Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life

  He didn’t wait for an answer, though. He just pushed me straight down, hard enough for a full face-plant in front of everyone.

  “Watch your step, Picasso,” he said.

  Gabe Wisznicki gave him a high five for that one, and they both walked right over my stuff and up the hall.

  Ever since Miller had gotten my notebook and started taking my money, he wasn’t so interested in actually killing me anymore. It was more like he was just testing me now, to see how much I’d take.

  And I guess the answer was—this much.

  I didn’t stop to think. I didn’t “use my words.” I just got up and ran straight at Miller. My feet left the floor. I landed on his back, and I held on with everything I had.

  Miller tried to reach for me, but then he changed his mind. He turned halfway around instead and jumped backward, really hard, into the wall. If it was a wrestling move, you’d call it the Dead Meat Sandwich—and guess who was the meat? I lost my grip, along with all the air in my lungs, and hit the floor (again) without Miller ever putting a hand on me.

  A bunch of people gathered around. Some of them started yelling, “Fight, fight, fight,” and Mrs. Stricker was out of the front office like somebody had shot her out of a cannon.

  “What’s going on here?” she yelled.

  “Rafe jumped Miller!” Gabe said. The problem was, it was true. There were about three dozen witnesses.

  “Miller pushed me down!” I said.

  “You tripped,” Miller said, and pointed at the mats by the front door. They’re all old and warpy, and people trip on them all the time.

  “Liar!”

  “Wimp!”

  “Both of you,” Stricker said, laser tagging us with her eyes. “Into the office. Pronto!”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” Miller said, all wide-eyed and innocent. Seriously, they should recruit him for Drama Club.

  At least Stricker wasn’t buying it. “Mr. Miller, you’re one of the two biggest troublemakers I’ve got,” she told him, and then looked right at me so we’d all know who the other one was. “Let’s go. March!”

  I didn’t have much choice, so I marched—right out of Miller the Killer’s hands and into Sergeant Stricker’s.

  DOING TIME WITH SERGEANT STRICKER

  The cuffs dig into my wrists. My hands are numb. Sweat trickles down my forehead, and some blood too, where the guards roughed me up before they threw me into this hole.

  How long have I been here? An hour? Six hours? A day? It’s all a blur.

  Suddenly, a bright light shines in my face. It’s so strong I can’t see anything else. The heat is intense.

  A door opens somewhere. I can’t see anyone, but I hear footsteps and jangling keys. Then a voice.

  “You got something to prove, Prisoner 2041588?”

  I’d know that voice anywhere. It belongs to Sergeant Ida P. Stricker, the biggest, baddest, meanest guard in this whole joint. And the P stands for Pain.

  “No, ma’am,” I say. “Nothing to prove.”

  If you forget to say “ma’am,” she takes out one of your fingernails or toenails, the hard way—with a pair of pliers. Believe me, it’s not a mistake you make more than once.

  “Word on the cell block is that you jumped Miller the Killer for no reason,” she says.

  “That’s ’cause you got only half the story,” I say. “They left out the part about Miller starting it. Ma’am.”

  “So you’re a liar and a fighter, is that it?”

  “No, ma’am. Miller’s just out to get me, that’s all.”

  As far as I know, they’ve already let Miller go. This place isn’t exactly the world capital of justice.

  Sergeant Stricker leans in close. I can see her face now, and the long, jagged scar down her cheek. They say she used to do cage fighting before she worked here.

  “Listen up, kid. I’m on your side,” she says, like I’m supposed to believe that. “I just want you to live up to your potential, that’s all.”

  “My potential, ma’am?” I say.

  “That’s right. Your potential to be the youngest little hoodlum I ever sent up to the federal penitentiary.” She laughs in my face, but there’s no smile to go with it. “You think this place is hard, 2041588? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  I think that’s supposed to scare me, but it doesn’t. What scares me are the brass knuckles she’s unclipping from her utility belt. The ones she’s sliding over her tattooed fingers right now.

  “We’re done talking,” she says. “Time for you to go to sleep. Say night-night, 2041588.”

  Then she slugs me once… twice… three times before the room starts to spin, and everything goes black.

  DOWN THE DRAIN

  Once Mrs. Stricker finished lecturing me about bad choices and wrong paths and good manners (huh?), she left me there in the Box. That’s what we call the homework room at school. It’s this tiny little room with no windows except in the door so they can keep an eye on you when you’re taking a makeup test or if you’re in big trouble, like I was.

  After a while, one of the secretaries came in and told me they were ready for me in Mrs. Stricker’s office. “They?” I said, but she just motioned at the door like I should stop taking up so much of her day and start moving.

  By the time I got to the office, I’d figured it out for myself. Not that it mattered anymore.

  It was too late to do anything about it now.

  The Stealth Mom had already hit.

  “Sit down, Rafe,” Mom said. “We have to talk.”

  The next forty-five minutes in that office was about as much fun as a day at Disney World—when it’s pouring rain.

  And all there is to eat are hot-dog buns. And you get electrocuted on the rides.

  Mom and Mrs. Stricker asked me a whole bunch of thinking questions, like “What were you thinking?” and “What do you think we should do now?”

