Ezra exposed, p.1
Ezra Exposed, page 1
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“Sweet, silly Ezra and his butt-joke-loving, approval-seeking antics make for a hilarious read, but it’s the serious digital citizenship lesson that parents and educators will applaud. I’m putting this in front of my kids now!”
—Suzanne Francis,
New York Times bestselling Disney author
“Ezra Exposed pulls off a magic trick: it’s an entertaining, hilariously funny story about a serious and difficult issue, told with compassion in a pitch-perfect middle-grade voice.”
—Natalie Standiford,
author of The Only Girl in School
“A wildly entertaining, fast-paced, and funny debut. Readers will fall in love with Ezra and his hilarity, but above all, they will relate to his mistakes. Essential reading for any kid about to own a phone for the first time—and for their parents.”
—Leslie Margolis,
New York Times bestselling author
“Ezra’s droll first-person narration, desire to be liked, and evolving maturity deftly render this a humorous and self-reflective tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Ezra Miller is the chicken-nugget-butt we need right now! Ezra Exposed introduces us to an unforgettable character who accidentally finds fame and shame through his Instagram account. Amy Feldman’s writing is funny, relatable, and informative. And if you have kids who like to take pics on their phones, it’s also crucial.”
—Robin Epstein,
bestselling author of the Groovy Girls series
“The book nails middle school humor…Smart and funny, Ezra Exposed illustrates just how dangerous the push for popularity can be—particularly when it is paired with the internet and butts.”
—Foreword Reviews
“This story is entertaining and educational at the same time. I couldn’t put it down! It is on the top of my must-buy list for my middle school students.”
—Christine Rosa,
library media specialist
“This book is highly accessible for a late elementary school audience…This book would be a great talking point for parents with their children about so many learning moments. These include internet safety, peer pressure, puberty, and work ethic.”
—Caitlin Dalton,
7th grade teacher
“I wish this were a book that didn’t need to be written. But internet safety is a real issue, and kids need to know the legal and social ramifications of their actions, and this is an age-appropriate way to introduce and explain this to kids.”
—Donna Melter,
educator
“This is an amazing book. It lays out what can happen with the internet. Ezra is a kid that most kids can relate to—not perfect, but not a bad kid. He makes a little mistake, and it slowly grows into a big problem. It will show the kids what happens if they forget what goes on the internet stays on the internet. This will work much better than a dozen lectures.”
—Allison Dollar,
former school librarian, MA in children’s literature
“This was a great book for upper elementary and middle school kids. It is a quick read that kids can really relate to…I hope to read this as a read-aloud with my class and help them understand how important it is to be careful what you post online.”
—Mandy G.,
6th grade teacher
Copyright © 2022 by Amy E. Feldman
E-book published in 2022 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Sarah Riedlinger
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 979-8-200-79750-9
Library e-book ISBN 979-8-200-79749-3
Juvenile Fiction / Technology / General
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
To Paul Epstein, Ray Feldman,
and Len Feldman, three wonderful dads,
whose love means the world to their children,
and
to my wonderful children,
who are my world
1
Finally
“Tell me you didn’t go to school like that.”
It was the very first thing Dad said when Mom and me and Emmie scooched into the booth at Elly Fants, where he’d been waiting for us.
I made a face. “Yeah, Mom picked out this shirt. I told her it was too hot to wear. I was sweaty all day.”
“Not the shirt. The ’stache, dude.”
Oh. Right. I had gotten up that morning before everyone else and found the Sharpie Mom used to label our clothes. So what could I do?
I mean, it’s not like I could grow an actual mustache yet. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try it on to see how it would look. It would look great, in case you were wondering, although I knew it would take three days for the Sharpie to wear off. “Yeah. Ms. Robinson loved it.”
“Really?” he said, like it was so hard to believe how charming I was.
“Yeah, I mean she didn’t say it or anything, but I’m pretty sure that’s because she didn’t want to make the other kids jealous. But she couldn’t stop looking at my handsome face.” I raised my chin and posed like a model. Dad snorted.
“Gee, I wonder where he gets that healthy sense of self-esteem?” Mom said. I knew she was actually making fun of Dad because whenever he was in a bathing suit, he sucked in his stomach, flexed his arms like a bodybuilder, and said, “Mr. Universe has arrived, ladies. Try not to faint.”
“What?” Dad said, acting like he had no idea what she was talking about. “When you got it, you got it. The kid knows.” He winked at me.
Mom rolled her eyes. “I got a text from Aunt Robin about the thank-you note you sent her,” she said to me. “She thought it was very”—she paused for a second—“creative.”
She held up her phone to show Dad. He read my note out loud:
“You spelled monkey wrong,” he told me.
Mom gave him a look. “Really? That’s all you have to say about that?”
