“Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is whether Khatchadorian can break every last rule in the book and advance to the final round before the year is over. According to our latest R.A.F.E.-Net poll, seventy-two percent of you out there think he’s going to pull this one out in the end. I’ll tell you this much, ladies and gentlemen—judging by the quality of his third-quarter play, it looks like he just might do it!”
“We’ve been hearing a lot of talk from Khatchadorian about some kind of huge finish coming up at the end of this game. Whether that’s just the usual trash talk or whether there’s some real action to back it up, we’ll have to wait and find out. One thing’s for sure, though: Rafe’s biggest obstacles are still ahead of him. Will he crash and burn? Or will he go out in a blaze of glory? All we can tell you right now, ladies and gentlemen, is that we’re going to keep with this story until it’s over, one way or another. So stay tuned!”
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS
I’m not sure what the difference was supposed to be between tutoring with Donatello and detention with Donatello, but it felt a whole lot to me like I’d gotten a bunch of detentions just for being dumb.
Most of the time, we did regular class work, like diagramming sentences (yawn) or research for my social studies report on copper mining (yawn… zzzzzz). But one Tuesday after school, I came in and she had a bunch of big sketch pads and pencils and markers out on the table.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“I thought you could use a little break,” she said. “We’re just going to sketch today.” Then she picked up a pad for herself, and I realized she really meant we.
“You look surprised,” she said. “I love sketching. You can make anything, out of absolutely nothing. What’s better than that?”
I didn’t know what she was up to with all this, but I went ahead and took a pad anyway.
For the next hour, we just sat there and drew. I kept expecting her to start asking me questions or to give me some kind of assignment, but she never did. When the bell rang for late bus, she just asked to see what I’d done.
It was definitely the best not-quite-a-detention I’d ever had.
“You’ve got a wonderful imagination,” Donatello said, looking at my stuff. “It’s all right there on the page.”
For a second, it made me want to tell her about Leo. Most of what was “on the page” felt like it came from him. But Donatello probably thought I was messed up enough as it was. She didn’t need to hear about me getting ideas from someone who wasn’t even there.
When she was done looking, I started to tear out my pages, but she told me to keep the whole pad.
“Put it to good use, okay?” she said. “Nice job today, Rafe. Excellent, in fact.”
I wasn’t sure whether I should take the pad or not. It felt like some kind of test, and I didn’t know what the right answer was.
“But we didn’t do anything today,” I said.
Donatello just shrugged. “I guess that depends on how you look at it.”
I had to go. The late-bus driver was always super-strict about leaving on time, and I didn’t want to walk home. So I went ahead and took the sketch pad. I still wasn’t sure if that’s what I was supposed to do or not, but Donatello wasn’t telling.
SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT
I was getting close.
Close to the end of the rule book, close to getting all my pages back from Miller, and at least kind of close to the end of the year. The weather was warming up, and pretty soon it was going to be time to start thinking about that final project.
But first there was one other thing I wanted to do.
This wasn’t for points. Or for Leo. It was just for me, and it was going to take all my skills to pull it off, everything I’d used in the game so far—art, stealth, and bravery. The Big Three.
I’d already put together my materials (six bucks for a hundred black-and-white copies at Office Mart) and brought them to school that morning. Now here I was, sitting through first-period Spanish, ready to make my next move.
In Señor Wasserman’s class, you can almost always get a bathroom pass, as long as you ask for it in Spanish. So I’d practiced the night before.
“Señor Wasserman, me permite ir al baño?” I said.
“Sí, Rafael,” he told me.
The tricky part wasn’t getting the pass. It was getting those copies I’d brought to school out of the room without anyone seeing. And that’s why I already had a stack of them shoved down the back of my boxers. It didn’t matter if the paper got wrinkled. In fact, I kind of like how it worked out, seeing as how this whole plan was all about getting back at the biggest butt-face in the entire school.
IS IT STILL BULLYING IF YOU’RE BULLYING THE BULLY?
By lunchtime, I’d gotten four different hall passes and hit up most of the boys’ bathrooms, two of the girls’ bathrooms, the back of the library, and a bunch of the second-floor lockers, all without being caught. Not only had everyone seen my flyers by now, but they were all talking about them too.
It wasn’t like I expected people to actually buy this idea, that Miller was any kind of chicken, killer or otherwise. Still, I had a feeling the nickname was going to stick for a while.
That took care of the offense part of my plan. Now it was time to switch to defense.
I hadn’t laid eyes on Miller since homeroom, but it didn’t take a genius to know I’d be at the top of his suspect list. In fact, he was probably looking for me right then. So I went looking for him.
He and his friends almost always hung out in the hall outside the gym at lunch and, sure enough, there they were. My heart was pounding big-time as I walked up to them.
Ricky Peña saw me first and elbowed Miller. When Miller turned around, I could see one of my flyers crumpled up in his hand—not to mention the murder in his eyes.
He came right for me.