  Then they sent me back out so they could talk some more. Then they brought me in again. I was starting to feel like a human yo-yo.

  “Rafe, it’s time for some specific next steps,” Mrs. Stricker said. “We take fighting very seriously here at Hills Village. Tomorrow, you’ll have a one-day in-school suspension and, frankly, it’s the least you deserve.”

  “As for your grades,” Mom said, “Mrs. Stricker thinks, and I agree, that some tutoring could be good for you. Ms. Donatello has already offered to work with you after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I told her you’ll be there.”

  “You’ll also have a peer tutor,” Mrs. Stricker said. “Somebody your own age, to help you out with math and science once a week. We have an excellent program here at school, and I know just the student for the job.”

  She looked at her watch and then leaned over her phone and pushed a button. “Mrs. Harper, could you please ask Jeanne Galletta to come down to the office?”

  YOU TELL ME

  Mom and Bear got into a big fight that afternoon when she told him what had happened. He kept yelling about how she wasn’t “hard enough” on me, and she kept telling him to back off. I just stayed in my room, wishing for it to be over. Finally, Mom said something about how she was late for work, and she slammed the door on her way out.

  At least it was quiet now. At least that. I guess.

  When I asked Leo what he thought I should do about all this, he answered right away. “What is there to think about?” he said. “Dude, you are all out of reasons for staying out of the game, and we both know it.”

  It was true. I’d spent the last two months trying to be someone else—someone normal, maybe even someone good—and I wasn’t any better off than before. Mom was mad at me, Bear was more in my face than ever, and the two of them were arguing about me all the time. Not only that, but Miller was still alive, Jeanne was about to be my tutor, and I was officially one of the worst kids in school. At least when I was playing Operation R.A.F.E., I had some fun while I was being miserable.

  Hmmm… miserable and fun? Or miserable
and no fun? You tell me.

  I opened my backpack and dug in the bottom for my HVMS rule book. I hadn’t even looked at it in weeks. “Where do I start?” I said.

  “Anywhere,” Leo said. “Just pick something and go.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I told him. “All you have to do is come up with the ideas and then sit back. I’m the one who has to do all the work.”

  “How about this?” he said. “I’ll give you twenty-five thousand points for your fight with Miller.”

  “That wasn’t much of a real fight,” I said. If it had been, I probably would have left school on a whole bunch of stretchers—one for each piece of me.

  “You got into trouble for fighting, so you get the points for fighting,” Leo said. “Plus another seventy-five thousand for the suspension. Not bad, right? Now all you have to do is earn another twenty thousand by the end of the day tomorrow, and you can consider yourself fully reactivated.”

  “You mean the day after tomorrow,” I said. “I’m locked up in the Box all day tomorrow.”

  “Exactly,” Leo said. “That’s your welcome-back challenge.”

  I should have figured. It’s always something with Leo.

  “How am I supposed to make twenty thousand points sitting alone in a room?” I said, but Leo just sat back and pointed at the rule book in my hand.

  “You tell me.”

  COPYCAT

  A little while later I came out to the living room, where Bear was eating Fruity Pebbles out of the box and watching some highlights from all the New Year’s bowl games he’d already seen.

  “I have to go to the store,” I said.

  “There’re some fish sticks in the freezer,” he said.

  “It’s not for dinner,” I told him. “I have to go to Office Mart. I need some poster board for a school project.”

  “What kind of project?” he said, like I was lying (which I was, but he had no way of knowing that).

  I looked over at the TV, and the scores for all the different games were flashing by. “Statistics,” I said. “It’s a math project.”

  I’d bet anything that if Bear hadn’t just made himself the almighty ruler of my homework, he would have rolled over, farted, and told me this was my problem. But instead he got up and yelled for Georgia to put on her coat because we had to go to the store.

  “There’re fish sticks in the freezer!” she yelled back.

  Fifteen minutes later, we all pulled into the parking lot outside Office Mart. I told them I’d go get my poster board and be right back.

  “I want to come!” Georgia said.

  “Just wait here,” I told her. “Bear’s missing his game highlights, and the faster I go, the faster we can get home again.”

  “Just park it, Georgia,” Bear said.

  Seriously, I was getting pretty good at this stuff.

  I ran in and went straight over to the self-service copiers. Before anyone could tell me not to, I lifted up the lid on one of the machines, put my face down on the glass, and pushed the button.

  The first copy came out with my nose all mashed flat, but I got it right on the second try, which was a good thing, because the manager told me to stop copying my face (even though I was paying for it).

  It was eighty cents for the two color copies, plus another $2.29 for the poster board that I didn’t really need. That meant two more pages I couldn’t buy off of Miller, but I’d make it back once I started selling Zoom again.

  “Took you long enough,” Bear said when I came back to the car. I kept the photocopies pressed flat against the back of the poster board, where he couldn’t see them, and got in.

  “All set for tomorrow?” he said.

  “Guess I’ll find out tomorrow,” I said, which was absolutely true.