“We already have two kids and a barely housebroken dog. What’s the big deal about a monkey in the mix?”
Just then, the waitress came over to our table. “You folks ready to order?”
Before anyone could answer, I said, “Well, for my birthday dinner, I’ll have the chicken nuggets with fries.”
I needed to make sure she knew it was my birthday so that Elly the Elephant and all the people working there would come out to sing and I’d get a scoop of ice cream with a candle in it. I knew that almost-ten-year-olds were too old for it, but my friends weren’t there, so I didn’t care. Plus, when Elly and the servers sang to you, everyone in the entire restaurant turned around, and sometimes other tables started singing too, so everyone paid attention.
“Today is your birthday?” she asked.
“Yup,” I said, even though it was only Thursday and my actual birthday wasn’t for another three days. Luckily, no one said anything, not even Emmie.
“I’ll have the chicken nuggets and fries too,” she said. “I’m six,” she added.
She looked at me, and I knew she was afraid I would tell the waitress she was only five—but if I did then she might say it wasn’t my actual birthday, so I kept my mouth shut.
The waitress, who was about 106, looked up from her little notepad and smiled. “Oh, those beautiful blond curls. Aren’t you a little Shirley Temple?” I had no idea who Shirley Temple was, but she must have been Emerson’s twin because old ladies always said that.
It was (almost) my birthday, and as usual, my little sister was upstaging me. I crossed my arms and sat back in the booth. It didn’t matter where we were. Every single time we went anywhere, adults always commented on how cute Emmie was. No one ever noticed me at all.
Mom and Dad ordered their meals, and the waitress left.
“So? How’d it go getting the phone?” asked Dad.
Mom was holding the bag with my birthday present. She’d wanted to wait until we were all together to “officially” give it to me.
I’d been waiting this whole year to get a phone. Mom and Dad had always said I couldn’t get one until the fall when I was in middle school, and even though I told them when each of my friends got a phone and how I was going to be the only kid without one, they always said no. It wasn’t until Zack—the one with the strictest mom of all—got a phone that they finally believed me.
“Happy birthday,” she said as she started to hand me the bag. Before she let me take it, though, she said, “After tonight, no phones at the table.” I nodded and grabbed it.
I used the table knife to open the cellophane wrapper, and when I pressed the button, it already had a little power. I could start using it right away! I had seen my friends take so many selfies that I already knew how, and I immediately started taking selfies and pictures of my family.
I didn’t want to put the phone down , even when the food came. I picked up two fries and put them up my nose, one in each nostril.
“I’m a walrus,” I said, taking another selfie. Emmie laughed.
“That’s disgusting,” snapped Mom. “Take those out of your nose this minute.” I pulled them out of my nose and ate them, and she wasn’t happy about that either. “Ezra!” she said in her really mad voice.
“Well,” said Dad, “you told him to take them out. You didn’t say, ‘and don’t eat them.’”
Emmie looked at her plate. Two of her nuggets were stuck together at the top. “Look,” she said. “A heart.” I could see that they also looked like something else. I took them out of her hands and turned them the other way.
“Or a butt,” I said, taking another picture. I made it my screen saver, it was so good.
2
Dodgeballing
“Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuu,” my best friend, Jasper, sang in a fake opera-singer voice when his nanny, Josephine, dropped him off at my birthday party at KidzGymtastic.
Dad gave Jasper a high five and said, “Hey, look, Ez, your twin is here.” People always used to say that because Jasper and I both have dark brown curly hair and light brown eyes, and until this year we were almost exactly the same size. But Jasper’s grown like six inches since last summer.
“Hi, Mr. Miller,” Jasper said, then handed me an envelope with a bow on it. “It’s a gift card to the App Store. I’ll show you the best games.” I just nodded, though, since the rest of my friends were all arriving at the same time.
But before everyone was in the door, the guy in charge blew his whistle. “OK, friends! We are here to celebrate Ezra’s birthday! Everybody, give him a round of applause!” Wow. I liked him already. “My name is Taylor. You can call me T. Who knows how to play dodgeball?” Everybody went wild. Everybody except Emmie, who did not want to play, which was good because I didn’t want her to. She took her coloring book and lay down in the corner.
T blew his whistle again. “Ground rules: One. No hitting each other in the face, or you’re out. That’s it. You know the rest.”
I heard Dad tell Mom, “He could have just said ground rule.”
T had us count off one-two, which was kind of a bummer because if I’d known, I wouldn’t have stood next to Jasper—I’d have stood next to Zack, who was the smallest by far and afraid of any ball in any sport, so he ran away from them. Dodgeball was probably the only time when that happened to be a pretty good quality, though, so it wasn’t terrible.
Luckily, Matthew Rodef was on my team too. Even though he wasn’t the biggest kid, he was strong and great at sports.