“I didn’t do it!” I said. He grabbed me by the shirt anyway, but I kept talking. “I just want to… you know. I’ve got fifteen dollars,” I told him.
This was the weird part with me and Miller. We both hated each other, but even more than that, he wanted my money and I wanted my notebook back. Neither of us had said anything about it to Stricker, even when we both got suspended. It was like middle school Mafia or something.
Miller looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to decide what to do with me. Then he let go of my shirt.
“All right,” he said. “Third-floor bathroom, five minutes.”
“Five minutes,” I said, and walked away, but my heart was still going just as fast as before. This was only half over.
Was it five minutes until I pulled this off?
Or five minutes to live?
TEN PAGES AND A LIE
D ON’T GO IN THAT BATHROOM!
Is that what you’re thinking right now? I know, I know—what kind of idiot would let himself get cornered like that? I guess the answer is, a desperate one.
I went straight up to the third floor and waited in the hall to make sure Miller came alone. When he got there, I followed him inside, and we both checked the stalls before either of us said anything. Then Miller turned on me and held out his hand.
“Money,” he said.
As soon as I gave it to him, he grabbed me and twisted my arm around behind my back.
“You think I’m stupid?” he said. He pulled that crumpled flyer out of his pocket and tried to shove it in my mouth. “You are so dead for this.”
“I told you, I didn’t do it!” I said, turning my head away. My arm hurt, but nothing was broken—yet.
“Don’t give me that. You draw all the time. It’s all over that stupid little notebook of yours,” he said.
“Did you look at my pictures?” I said. “They aren’t anything like the, uh… the other thing.” It seemed like a bad idea to actually say “Miller the Killer Chicken” out loud right now.
“You could have faked it,” Miller said. He twisted my arm some more, and I tr
ied not to yell out. “You could have drawn different, or whatever.”
“Miller, seriously!” I said. “I’ve spent half the year trying to get my stuff back from you. Do you really think I’d blow it on something as stupid as this?”
I was still more scared than anything, but I have to say—that was just about the most genius moment of my life. Not only did Miller buy it and finally let me go, but he gave me the ten pages I’d paid for too. Besides my arm, which hurt like crazy, I hadn’t felt this good in a long time.
“How many more pages to go?” I asked him. He’d stopped giving them back to me in order, and I was losing track.
“Just keep bringing the money, and you’ll find out,” he said. “I’ll tell you this much, though. You figure out who made these”—he threw the flyer in the garbage and then kicked the garbage can over—“and I’ll give you ten pages for free.”
“That’s a deal,” I said, and got out of there while I still could.
When I left that bathroom all in one piece, I decided Leo had to give me some major points for this after all. I’m not sure if I broke any rules that day, but it didn’t even matter. I’d figured out that there’s more than one way to fight a war. And believe me, that’s worth a lot.
INTO THE HOMESTRETCH
Then, on the last day of the third quarter, something amazing happened.
I’d been selling Zoom out of my locker, slowly but surely so I wouldn’t get caught, and when I told Miller I was ready to buy some more pages, he admitted there were only nine left.
“But the price just went up again,” he said. “You can have them for twenty bucks.”
I didn’t even care. I had twenty-seven in my pocket, anyway, and as long as Miller didn’t know that, it was almost like saving seven dollars. Even better, my school year was now officially headed into the homestretch, and Miller’s reign of terror was over. (Okay, Miller’s reign of terror was never over, but at least he couldn’t hold that stupid notebook over my head anymore.)
I decided this was a good time to start thinking seriously about my big Operation R.A.F.E. final project. The rules were that I had to get all the way through the HVMS Code of Conduct before I could move on to the last round, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t start getting ready for it in the meantime.
After school, I rode over to the Office Mart and picked out a big heavy-duty black marker. I got the kind with the chisel tip that can make thick or thin lines with the same pen. It cost $4.99, which left me just enough to buy some flaming barbecue chips on the way home.
Back in the garage, I took a roll of masking tape from Bear’s workbench, a stack of old newspapers out of the recycling bin, and a can of Zoom to go with the chips. I brought it all back to my room and stuck a chair under the doorknob for maximum security, just in case.
Next, I used the tape to put a triple layer of newspaper up on my wall so the marker wouldn’t soak through when I pressed down. On top of that, I put a bunch of pages from the big sketchbook Ms. Donatello had given me, all edge to edge so it was like a giant canvas.
Now I was ready to start practicing.
Leo sat in and gave me ideas, the way he always does. “Do it like this,” he’d say, and “Try that,” and “Put this over there,” and “Get rid of that.” It sounds kind of bossy when I write it down here but, trust me, we make a good team.
The more I practiced with that marker, the better I got. And the better I got, the faster I got, which was just as important. Speed was going to be key when it came time for the real thing.
I was starting to get excited too. As far as I was concerned, the end of Operation R.A.F.E. couldn’t come fast enough. I could just see it now.
RAFE KHATCHADORIAN IS A BIG FAT IDIOT
And then I got my third-quarter grades.
