Well,” Mom says, “you already know that
I
think you’re brave, honey. And as for EllRay, what were all the other kids doing when Jared was dragging you toward the trash can?”

“Watching,” I tell her, picturing the circle of excited faces.

“Then I think that what EllRay did took a lot
of courage,” Mom says. “Watching bullies and standing up to them are two separate things, Em.”

I shut my eyes and whisper a secret to my mom. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I just want there to be peace and quiet.”

Mom laughs. “Well, Super Emma,” she says, “I don’t know about anyplace else in the world, but there’s peace and quiet for you here at home.”

“I know,” I say, smiling in the dark.

I can hear my mom brushing her teeth.

I listen to a car drive by, and a block away, a dog barks. Another dog answers him.

They do that.

Behind a golden seashell, my night-light is glowing. If I shut my eyes halfway, it looks almost like a star.

We
are
going to have a Halloween party, Ms. Sanchez told us this afternoon! But only if we can be good, and work on solving our problems in a reasonable, civilized way.

I’m pretty sure that we can. Because we
like
parties!

I close my eyes and make a wish.

“I’m stuffed!” I say, almost gasping.

It is a Monday in November, and Annie Pat Masterson and I are eating lunch at school. We are outside, my favorite place in the world to be.

Annie Pat and I are getting ready for Thanksgiving—ten days away, Mom says—by stretching our stomachs. You have to do this from the inside, with food, because outside stretching doesn’t work. We already tried that.

“I know you’re stuffed. But want another apple anyway?” Annie Pat asks—gloomily, because she is stuffed, too. She holds one out on the flat of her hand, as if I were a horse. Her
red pigtails are usually bouncy, but today they droop.

“Sure,” I lie. “We’re in training for Thanksgiving, aren’t we?”

Annie Pat nods.

“Last year, I was too full after dinner to eat any pumpkin pie,” I continue. “And there wasn’t any left over the next day, either. So I missed my pumpkin-pie chance for the whole entire year.”

“I ate a piece of pie,” Annie Pat tells me, remembering.
“But I could barely even taste it, my mouth was so worn out from eating turkey.”

“It’s all that
chewing
with turkey,” I say, agreeing with her. “You’d have to be a termite to be able to chew that much.”

Annie Pat sighs.

“This is going to be the coolest Thanksgiving ever,” I say, trying to cheer her up. “And it’s starting early, because on Saturday we get to go to …”

“Marine Universe!”
Annie Pat chimes in happily. Marine Universe is near San Diego, where the Pacific Ocean is, and it is Annie Pat’s favorite treat, because she wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up. I want to be a nature scientist, but I’m not copying her. I have
always
wanted to be that.

Annie Pat’s father is taking us to Marine Universe to make up for having a new baby. We have been excited for exactly two and a half weeks.

“It’ll be great,” I say, as if she needs me to tell her that.

Annie Pat nods, smiling, then pulls a second apple for herself out of a crumpled brown paper bag. Moving shadows from the leaves overhead flicker across her face as her navy-blue eyes stare at the apple. Then she sighs and prepares to take a bite.

She is a very brave kid.

My name is Emma McGraw, and I am the smallest girl in Ms. Sanchez’s third-grade class at Oak Glen Primary School, although a boy named EllRay Jakes is even smaller than I am. Annie Pat is the second-smallest girl, after me, and we always eat lunch together—but not because of our size. It’s because we’re friends.