Free EllRay Jakes Is Magic by Sally Warner

That’s strange.
    “And here’s my advice,” Fiona says.
“‘Always wear darling shoes.’”
    “Good one,” Emma says, smiling.
    The girls in our class are all big fans of Ms. Sanchez’s clothes—especially her shoes, which are mostly high heels.
    “Everyone who hasn’t turned their paper in yet has to get it to me by the end of the day,” Fiona announces to the rest of the kids. “Or they won’t be in the book. But don’t let Ms. Sanchez catch you writing stuff down,” she warns. “Or you’ll wreck the secret.”
    “What about the cover?” Cynthia asks. “Let’s see it.”
    “You can’t, because it isn’t done yet,” Fiona says.“The glue for the lace and pearls hasn’t dried. But I’m finishing it tonight.”
    “Ooh. Lace and
pearls
,” Annie Pat says, her eyes wide.
    “You
better
finish,” Cynthia says, just to keep in practice for being mean, I guess.
    “Yeah,” Heather says. “I second that. Maybe we should vote on it.”
    “Nah,” Cynthia says, and Heather blushes.
    Jared looks worried.
    “What’s the matter?” I ask him.
    “I dunno,” he says, shaking his big head. “I think some of our advice is kind of weird.”
    “Well, but so are we,” Emma says, laughing.
    “You, maybe,” Cynthia says.
    “It’s okay,” I tell Jared. “Ms. Sanchez is pretty much used to us. I think she’ll
expect
weird.”
    “And she’ll love the book,” Kry—the optimist—assures him.
    “Yeah,” Jared grumbles. “She’ll like it the way some parents say they like their kids’ scribble-scrabbles, when they put them up on the fridge with magnets. But everyone will laugh at us.”
    “They might laugh,” I say, thinking more about the talent show than the wedding shower book. “But it’s too late now to do anything else. So just forget about it, dude.”
    “Don’t tell me what to do,” Jared says, making himself look big, which isn’t hard.
    “Maybe I wasn’t talking to you,” I tell him.
    And P.S., I wasn’t.
    I was talking to myself.

16
TOGETHER
    “Daddy’s home!” Alfie shouts a few hours later.
    I have been practicing my two TEENY-TINY magic illusions in my room. I’m sick of them, and I know I’m gonna flop tomorrow. But if I have to perform those illusions at the talent show, I might as well do them right.
    It’s not
their
fault they’re small.
    Maybe their father tells them that they’ll grow bigger any day now.
    “Go give him a big hug,” Mom tells my little sister. “Why don’t you go too, EllRay?” she adds, smiling as if she knows a secret. “Give him a hand with his briefcase, maybe. Or whatever he needs help with. Dinner will be ready in an hour.”
    So I wander out the kitchen door after Alfie to greet my dad.
    He’s carrying a white FedEx box under onearm, which probably means he had something delivered to his office at the college. He claims that things get to San Diego faster than they do to Oak Glen, and he’s probably right. San Diego is a big city, and it has an airport.
    I like FedEx. Their packages always make things look important.
    “EllRay,” Dad says, smiling. “Help me out here, would you, son?”
    Alfie has wrapped her pudgy golden arms around his legs as part of her big hug. But I think he wants me to take the box he’s carrying, not unwrap Alfie from his legs.
    I just hope that box isn’t full of rocks!
    It’s not. It’s pretty light, in fact.
    “Want me to put this in your office?” I ask as Dad hobble-walks to the kitchen door, Alfie still attached to him like a starfish. She likes to walk—and sometimes dance—while standing on his feet.
    Being a dad can be hard. On shoes, anyway.
    “Good idea,” Dad says. “And you can stay in there with it, if you would, while I say hi to your mom and wash my hands,” he adds. “I’ll be with youin a minute.
It’s a secret
,” he mouths, so Alfie can’t hear this last part.
    A secret?
What’s
a secret?

    “First things first,” Dad says after he and I have sat down on