It was like someone had taken all the D’s and F’s from my last report card and just rearranged them in different places on the new one. In other words—two months of extra tutoring and all I’d learned was a new way to spell DDFFDF.
I knew Jeanne would be dying to know how “we” did, so I actually brought my report card with me to our next tutoring session.
“Don’t take it personally,” I told her. “You can’t fix a car if it doesn’t have an engine, right?” I even knocked on my head like it was hollow, but Jeanne didn’t laugh. She just sat there staring at my grades.
I tried again. “Hey, look on the bright side. One more quarter, and we can kiss sixth grade good-bye forever.”
“Well,” she finally said, “I hope so.”
“You hope so?” I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, you must have thought about this, right?” she said.
“Thought about what?”
“Your grades, Rafe. You can’t get report cards like this all year long and then expect to sail right into seventh. They could make you take extra classes. They could make you go to summer school. Or—” Jeanne bit her lip like she didn’t want to say the next part. “Or… they could make you do sixth grade all over again,” she said, just before my head exploded into a million billion pieces.
CHAPTER 59
STALLING FOR TIME
I got up and walked straight out of the math room.
There was no way I was going to cry about this—not in front of Jeanne. Not in school. Not at all.
But I went straight to the bathroom and locked myself in one of the stalls, just in case.
How could this happen?
I’d spent the whole school year thinking about how to survive sixth grade, and I forgot to think about the worst possible thing. It was like getting blindsided by an aircraft carrier—
AND WHAT KIND OF IDIOT DOESN’T SEE AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER COMING?
I thought seriously about walking right out of that school and not looking back. I mean, what was the point of finishing the year if I was just going to have to do it over again?
But before I could make my move, somebody started knocking on the bathroom door.
“Rafe? Are you in there?”
It was Jeanne. Unbelievable.
I didn’t answer, but the door opened anyway. “I’m coming in,” she said, and a second later I could see her sneakers under the stall door.
“Rafe?”
“Go away,” I said.
“It’s not the end of the world, you know. It’s not even the end of the school year. There’s still time,” she said.
“For what? A brain transplant?”
“For getting your grades up.”
“Easy for you to say,” I told her. “You eat fractions for breakfast.”
She took a step closer, and I could see her eye through the crack of the door. If I could have flushed myself right out of there, I would have done it.
“You know what my dad would say right now?” Jeanne asked.
“Yeah. ‘What are you doing in the boys’ bathroom?’”
“No,” she said. “He’d tell you to buck up.”
“Buck up?” I said.
“That’s what he always says when he thinks I’m feeling sorry for myself. ‘Don’t give up—buck up.’”
I got to my feet and opened the stall door. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” I said, which was at least a little pathetic, since I was standing next to a toilet.
“Uh-huh,” Jeanne said. “Could we please finish this conversation somewhere else?”
But then—knock knock knock knock!
Somebody else was outside the bathroom door. This was starting to get downright weird.
“Hello?” said a familiar voice. The door swung open, and Mrs. Stricker was standing there, looking ready to kill. “Rafe Khatchadorian and Jeanne Galletta! What in heaven’s name is going on in here?”
JEANNE GALLETTA IS IN TROUBLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
If you’d told me at the beginning of the school year that Jeanne Galletta was going to get sent to the office for anything besides collecting awa
rds or being perfect, I would have laughed in your face.
And if you’d told me it was going to be for getting caught in the boys’ bathroom alone with me, I would have laughed in your face, but from a safe distance because you were obviously a dangerous and insane person.
But there we were, five minutes later, sitting on that bench of shame outside Stricker’s office, waiting to get yelled at.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Jeanne whispered. “This is so totally unfair.”
“No talking!” Mrs. Harper said from the secretary’s desk.
Jeanne just shook her head. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to yell, or cry, or both. So when Mrs. Harper looked away, I wrote a quick note on an old tardy slip and passed it to her.
She actually smiled when she read it, but that didn’t last long. Mrs. Stricker opened her door about two seconds later and told us to come inside.
“Now, can one of you please explain this little stunt to me?” she said. “Jeanne?”
“It wasn’t a stunt, Mrs. Stricker,” Jeanne said, talking really fast. “It wasn’t anything. I swear. We were just tutoring, and—”
“Tutoring?” Stricker said. “In the boys’ bathroom?”
“It’s not her fault,” I said. “I went in there first, and I wouldn’t come out.”
Stricker just looked at me like I was speaking Russian, and then she looked back at Jeanne like she was supposed to translate.
“The point is,” Jeanne said, “nobody got hurt and nothing really happened. I mean, it’s not like any rules got broken. Not really.”
“A very important rule was broken the moment you went into that restroom,” Mrs. Stricker said. “I’m afraid after-school detention is mandatory in this case.”
“What?” Jeanne said.
“Come on!” I practically yelled. “That’s totally unfair!”
“Watch your tone, Mr. Khatchadorian. You could just as easily wind up in that detention with Ms. Galletta,” Stricker said.