Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life

  DINNER FOR THREE AT SWIFTY’S DINER

  November 2 is a good day. It’s Mom’s birthday, and she said all she wanted this year was for us to come have dinner at Swifty’s while she was working.

  Still, Georgia made her a drawing (whoopee), and I used most of my Zoom money to get her a card and some of this perfume she likes. We put the gifts out on the table so they’d be sitting there when she came to take our order.

  Swifty’s is a pretty good place to eat. I usually get the burger with double fries, or sometimes the open-faced turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. And we almost always get the apple pie with ice cream and extra cinnamon for dessert.

  The other reason I like Swifty’s is that they have Mom’s paintings up on the wall for sale. She doesn’t have much time to paint these days, since she’s always working, but I think she’s a really good artist—even if her stuff is kind of weird.

  None of Mom’s paintings have names. She says you’re supposed to look at them and decide for yourself how they make you feel. Mostly I just feel happy when she sells one. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, that’s a good day too.

  When she came up to the table, Mom smiled at the presents we’d brought her, but I could tell right away that something was wrong.

  “You kids can go ahead and order,” she said. “Bear called to say he couldn’t make it. He’s got somewhere else to be.”

  “On your birthday?” I asked, which I probably shouldn’t have. Mom was trying to pretend like it didn’t matter, but she’s an artist, not an actress, if you know what I mean.

  “This will be nice, just the three of us,” she said. “And besides, now you can get whatever you want. Even the steak.”

  Usually we had to spend ten dollars or less when Bear was there, because he ate so much and Mom couldn’t afford it. Talk about lame!

  “Steak, please,” I ordered.

  “One steak, medium well with double fries,” Mom said, writing it down on her pad and smiling again. “How about you, Georgia Peach?”

  “Rafe was naked in school!”

  It came out of her just like that. With Georgia, secrets are kind of like time bombs, and you never know when one’s going to go off.

  “What?” Mom said.

  “Shut up!” I said. “I was not.”

  “Gracie said that Miranda Piccolino said her brother said you were running all over the school like that.”

  “I wasn’t naked!” I yelled.

  Just in case you’re wondering, that’s not a thing you want to yell in the middle of a crowded diner. I felt like every single eyeball in the place turned to look at me. Probably because they did.

  Mom was looking at me too. She stood there really still, like a statue.

  “It was just a Halloween thing,” I said.

  “Gracie said that Miranda said that her brother said you were—OUCH!”

  That was me, kicking Georgia under the table. And then—

  “WAHHHH!”

  That was Georgia, making like a howler monkey and trying to look like she was crying, which she wasn’t, the big faker.

  Then the worst thing of all happened. I looked up at Mom again. She hadn’t moved, but this one tear rolled down her cheek. Then she turned away and walked into the back room without saying anything at all.

  “See what you did?” I told Georgia. “Way to go.”

  “I’m not the one who ran around NAKED!” she yelled, just in case the people in the parking lot hadn’t heard it the first time.

  But I didn’t even care about that anymore. I was already up and following Mom.

  SCUM

  Mom?”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  She was sitting on a big white plastic tub of dill pickle chips in the storage room. Giant containers of everything on the menu are kept back there. If you got stuck in that room, you’d never, ever starve.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” I said.

  “Come over here, Rafe.” She patted the empty pickle tub next to hers, just as Swifty stuck his head in the door. (Actually his name is Fred, but there was already a place called Fred’s Diner on the other side of town.)

  “Jules, I don’t mean to be a hard guy, but we’re kind of busy out here,” he said.

  “I’ll be right there,” she told him. “Promise.”

  Great. Now it was Bear, Swifty, and me, all giving Mom a hard time. That’s not a list I wanted to be on.

  “We never did finish our chat about Leonardo,” Mom said. “I want you to know that I know you’ve been talking to him again.”

  “I don’t have to,” I told her right away. “I can stop.”

  “No, honey,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this. We all talk to people who aren’t there, all the time, with texting, and computers, and even answering machines. Artists talk to their muses for inspiration. Some people even talk to themselves.”

  “That’s true,” I said. Sometimes I could hear Mom out in the garage when she was painting, talking away even though nobody else was there.

  “So why shouldn’t you talk to Leo if you want to?” she said. “Besides, it’s not Leo I’m worried about. It’s you.”

  “I’m okay,” I insisted.

  “Are you?” she asked, looking at me in that Mom way. “Sweetie, you’ve been getting into so much trouble at school lately. I just don’t understand. I know it’s been a tough year, and I haven’t been around much, but… but…”

  And then she started crying all over again.

  On her birthday.

  Because of me.

  I’ve never felt like a bigger piece of scum than I did right then. Just one big slice of loser meat on toast. So much for being a good person.

  HOW HARD COULD IT BE?

  After what happened that night, I knew I had to put the game on hold. No more breaking the rules on purpose. No more Operation R.A.F.E. for the time being. No Zoom for sale, and no fighting with Bear either. If I couldn’t be good, I could at least try to be a normal person for a while. I mean, how hard could it be?

