Then just before first period, I saw some guys trying to shove Alvin Wu into his locker. Caught that too!
In third period, when we were supposed to be reading silently, Felicia Tollery and Ava Barlett were making fun of Dee-Dee’s iPad and pointing at her behind her back.
And the whole time, SAM was right there to catch all of it.
Then at lunch, I was about to snap a picture of some sixth graders getting kicked off their table by some eighth graders, when I heard a familiar voice behind me.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing, Mr. Khatchadorian?”
“I, um… just wanted to make a call,” I said, holding up Grandma’s phone.
“Cell phone use is not allowed during the school day without permission,” she said.
“I know. But it was kind of an emergency.”
“Excuse me, but there is no such thing as ‘kind of an emergency,’” she said—just before Flip fell down and started howling right there on the cafeteria floor.
“OWWWWW! I think I broke my ankle!” he said. “Ow-ow-OWWWWW!”
Flip didn’t even know what I was doing. He just saw me getting in hot water and jumped to it. I don’t think he even realized he was clutching his belly right after he’d started yelling about his ankle, but it got Mrs. Stricker’s attention, anyway. Just long enough for me to disappear. (Thanks, Flip!)
Now all I had to do was stay off Mrs. Stricker’s radar until the end of the day, and then I’d be all set.
With Phase One, anyway.
PHASE TWO
Phase Two was all about making art. When I got home, I had a hundred and three pictures on Grandma’s phone. Most of them were garbage shots, but eleven weren’t bad, and eight of those were good enough to use.
Mom says that’s how art works: “Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks.” I guess that means eight of them were sticking. So I loaded those onto the computer and used the painting tool to do my thing.
First, I colored in the people so they were just silhouettes. I used red for the bullies and green for the kids they were messing with. That way you couldn’t tell who anyone was, but you could still see what was going on.
I put some more “statement” in there too. Ms. Donatello had asked us to think about what our art was going to say to the world, and my idea was short and sweet: Be nice. In fact, I made it even shorter than that.
Once I finished my pictures, I posted them on their own page at Art-Gunk.com. I made a whole separate account for this, so it wouldn’t have anything to do with my Loozer comics or R. K. Whatchamacallit. This was supposed to be a stealthy-anonymous, Secret Artist Man thing.
The complicated part was, I couldn’t be stealthy-anonymous and get credit for the art.But by now, this whole thing was like a car running downhill with no brakes. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. I’d figure out the Donatello stuff later.
I wasn’t done yet either. The pictures on Art-Gunk were my “statement piece,” but I still needed people to know where to find them. I mean, what good is a statement if nobody’s listening? That’s what Phase Three was all about.
And I had a plan for that too.
The next day was game day, and I mean that in two ways. After school, it was going to be the HVMS Falcons against the Belleville Raiders. But it was also game time for me. There was going to be a big pep rally in the gym, right after lunch. That was when I had to be ready.
All I needed in the meantime was a bunch of notebook paper, a big fat marker, a glue stick, a little bit of luck, and a few stealthy moves at school, just before the pep rally.
No problem. SAM 2.0 was on the case.
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
I am SAM, and this is my latest mission. This one’s like a cross between a house of cards and a hand grenade with a missing pin. One wrong move, and—BOOM! The whole thing comes down. I’ve got to be in a dozen different places at just the right time, and in just the right order.
Not only that, but this high-tech fortress disguised as a middle school is crawling with guards in the middle of the day. The trick is to act natural when anyone’s looking, and then move like the wind when they’re not.
So I walk casually up the corridor, like I belong here. Deputy Marshal Stonecase passes me by and I give her a friendly (but not too friendly) nod. She has no idea I’m working undercover. That’s what the street clothes and prosthetics are for.
As soon as I find myself alone, I swing into action.
First I check my scanners, perfectly camouflaged inside an ordinary-looking backpack. Once they give me the all clear, I continue to the gymnasium.
My first stop is the so-called equipment room. I know it’s a flimsy cover for Sergeant Stricker’s missile silo, but I can’t worry about that now.
I work fast. I work carefully. I try not to think about the pair of fully armed heat-seeking missiles just under the floor. And the millisecond my package is delivered, I move on.
This next maneuver is what you call a speed round. I cruise through the building like a ninja-tornado, dropping tiny subpackages of coded instructions in every empty corner I can locate. Once the inmates start finding them—and they will find them—they’ll know what to do.