  IT WAS WORTH A SHOT, ANYWAY

  It’s a documented fact that in-school suspension is the most insanely boring thing that can happen to a person at Hills Village Middle School. It’s just you, your homework, and the homework room.

  All. Day. Long.

  I turned thirteen in that room. Winter ended, and then spring came and went. Wars happened. Trees grew. Babies were born and people died.

  I now completely understand why the school gives suspensions, because by the time you get out of there, you NEVER WANT TO SPEND ANOTHER WHOLE DAY IN THAT LITTLE ROOM AGAIN. I knew I didn’t.

  But I did earn my 20,000 points.

  Okay, truthfully? I didn’t expect for one second that my whole mask idea was actually going to work—and it didn’t. But it was all I could come up with on short notice, and then once I’d thought of it, I started getting all curious and wanted to give it a try anyway. Mom says every masterpiece comes at the end of a long line of failures. Maybe someday I’ll get this one right and sell a zillion of them.

  Meanwhile, I barely got to close my eyes before I heard the homework room door open and Mrs. Stricker start yelling at me.

  “Rafe Khatchadorian, what in heaven’s name is that supposed to be? Take it off immediately!”

  I did, but when I handed it over to her, something totally unexpected happened. She looked down at the mask (it was just a piece of paper with a string, really), and her face started getting all weird. Her eyes squinched up. Her cheeks got kind of twitchy. At first I thought something was wrong, but then she just burst out laughing.

  It didn’t last long, maybe two or three seconds before she got control of herself. Then she cleared her throat once, told me to get back to work, and left the room shaking her head.

  Now, I don’t know if you can appreciate this without actually knowing her, but getting Mrs. Stricker to laugh is like getting an octopus to stand up on two legs. And maybe juggle with the other six. As far as I know, nobody’s ever seen it happen in the history of HVMS.

  That’s why Leo gave me the 20,000 points anyway.

  And that’s the story of how I survived my first in-school suspension.

  TWO TO TUTOR

  That next Wednesday at lunch was supposed to be my first tutoring session with Jeanne. I spent all of Mr. Rourke’s fourth-period social studies trying to make myself throw up or pass out just by thinking about it, but all I got was dizzy.

  After the bell I went to my locker, even though I already had my math book. Then I went to the bathroom, even though I didn’t have to go. Then I went and got lunch, even though I wasn’t hungry. And then I slowly walked toward the math room.

  I’d already asked Mrs. Stricker for a different tutor, but basically, unless Jeanne was a convicted serial killer, or at least had head lice, I was stuck with her.

  When I got to the math room door, my feet just kind of kept going straight up the hall, like they knew better. Maybe I’d circle back around and try again, I thought. Or maybe… not even that.

  “Rafe?” I looked back, and Jeanne was leaning out into the hall. “Are you about to blow me off?” she said.

  She sure does cut to the chase, I’ll tell you that much.

  “No, I just wanted to get something out of my locker,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, but it sounded a lot like Suuuuure you did. “Listen, Rafe, it’s just tutoring. I can take it if you can.”

  I can take it if you can? How was I supposed to back out now?

  “Sure,” I told her. “No problem.”

  I followed her inside, and we sat down at one of the worktables. Jeanne already had her math book out. “You’re on unit eight, right?” she said.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Dividing fractions. That’s a hard one.”

  I knew she was just trying to be nice. She’d probably finished unit eight when she was eight, and here I was, still trying to get through it.

  She took out a pencil and started pointing at a bunch of fractions on the page. “So, you see these top numbers?” she said. “That’s called the numerator. And then these bottom ones are—”

  I didn’t even know I was about to say something.

  “I’ll give you five dollars if we c
an skip this and pretend like we didn’t,” I told her. It just kind of popped out.

  Jeanne raised one eyebrow. I wasn’t sure what that meant. She kept looking at me for a long time, until I started to wonder if it was a staring contest or something.

  Then she said, “Just so you know, Rafe, I never thought you were my ‘project,’ or whatever. I was just trying to be nice.”

  Whoa. I was surprised she even remembered I’d said that. The whole Thanksgiving bake sale disaster seemed like ancient history by now, and we’d never talked about it at all, which was kind of awkward.

  But you know what was even more awkward? Talking about it.

  Besides, I was done with letting Jeanne see me as a loser. In fact, I was starting to feel done with a lot of things these days.

  “I didn’t think you really thought that,” I said, even though I really did. “It’s no big deal.” Jeanne just kept looking at me, so I opened my backpack and took out my math book, some paper, and a pencil. “Go ahead,” I said. “What do you call those top numbers again?”

  She picked up her pencil too. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “I can take it if you can.”

  PLAY-BY-PLAY

  …Hills Village: 0! Khatchadorian’s been showing some fine form this quarter. A lot of people might have thought he was out for good after that stumble in the first half, but he’s come back strong. We’ve been watching some world-class play ever since. Let’s go to the highlights.”

  “Remember, folks, it’s not just getting it done in this game. It’s how you do it. Rafe’s coach, Leo the Silent, has insisted on nothing but technique, technique, technique, and Khatchadorian has risen to the occasion. He’s not just back, ladies and gentlemen. He’s better than ever!”