EllRay Jakes Rocks the Holidays! Read Online Free PDF

them.
    “The girls, anyway,” Emma says, seeing the expression on my face. “But what kind of dance?”
    “I’ve got an idea,” Cynthia says, and Heather gets ready to back her up no matter what. You can see it happen. “My mom listens to this old song called ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’” Cynthia tells us, “and it’s really cute. We can tell Ms. Sanchez we want to do thatone—before she sticks us with ‘Jingle Bells’ again.”
    “I think I know that song,” Kry says, beaming at her. “And it’s
adorable.
Good one, Cynthia.”
    “Thanks,” Cynthia says, looking surprised and bashful at the same time.
    Everyone likes Kry. I don’t know how she does that!
    “I don’t wanna do
anything
‘adorable,’” Corey mutters in my ear. And I kind of agree.
    But I don’t have any better ideas, and the buzzer just sounded.

    I feel myself being pulled along with the crowd of kids as we make our way toward the school building.
    “Dude,” a voice behind me shouts, cutting through the noise around us.
    Kevin
.
    “Hey,” I say over my shoulder. I attempt a smile. “Listen, Kev. I’m really—”
    “I decided you owe me, EllRay,” Kevin says. “
Big-time
.”
    “What are you talking about?” I ask.
    “I’m talkin’ about makin’ things even,” he says.
Talkin’
and
makin’
?
    But I decide not to say anything to Kevin about ‘poor Mr. G,’ to use Dad’s expression. Not that I would.
    “I’ll tell you the rest later,” Kevin adds as we push our way past the heavy door to Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class. “After I figure it out.”
    He’ll tell me the rest later
.
    Lucky me.
    But at least Kevin’s talking to me again!

7
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
    “You boys go straight to Principal James’s office, give him this, then come right back,” Ms. Sanchez tells Kevin and me an hour later at her classroom door. She hands me an envelope that I guess is full of our brainstorm ideas for the assembly title and the song we would not refuse to sing, “Jingle Bell Rock.”
    “That’s okay. EllRay can go alone,” Kevin tells her.
    “That’s okay,” she echoes, smiling. “But no, he can’t. You’re going together. And
now
would be good.”

    “She didn’t lick it shut,” Kevin tells me as we head off down the empty hall.
    Down the rabbit hole.
    I started calling it “going down the rabbit hole” last year, the few times I was allowed out into the empty hall during class hours, usually to deliver a message to the office or to use the restroom. Mom was reading Alfie and me
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
at the time, which is definitely not just a girl book, by the way. I think I got the words “hole” and “hall” mixed up.
    But being alone in an empty school hall seemed strange to me back then, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. That’s my point. One minute, normal. Next minute, weird.
    The hall seems weird today, too, even though I’m with Kevin. It’s like I can still hear the ghosts of sneakers squeaking and kids shouting, even though there’s nobody here except Kevin and me—and about a hundred brightly colored construction paper snowflakes pinned to the wall.
    A few of them are fluttering for no reason, which is
also
weird. And a little scary.
    Emma McGraw was right. Those fake snowflakes—and the smallest one is the size of a Frisbee—are the closest lots of kids here in Oak Glen, California, have ever been to snow. So far,anyway. They’ve probably seen real snow in movies, but maybe even
that
wasn’t real. Maybe—
    “I
said
, Ms. Sanchez didn’t lick the envelope shut,” Kevin repeats, interrupting my thoughts. “So we could look inside.”
    “We’d better not,” I tell him. “We already know what’s in it, don’t we? And there are probably security cameras all around us.”
    This seems to impress Kevin. “
Dude
,” he whispers, darting nervous glances at the red fire alarm boxes on the walls and the emergency sprinklers on the ceiling. The sprinklers here at