Basically, I’d been at Quinn’s house for about eighty-two seconds, and I was starting to wonder why I ever thought this party was a good idea. As far as I could tell, there were about fifteen people having a great time, and then there was me. I felt as popular as a cactus.
So after a while, I headed for the nearest corner and sat down on one of the couches in the dark. I know when I’m better off sticking to the sidelines. Not that I had much of a choice.
“Hey,” someone said.
I looked over and there was a girl sitting at the other end of the couch. I hadn’t even seen her there in the dark. I didn’t recognize her, but she was pretty. Which made me instantly nervous, of course.
“Hey,” I said.
“I’m Page,” she said. “I’m Carissa’s cousin, visiting from out of town.”
“Hi, I’m Rafe,” I said—but my voice decided to crack just then, so it sounded like there was a duck living right in the middle of my name.
Great.
Just great.
The music stopped suddenly, right in the middle of a song. I was super-grateful because Page looked away to see what was going on.
“Okay, boys and girls,” Quinn said loudly. “Time for a little game!”
Finally, something fun to do! I thought about telling everyone how to play baconball, but I didn’t know if Quinn had a dog. Or bacon. Or a ball. So I kept my mouth shut.
Good thing too, because baconball wasn’t exactly the kind of game he was talking about.
Quinn held up an empty water bottle and grinned. One by one, all the other kids started smiling too, like they were in on a joke I didn’t get. Even Flip.
I looked over at Page and she winked.
“What’s that for?” I whispered.
“You’ll see,” she whispered back, then got up and reached out her hand. She pulled me off the couch and onto the carpet, where everyone was sitting in a big circle.
Oh no.
Still grinning, Quinn put the bottle in the middle of the circle.
No no no.
Then he looked right at me. “As the Most Valuable Player in the game, Rafe gets the first spin!”
NOOOOOO!!!!
THE RUNAWAY
Since boy-girl parties were a brand-new thing for me, I’d never played Spin the Bottle before, but I did know that it usually involved—well—spinning a bottle.
And kissing the person it’s pointing to.
Don’t get me wrong. The idea of kissing a girl was fine. The idea of kissing a girl I might not even know or like while all the cool kids in school were watching?
But like with all the un-fun stuff in my life, I didn’t have a choice. I shuffled over to the middle of the circle, knelt down, and grabbed the bottle. I closed my eyes and spun it before I could even let myself think about who I did or didn’t want it to land on.
Because I had to keep being the person everyone wanted me to be. The MVP. The cool kid with all the right moves.
I opened my eyes when all the whistles and claps started ripping through the room. The bottle was pointing at someone… a girl.
Page.
You’d think I’d be relieved to kiss a pretty girl like Page, but I wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Just the thought got me sweating in places I’d never sweated before. Even my earlobes were getting drippy.
Oh, man… oh, man… oh, man! This was supposed to be a good thing, right? I’d been wishing for a pretty girl to kiss me since about day one of middle school. And now it was happening. My first real kiss.
So then, if this was such a good thing, why was I so… freaking… SCARED?
Sometimes my life is unbelievably confusing. On the one hand, I just wanted to be smooth Rafe and kiss her and have fun like everyone else.
On the other hand, I was feeling about ready to barf all over her shoes.
“Hello? Rafe?” Page asked. She smiled.
Which, I reminded myself, meant that she was not totally disgusted by the idea of a kiss from me.
I turned to face her and she closed her eyes. But I could feel a zillion other laser eyes on me.
I leaned in.
And then I froze.
I couldn’t do it.
Not like this.
After a few decades went by, Page opened her eyes again. She looked confused. I know I had a dumb, deer-in-the-headlights look on my face, which probably didn’t make her any less confused.
I thought—SAY SOMETHING, RAFE!SOMETHING FUNNY. SOMETHING SMOOTH.
ANYTHING!
JUST… OPEN YOUR STUPID MOUTH AND SAY SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!
“Um… I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and a wave of giggles and chortles zipped right around the circle of kids staring at me.
“Um… okay,” Page said. Now she was kind of looking at me like I was starting to grow an extra limb.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her. Even though it was totally possible at that point that she was hoping I wouldn’t be back.
Everyone was still staring and cackling as I slowly backed out of the Circle of Agony. I couldn’t look Page in the face, or anyone else. Flip was nowhere to be seen—he was probably upstairs raiding the refrigerator and had missed the whole thing.
I wish I’d missed it too. Raiding the refrigerator with Flip sounded like heaven right about now.
As I scrambled up the basement stairs, every good feeling from my touchdown and being on the team melted away like a snowman in the Sahara. I heard laughter and squeals behind me as someone else spun the bottle and did what they were supposed to do.
So why couldn’t I?
I swerved away from the hallway where the bathroom was, opened the front door, and walked out without once looking back.
Right before I started running.
DÉJÀ POO
That was fast,” Mom said when I came into the house. She and Grandma and Georgia were on the couch watching The Princess Bride, even though they’ve all seen it about a hundred times. “Did you forget something?”