  “You’re going to regret this,” Leo told me. “Besides, Jules doesn’t want you to be normal. She just wants you to be yourself. Doesn’t she say that all the time?”

  “Yeah, well, myself made his mother cry tonight,” I said. “I’m just going to lie low for a while, that’s all. Just until things get a little better around here.”

  “Sure,” Leo said. “Right after you win the lottery, and Jules turns into a famous artist, and Georgia has a personality transplant, and Bear gets amnesia and never comes home. Forget it, dude. You’re living in a fantasy world.”

  “Look who’s talking,” I said.

  “And that’s another thing,” Leo told me. “What am I supposed to do while you’re off being Mr. Normal?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What do imaginary people do in their spare time?” Leo yawned. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going anywhere. You can still talk to me. We just won’t be playing the game.”

  “But we’re only getting started here,” he said. “You can’t quit now.”

  “I’m not quitting,” I told him. “I’m taking a time-out.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “We’re just going to have to wait and see, okay?”

  But Leo didn’t say anything.

  “Okay?”

  Still nothing.

  “Leo?”

  My whole room suddenly felt kind of… empty. I’d never seen Leo mad before, but I think that’s what was going on now.

  Leo the Silent was giving me the silent treatment.

  NORMAL

  The next day at school wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I paid extra attention to what some of the good kids were doing, and I tried to do the same stuff. (Some of it, anyway.) I showed up on time for class; I raised my hand when I thought I knew the answer, even though I was usually wrong; and I told my Zoom customers I was out of business until further
notice.

  In Donatello’s English class, I volunteered to hand out the assignment sheets. She looked at me like nothing weirder had ever happened in her life.

  “Are you trying to butter me up before your next detention?” she said. “Because it’s working. Thank you, Rafe.”

  I just said, “You’re welcome.” If there was some buttering involved, that was a bonus.

  And speaking of bonuses, Jeanne Galletta actually smiled at me when I gave her the handout. I’d been avoiding her ever since the whole underwear episode on Halloween, so I was surprised when she smiled like that. Maybe it had something to do with me being normal for a change.

  In fact, it seemed that the only people who didn’t like me this way were Leo (no surprise) and Allison Prouty, who kept looking at me like I was ruining her career as Hills Village Middle School’s number one kiss-up.

  The English assignment was a vocabulary exercise. It was all about abstract nouns, or “things that aren’t things,” as Donatello called them. The list had words like contentment, prosperity, fortitude, vastness, and stuff like that. We were supposed to work in groups to find pictures that represented what the words meant to us. It made me think about how Donatello and my mom could totally hang out. They’re both into all that arty stuff.

  I wasn’t in Jeanne’s group, unfortunately, but I was still being Normal Rafe, so I volunteered to be the recorder for my group. Matt Baumgarten and Melinda Truitt printed pictures from the computer, and Chance Freeman looked through a bunch of magazines Donatello had brought in. I cut out the stuff they found and put it all together in a big collage kind of thing. I made the pictures fit up against each other like puzzle pieces and spelled out the vocab words with letters from the magazines.

  When Donatello came around to check everybody’s work, she stopped and looked at ours for a long time. “This is very creative,” she said. “Very organic.”

  All I know about organic is the disgusting plain yogurt Mom keeps in the fridge at home, but I’m pretty sure Donatello meant it was a good thing. Nobody in the group gave me credit for the idea either, and I didn’t even care. I knew she was talking to me.

  So this was what normal felt like. It sure wasn’t as fun as Operation R.A.F.E., but if this is what it took to keep Mom happy and off my case, then I figured it would be worth it.

  Too bad it lasted only one day.

  MILLER STRIKES AGAIN

  If you’ve been reading carefully, you probably noticed a kind of pattern in my life. Just when things seem to be going okay… blah, blah, blah.

  So there I was at my locker, feeling pretty good about how the day had gone and getting ready to go home. I had half my stuff in my backpack and the other half in my hand, when I turned around—right into a big pile of Miller. (In the future, when it’s possible to have extra eyes installed in the back of your head, I’m definitely going to be the first one in line.)

  He stuck out his foot, put a hand on my back, and pushed. I went down hard, along with all my stuff.

  “Careful,” Miller said. “You might trip and fall.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re a regular baby Einstein.”

  “Right,” he said, like he thought I was serious. “You ready for the meeting?”

  “What meeting?”

  “My fist, your face,” he said, and pointed outside. “Come on. Once and for all, dirtbag.”

  I was getting tired of this. Way past tired.

  Maybe dangerously past it.

  “Listen, Miller,” I said, “I already told you. I’m not trying to prove anything, and even if I was before, I’m done, okay? So just back off.”

  But he wasn’t even listening anymore.

  “What’s this?”

  He bent down and picked up something off the floor. It was my Operation R.A.F.E. notebook! I hadn’t even realized it had come out of my backpack—until then.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Give it back.”