That’s it. Within twenty minutes, my mission is complete. The rest of this operation is out of my hands. So I go back to undercover mode and continue my day like none of this ever happened.
In fact, none of it did. (You’ve got my back, right?)
SAM out!
THE BIG REVEAL
By the time Mrs. Stricker got on the intercom and started telling everyone to go to the gym for the pep rally, I was sweating like crazy. All that last-minute running around had me worn out. But I was ready for Phase Three.
So here’s how the pep rally was supposed to go.
While everyone else came into the gym and sat on the bleachers, the football team would wait in the locker room.
Then Coach Shumsky would say something to the crowd. Then some kids from the student council would bring out this big rolled-up sign from the equipment room. The cheerleaders would start cheering, the student council kids would unroll the sign in front of everyone, and the sign would say GO, FALCONS, GO! After that, the team would come running out and bust through it while the whole school watched.
Got it? That’s how it was supposed to go. And most of it did happen that way, right up to the part about the sign saying GO, FALCONS, GO!
Because that’s not all it said.
Not anymore.
So there I was in the locker room, lined up with the team and waiting to go. Coach was giving his pep talk to the crowd, and I was starting to wonder if I’d made any mistakes. What if something went wrong?
“You okay?” Flip said. “You’re sweating like a pig. Actually, I don’t even know if pigs sweat, but you sure are.”
“I’m good,” I said. I kind of wished I’d told him about this, but the less Flip knew, the better. For his own sake, anyway.
Besides, it was too late now.
“So without further delay…” Coach Shumsky said. I could hear the sound of that big paper sign starting to unroll (crinkle, crinkle, crinkle, crinkle).
“I present to you—”
(Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle…)
“The HVMS FALCONS!” Coach said, just before the cheerleaders and everyone else started screaming—
“LET’S GO, FALCONS, LET’S GO!”
Then we all went running out of the locker room. I couldn’t see the front of the sign, but I could see everyone on the bleachers, looking back at us. Which is about when the cheering changed from—
to something more like—
Because this is what everyone was seeing:
Meanwhile, all the Falcons at the front of the line went tearing through that sign like it was made out of Belleville Raiders. The rest of us came running behind. By the time we were all standing in front of the school, the whole thing was in a million little shreds on the gym floor.
Mrs. Stricker was looking at
Mrs. Stonecase. Mrs. Stonecase was starting to tap on her phone. The cheerleaders were still cheering, and the pep rally was still going on—mostly. But I could see a bunch of kids looking at each other like they were thinking, What’s on that website?
And I know what you’re probably thinking too. What good was that huge sign if it was only in front of everyone for about ten seconds?
But Phase Three wasn’t over yet.
And I’m just saying, if everyone started finding little slips of paper after the pep rally—like in their lockers, and the bathrooms, and the library, and the music room—and if those little slips of paper just happened to say the same thing as that sign?
Well, that might have had something to do with me too.
AWESOME AND ANONYMOUS
The rest of the school day was cray-cray-crazy. My whole BNICE thing started spreading faster than a fire in a match factory.
Every time I went by the library, people were looking at those pictures of mine on Art-Gunk.com. And I went by the library a lot. I’ve never gotten so many hall passes in my life.
I could hear people talking about it everywhere too. More than any of my other SAM stuff. One girl had even printed out a picture and taped it on the front of her folder. Which was like free advertising.
Which was awesome. I had definitely made a statement with my art, like Ms. Donatello said I should. It wasn’t like anything I’d done for Operation: S.A.M., which was kind of the point. I wondered if she’d seen any of this yet. And I wondered what she thought.
She’d probably like it, I figured. She might even have been proud of me. Maybe I’d get an A+.
You know… if I could ever figure out a way to tell her I’d done it.
GAME TIME
My day wasn’t over yet either. Not by a long shot. You haven’t forgotten about the big game against the Belleville Raiders, have you?
By the time we were jogging onto the field for warm-ups that afternoon, I was feeling pretty good. Everything with BNICE had gone even better and bigger than I’d hoped.
And speaking of big, the crowd at this game was about twice the size as at the last game. And even though all those people weren’t there just to see me, it was fun to pretend they were. For a minute, anway. It felt like everyone was there. Mr. Fanucci was sitting with Mom, Grandma, and Georgia, which was weird. Jeanne was working the snack bar again, and hopefully watching more than the popcorn this time. Marley and her friends were sitting at the top of the bleachers with their heads all stuck together like usual.