“No, I just, um… I mean, yeah. I forgot to walk Junior,” I said.
“No, you didn’t,” Georgia said. “You walked him right after dinner.”
“Well, as long as I’m here…” I said. “Here, boy!”
I couldn’t even think about answering any questions right now. So I clipped on Junior’s leash. A few seconds later, I was on my way back out the door.
“Rafe?” Mom said.
When I looked at her, I could tell she knew something was up. Mom’s psychic, in that typical Mom kind of way. But she didn’t make a big deal out of it.
“Just around the block, okay?” she said.
I told her that was no problem and headed out.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped watching where I was going and Junior took over. When I looked up again, we were almost all the way to his favorite place on earth—the dog park. You can always tell you’re getting close because he starts pulling on the leash like he’s going to die if we get there a second later than we have to.
I figured it couldn’t hurt to make a quick stop. It wasn’t that late, and it looked like there were still a lot of people out with their dogs.
Then my mind just started cranking, and not with happy smiley thoughts.
Mostly, I wished I’d never gotten invited to Quinn’s party. It was like my whole life had turned into a game of Chutes and Ladders. Just when things were heading up, up, up, I had to go and land on a big fat slide, all the way back to the bottom.
Once we were inside the fence, Junior got right to it, saying hi to all his friends and sniffing a few new butts around the park. But then, pretty quick, he started walking in little circles—right before he went into that old familiar squat.
And that’s when I remembered something. You always, always want to bring a plastic bag to the dog park with you.
“Isn’t that your dog?” some lady said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t have an extra bag, do you?”
She just made a fac
e like I was totally useless. “Are you kidding me?” she said.
“I forgot.”
“Everyone’s responsible for their messes, kid. That’s how it works,” she said. “If you can’t look after your own dog—”
“I know, I know,” I said, and started walking over to where Junior had done his business. I didn’t want to get yelled at anymore. Maybe I could use one of my socks, I thought. But then—
“Hey, do you need a bag?” someone behind me asked.
When I turned around, Marley Grote was standing there looking at me. It was like déjà vu from the day of the football game. Except this time, instead of scoring a touchdown, I was picking up poop. Besides that, it was exactly the same.
“Here,” she said. She had a little plastic dog bone on her leash, with a whole roll of bags inside.
“You come prepared,” I said.
“Like I have a choice, with my dad,” she said, and pointed at some guy over on a park bench, feeding a baby. “Why aren’t you at Quinn’s party?” she asked.
“Well, I was,” I said. “But… Junior needed a walk.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Why aren’t you at Quinn’s party?” I said.
Marley looked at me kind of funny. “I wasn’t invited,” she told me.
That’s when I figured out I shouldn’t have asked in the first place. Oops… again.
“You didn’t miss much,” I said. Except for the single most humiliating moment of my life. “Hey, sorry if I was rude or whatever at the game the other day.”
“You weren’t rude,” she said.
“Jeanne thought I was,” I told her. “But I didn’t mean to be.”
Marley smiled, and kind of blushed. I think that was her way of saying, Yeah, okay, you were a jerk, but I’m not going to make a big deal about it. Which was pretty nice, I thought. I didn’t think I could sink any lower anyway.
“Which dog is yours?” I asked her.
She pointed over to a tree where three little dogs were all sniffing the same spot.
“The white one with the pink collar,” she said.
“What’s her name?” I said.
“Justine Bieber,” she said.
“Seriously?” I said.
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason,” I said, because I’d already been rude once, or maybe even twice. I didn’t want to push my luck.
Besides, it looked like Junior was starting to make eyes at Justine. So who was I to get in the way?
Maybe at least one of us could have a good night after all.
FALCONS AND SPECIALS
Monday morning, I totally expected everyone to give me a hard time about what happened at the party. I even tried faking sick so I wouldn’t have to go to school, but Mom knew a hot washcloth to the face when she saw one.
The one person I told anything to—and I’d already told him everything—was Flip. I said I wasn’t really into the game, which was true. He was totally cool about it. Which I knew he would be. Which is why Flip is awesome.
Once I got to school, I spent the whole morning waiting for someone to tell me how lame I was or make kissy noises or whatever else. But nobody said a single word.
At first that seemed like a good thing. But then I started to wonder. Did anyone even notice I’d left the party? Anyone besides Flip, I mean? Probably not.
Not that I wanted them to.
Right?
Then I passed Page’s cousin Carissa in the hall and she turned away like she didn’t see me. Maybe she thought I didn’t kiss Page because I didn’t like her. Which wasn’t true. How could I not like someone I didn’t even know?
I couldn’t help being kind of jumpy all the way through Learning Skills. Miller was sitting out there at his usual computer the whole time, surfing away. I figured if anyone was going to get on my case about the party, it would be him.I know we still had our little deal going on, but this was Miller the Killer we were talking about. And I still didn’t trust him.
