Jasper John Dooley, NOT in Love by Caroline Adderson, Ben Clanton

Chapter 1

    Jasper John Dooley and Ori were playing knights with Leon at lunch. They ran around in the bushes at the back of the schoolyard where the playground monitor couldn’t see them. Jasper and Ori waved sticks. They chased Leon, who didn’t have a stick. Chasing people with sticks wasn’t allowed at their school. If a real dragon showed up, they probably wouldn’t be allowed to chase it with sticks either. The principal would say it was Very Dangerous. Jasper and Ori ran after their dragon, but Leon was too fast. “Hey!” Jasper shouted. “Slow down or we’ll never slay you!”
    â€œWhat’s slay?” Leon shouted back.
    â€œKill!” Ori shouted. “But when you’re talking about dragons, you’re supposed to say ‘slay’!”
    Leon stopped running. Jasper caught up and flicked his stick across Leon’s stomach. Leon let out a terrible roar.
    â€œSorry,” Jasper said.
    Leon wrapped his arms around his middle. He crumpled on the ground, rolling around and roaring “Agh! Rawr! Grrr!”
    Finally, he stopped. Jasper and Ori peered down. “Are you okay, Leon?”
    â€œNo,” Leon said. “I’m dead.”
    Jasper laughed. “That’s one dragon for me,” he told Ori. He told Leon, “You can get up now.”
    Leon didn’t get up. He lay there like he was really dead. Even when Jasper and Ori dropped their sticks and tickled Leon, he wouldn’t stop being dead. Even when they said the playground monitor was coming over, Leon wouldn’t get up. So Jasper and Ori ran off before the monitor got there and asked who slayed Leon.
    They went to climb on the jungle gym for the last ten minutes of lunch. Zoë and Isabel were on the swings. As soon as they saw the boys, they wanted them to play babies. The two girls loved playing babies, but the two boys would only play if the girls had something to pay them with. Leftover Halloween candy was good, or cookies from their lunches.
    â€œNo cookies, no babies,” Jasper said.
    Isabel smiled, showing she had no front teeth. From her pocket she took two small, square packets of jam like you get in restaurants.
    â€œThe thing is,” Ori said to Jasper, “I’d be a baby for jam.”
    So would Jasper.
    Isabel was always Ori’s mother and Zoë was always Jasper’s. The babies lay down in the grass and wa-wa-waed while the mothers went to collect food. Food was pinecones and twigs. The babies only got their candy or cookie at the end, for playing properly.
    While Jasper and Ori were wa-wa-waing in the grass, the playground monitor came over and said, “I don’t know what’s going on today. There’s another boy lying on the ground over there.” She pointed to the bushes at the back of the playground.
    â€œWa-wa-wa-wa!” the boys cried so she wouldn’t ask who slayed Leon.
    A few minutes later the two mothers showed up with pinecones. They got down on their knees and hauled their babies onto their laps. Jasper hated this part.
    â€œWa-wa-wa-wa!” he cried. “Wa-wa-wa-wa!”
    Zoë pushed a pinecone in Jasper’s face. He was supposed to pretend to eat it. Ori was pretending, but Jasper got an idea. “I want my jam now,” he said.
    â€œNo. You’ll run away,” Zoë said.
    â€œI won’t. I’ll run away if you
don’t
give me my jam.”
    Zoë took a jam packet from Isabel. She said she would feed it to Jasper. She peeled off the cover and used a twig as a spoon. Jasper opened his mouth and ate a twigful of the sweet jam. Like a real baby, he grabbed the twig and smeared jam around his mouth. Then he said, “Do you see what’s on my face?”
    â€œJam,” Zoë said.
    â€œNo, it’s blood,” Jasper said. “I’m a bad baby!”
    Ori jumped up, too, and said, “We’re bad, bad babies!”
    The girls screamed and ran away.