You really wanted Matthew on your side—because if he wasn’t, it could be terrifying. When he got into a game, he sometimes forgot who his friends were, and he always wanted to win, so you could never play just for fun. But if you cared about winning, he was the best guy to have because he always played his hardest. Plus, he could whip a dodgeball like nobody’s business. He once took out two people with a single throw when it ricocheted off the first person and then hit someone else. It was legendary.
We also had Henry, Jason, and Nelson on our team. Nelson was a good athlete, but he was also the tallest, which didn’t help at all in dodgeball because, unlike Zack, he couldn’t just make his body small and hard to hit. Owen, Danny, Josh, Lucas, Leo, and Jasper were on the other team. Jasper pointed at me and mouthed, “You’re going down.”
When the whistle blew, Matthew immediately hurled the ball so hard it whizzed past everyone on the other team, bounced off the wall, and hit Lucas in the back.
“Yer out,” yelled Matthew.
“What?! No, I’m not. That ball was out before it was back in again, so it’s a dead ball.”
T blew his whistle and said that Lucas was right. Matthew looked mad, but he always gets a little mad whenever he doesn’t win, even if it’s just a single point.
After a couple of games, we went to the back room, where everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to me, and we had cake.
Then I got to open the presents. Mom wrote down who gave me what so I could send thank-you notes. I mostly got gift cards, but I also got a football, a Phillies cap, and a Junior Bug Collector kit that had a mini magnifying glass, plastic tweezers, and a plastic cup with a lid to collect bug “specimens.” That was from Zack, of course. Zack gave the worst gifts, but it wasn’t his fault; I knew it was his mom. I really had to pretend to like it. I deserved an Academy Award in the category of “Convincing People You Like an Educational Gift.”
“No broken bones, no tears, and no damage we have to pay for,” said Dad, after everyone had left. “By any measure, a complete success.”
Emmie gave me a hopeful look and said, “If you don’t want any of your presents, I’ll take them.”
“You can have this one.” I handed her the bug collector kit. Then I turned to Mom. “Shouldn’t Emmie have to write the thank-you note for that present if I’m letting her keep it?”
“Nice try,” said Mom.
3
Chicken Butt
“Great party yesterday,” Jasper said, sitting down next to me on the bus. He only lived three blocks away, and I always saved him a seat.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What was the best present you got?”
“My grandparents got me a Sixers jersey, so that was pretty cool.” He looked disappointed, so I said, “But yours was the best gift from any of my friends.” It was clear he didn’t really believe me. “I already used it to buy some games.”
“Show me what games you got.”
I wasn’t sure if he said that because he was suspicious or because he really wanted to see them. Either way, I pressed the button to get back to the home screen.
“What’s that?” He pointed to my screen saver.
I explained about Emmie’s chicken nuggets at Elly Fants and how they looked like a butt.
“Chicken butt!” Jasper said, laughing. “You gotta send it to me.”
I did, and then, because he liked it so much, I posted it on my new Instagram account that Mom let me get when I told her that even Zack had an Instagram. I didn’t mention that his mom let him get it so that he could post the covers of all the books he read. Under the photo I wrote the words “Chicken Butt.”
Our bus always arrived at school at the same time as about five other buses. Mr. Brubaker, the principal, was standing in front of the sign that said “Sean Hughes Elementary School” when we got off, yelling at kids to keep moving and not block the path.
Mr. Brubaker wore a brown suit every single day, and today was no different, even though it was May and already about a million degrees out. His bald head was so sweaty that he looked like the plastic man from Emmie’s Play-Doh kit when you put Play-Doh inside and push down and it squeezes out of a thousand holes at the top of the head like hair. Except that, instead of sticking out like Play-Doh, the sweat on top of Mr. Brubaker’s head was just rolling down his forehead and neck, making his collar so wet that it was a darker color than the rest of his shirt. So gross.
Matthew jumped off the last step of his bus and ran to catch up to us. I looked over at Mr. Brubaker to see if he was going to yell at Matthew for running, but he was too busy yelling at a girl who had stopped to tie her shoe.
“Was that really a chicken’s butt?” said Matthew.
“No,” I said, “it was just two chicken nuggets stuck together.” I was glad Matthew liked it because he made fun of people if they did dumb stuff.
“Duh,” said Jasper, rolling his eyes. “Obviously it wasn’t a real chicken’s actual butt. A real chicken butt would have feathers on it.”
Matthew glared at Jasper. “I know,” he s+aid. “I obviously meant, Was it real chicken nuggets?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. I was pretty sure Matthew didn’t know it was nuggets, and even though he could dish it out, he didn’t take it very well when someone else made fun of him, so I wanted to protect Jasper from getting pounded. “It was real nuggets that we got at Elly Fants. They came just like that.”