So when the period was over and Miller just let me walk by without saying anything, I’ll admit it—I was pretty glad. Maybe that whole party disaster was just going to fade off into the sunset and I’d never have to hear about it again.
In fact, I was about halfway through a big sigh of relief, when I heard a familiar sound.
SKREECH!
It was someone pushing their chair back from one of the computers. And then I heard Miller’s voice.
“What’s up, dweebs?” he said.
I hung back in the library door, just out of sight, and peeked around the corner. Miller was sitting there, blocking Jonny and Maya’s way out. Tug was there too, watching and grinning like a second-baboon-in-command.
“Excuse us!” Maya said, all friendly like she usually was.
“What’s that class in there?” Miller said.
And I thought—seriously? Couldn’t he at least get some new material?
“It’s Learning Skills,” Jonny said. “It’s for kids who need extra help.”
For some reason that cracked Miller and Tug up. The thing about Jonny is, he’s great at reading books, but not so much with people. He doesn’t always know when someone’s making a joke.Including one about him.
“What do they call you in there?” Miller said. “Factoid?”
“That’s right,” Jonny said.
“Okay, so tell us something we don’t know,” Tug said. “And then we’ll let you guys go.”
“Why are you being like this?” Maya said.
“Like what?” Miller asked her, all innocent. “We just want Factoid here to show us what he knows.”
“Well, for instance, the world’s biggest crocodile and the world’s smallest man are from the same island in the Philippines,” Jonny said.
“See that?” Tug said. “That wasn’t so hard. Tell us something else.”
Then Maya spoke up. “Mrs. Seagrave! These boys are bothering us!”
“QUIET!” Mrs. Seagrave yelled, because she’s so sweet and cuddly that way. But it was enough to break things up, anyway.
“Come on, Jonny,” Maya said, and they kind of squeezed by Miller and Tug. Except just when Jonny walked past, Tug knocked his books out of his hands and they all fell on the floor.
“Careful there, Factoid,” Tug said. “You keep dropping stuff, you’re going to lose something.”
Now Miller was the one cracking up. And I was the one standing there watching, and knowing I should do something, but not doing anything.
It felt kind of complicated. I was on Miller and Tug’s team, technically. We were all Falcons and all that. But I was also sort of on Maya and Jonny’s team—the Specials. I just wished that meant something besides what it actually meant.
I wished it a lot.
And even though I knew it was wrong to turn around and walk away, that’s what I did. After what happened at the party, I couldn’t risk being the school bull’s-eye again. I thought it would make me feel better to just keep my head down and not worry about it too much.
But guess what?
It didn’t.
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE
I guess I could have talked to Flip about all this. Or Mom. Or even Mr. Fanucci. But I didn’t. To tell the truth, I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I’d walked away like that.
At least, I didn’t want to admit it to anyone real. So that night, I talked it over with Leo instead.
“I should have said something,” I told him. “If it weren’t for football, Miller would be torturing me, not them. And now I feel like a jerk all over again. It’s like there’s no right answer anymore.”
As usual, Leo was pretty good about making me feel better. Not only that, but he always has an awesome idea or two up his imaginary sleeve.
“You know, it’s not too late,” he said.
“Too late for what?” I said.
“To say something,” he told me.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“Just think about it.”
So I did. And that’s when the million little lightbulbs started going on. It was also when I started figuring out what I wanted to do for Ms. Donatello’s assignment.
The more Leo and I talked about it, the better it got. Ms. D wanted me to make a statement? Do my own original artwork? Set my sights high?
Done, done, and done.
But I was still going to keep it a secret, and I was still going to put it up where everyone could see it. Not only that, but this time it was going to go somewhere that Mrs. Stricker wouldn’t be able to take it down, no matter how hard she tried.
It was time to take Operation: S.A.M. to a whole new level.
SECRET ARTIST MAN 2.0
By the next morning, I was all fired up and ready to start.
First, I asked Grandma if I could borrow her phone for the day. Mom always needs hers, but Grandma’s mostly just sits on her dresser. When she asked me what it was for, I told her it was an art project, which was 100 percent true. And that was good enough for Dotty.
Before I left for school, I went into my room and practiced my moves a little bit. I put Junior on the bed and took some pictures of him with Grandma’s phone. But I held the phone down by my side so it didn’t look like I was taking pictures. At least half of them came out off-center, or blurry, or both. But that was actually okay with me. I even kind of liked them better that way, so you weren’t totally sure what you were looking at. It felt more like art.
Then I tucked Grandma’s phone in my backpack, kissed Mom good-bye, and headed out for my big day.
It turned out it wasn’t so hard to get pictures of the stuff I wanted. All I had to do was keep my eyes open, especially when there weren’t any teachers around. Like in the hall, in the bathroom, in the locker room, on the bus, outside the school, and on the stairs.
I got my first few shots on the bus, when Jeremy Savin was neck-clamping a kid and pushing him out of the backseat.