  Miller already had it open to the first page. “Operation R.A.F.E.?” he said. “What are you? Six years old?”

  “I told you, it’s nothing,” I said. I reached, but he pulled away.

  “If it’s nothing, why do you look like you’re going to wet your pants?” Miller said.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. This was supposed to be Normal, Day 1, and all of a sudden it was more like Worst Nightmare, Part 13.

  Miller was flipping through the pages, looking at everything I’d written, and smiling like he’d just found a box of money.

  And that’s when I saw it happen. Miller the Killer had just gotten himself an idea. You could see it on his face. It was like watching a caveman stand up on his own two feet for the first time.

  “Here you go,” he said. He ripped the cover right off the notebook and handed it to me. “That much is free. The rest is a dollar.”

  What was I going to do—take him down with paper cuts?

  “Fine,” I said, and took one of the two dollars out of my pocket. “Here. Now give it to me.”

  But all he did was tear off the first page and hand it over.

  “What?” he said. “You thought it was a dollar for the whole thing? What do you think I am, some kind of idiot?”

  Attention! Do not answer that question! I repeat, do NOT answer that question!

  “Come on, Miller,” I said, not answering the question.

  “Come on, Miller,” he said, in this little squeaky voice, like that’s how I sounded.

  “I don’t have the money for all that,” I told him. I’d practically filled up the notebook, and there were something like seventy pages in there.

  Miller just shrugged, folded it in half, and shoved it under his arm. “You can take your time,” he said, walking away. “A dollar a page, Khatchadorian. Unless the price goes up, which it might.”

  I kind of felt like it already had. So much for normal.

  WHAT NOW?

  I spent the whole afternoon trying to come up with some kind of plan for how I was going to deal with Miller.

  All of my ideas were great, except for the part about them being totally impossible.

  And letting Miller keep the notebook just wasn’t an option. I mean, if Mom acted the way she did about what happened on Halloween, what would she do if she found out about the whole Operation R.A.F.E. thing?

  I had to face the facts: Miller had me, and I was going to spend the rest of sixth grade buying back that stupid notebook, one page at a time.

  That meant I needed to start making some money right away. As far as I knew, there was only one way to do that, and it was sitting in brightly colored cans out in the garage.

  “Yes!” Leo said as soon as I thought of it. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  “You’re back,” I said.

  “Never left,” he said. “I was just waiting around for something interesting to happen. Oh, and by the way, you tanked your second life when Miller got that notebook away from you. Only one life left. You’re going to have to be careful.”

  “I don’t care about that right now,” I said. “I just want the notebook.”

  “Well, then, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  “Okay,” I said, and headed out toward the garage. “But I’m only selling the soda,” I told Leo. “I’m not getting back in the game.”

  “We’ll see,” Leo said.

  BUSTED!

  So there I was, minding my own business and stealing a few six-packs of Zoom out of the garage, when guess who came walking up on her silent little feet to spy on me?

  “What are you doing?” Georgia asked. “You���re not supposed to be out here. Are you taking that? Why are you taking that?”

  “Close the door!” I told her. I knew that would be faster than trying to get her to go away.

  “Bear’s going to kill you,” she said.

  “Not if he doesn’t find out.” I put another six-pack in my backpack and then stepped up really close, so I was looking straight down at her. ?
??Understood?”

  She tried to look past me. “Why do you need so much?” she said.

  “Why are you on his side?” I asked.

  “I’m not!” she said right away. I knew that would get her. She hates Bear as much as I do.

  “Listen,” I told her. “Every time I take some of this, I’ll take one for you too. We can drink it when Bear’s asleep and Mom’s not around.”

  She looked first at me, and then at the cases of Zoom under the workbench, and then back at me. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she said.

  “Do you want it or not?” I said, holding up the can. The thing is, Georgia likes soda even more than secrets, and Mom hardly ever lets us drink it.

  “What if we get caught?” she said.

  “We won’t,” I told her. “Not if we keep our mouths shut and don’t say anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ever,” I said.

  “O-kaaay,” she promised, looking at the can instead of me. I took her by the shoulders and made her sit down on an old milk crate.

  “For Mom’s sake,” I said. “Swear?”

  “I swear, I swear,” she insisted. “Triple swear.”

  That was only a double, but I let her go.

  Even with all that promising, there was no guarantee. Not with Georgia, but it was too late now. She’d already busted me, and this was my best shot at keeping her quiet.

  I was just going to have to take my chances.

  THE DARK AGES

  If you ask me, one of the worst parts of the school year is between Halloween and Thanksgiving. You’ve been there long enough to know how bad it can be, but Christmas break isn’t nearly soon enough, and the end of the year is nowhere in sight.

  It’s also right after daylight saving time, so when you leave in the morning, it’s dark, and when you get home after school, it’s practically dark.

  Dark, dark, dark… that was my life these days.

  When I showed up for the first of those three Wednesday detentions with Donatello, I found out she’d done the same thing as before. It was going to be just me and the Dragon Lady, all alone, for the whole hour.