I thought Coach might put me in the starting lineup this time, but he didn’t. For the whole first quarter, I just sat there leaving a Rafe-shaped butt mark on the team bench.
But finally, after the first play of the second quarter, the Falcons took possession and Coach yelled at me to get ready with the rest of the offensive squad.
Part of me got excited, because I wanted to score another touchdown. Or two. Or ten. But part of me was also shaking in my cleats, because I didn’t know if I could.
Either way, I wanted to find out.
When we got into the huddle, Tug laid out the play for us. I was so busy trying to focus, I forgot to listen to everything he said. I just heard, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah, and KHATCHADORIAN, you cut up the middle.”
At least I got my part, anyway. So I took my place on the line and got ready to go.
As soon as Tug took the snap, one of the Belleville guys came right for me. I scrambled like a human egg and managed to get past him somehow.
After that, I took a fast run downfield and turned around. Tug saw I was open and got off a nice spiral pass, headed right for me.
I saw the ball…
kept my eye on the ball…
reached up to catch the ball…
and—WHIFF!—watched the ball go right through my hands, just before it landed on the field like football roadkill.
Hello, embarrassing.
“All right, all right!” Coach yelled from the sidelines. “We’ve got this, guys! Just focus and try again!”
It took a few more plays before I got my next chance. This time I was more determined than ever.
I was supposed to go wide, and I did. I got clear of the Belleville defenders, maybe because they weren’t taking me too seriously anymore. Either way, I put up my hands, Tug sent another special delivery my way, and—
WHIFF!
I didn’t even get a piece of it this time.
Which stunk. Miller was starting to look at me like I was a walking waste of space. And I was starting to wonder if my first-ever touchdown had also been my last-ever touchdown.
It wasn’t looking good. At this rate, I was going to be moving back to Miller the Killerville sooner than later. Like maybe right after the game.
Except then something completely unexpected happened. I got a lucky break—and that’s not even the most unexpected part.
Because this time, it came from Miller himself.
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
Here’s what we’re going to do,” Miller said as soon as we were huddled up for the next play. “Tug, you’re going to take the snap. Then you’re going to hand off to Khatchadorian. After that, the rest of us are going to make like a road crew and give him an open lane.”
Michael Alvarez looked as confused as I was. For one thing, Miller wasn’t playing quarterback. But I guess he was playing head mouth in charge.
“But Coach said—”
“I know what I’m doing,” Miller said. “So listen up. Khatchadorian couldn’t catch a cold if someone threw it at him—”
“Um, thanks?” I said.
“But he can run. Can’t you, Khatchadorian?” Miller asked me.
“Sure,” I said, because that was the only right answer.
“So do that,” Miller said. “You get handed the ball, and you run like your life depends on it, because it does. I want to win this thing. Anyone got a problem with that?”
I guess nobody did, because a second later, we were lining up the play.
Quinn snapped Tug the ball. Tug dropped back. I cut around and took the hand-off from him, just like Miller said. Then, while everyone else was blocking like crazy, I started running like crazy.
“GO!” Miller said.
So I went. It was like I was on fire, and not in a good way. Or maybe it was good, since it got me running downfield as fast as I’ve ever run. I just kept thinking about Miller coming after me with that Rafe-eating look in his eye, and that pretty much did the trick. The next thing I knew, I was running for my life right into the end zone.
Touchdown! Falcons score!
Khatchadorian lives to see another day!
People were yelling, and the team was all over me again, and I could hear my mom screaming louder than anybody else in the stands.
“WAY TO GO, SWEETIE!”
I could have done without that “sweetie,” but I’m not going to get picky. It was all awesomely, awesomely awesome.
And get this. Are you ready? Coach was all over it. He didn’t yell at Miller for calling the play, or anything. In fact, at halftime he said we were going to try it again and see what happened.
Long story short, Miller’s idea worked two more times. That’s how long it took Belleville to figure it out and start covering me like poison ivy.
But by then it was too late for them. Final score: Falcons 25, Raiders 18. And I’d run for three—count ’em, three!—touchdowns. I didn’t know if that was any kind of school record at HVMS, but it was definitely a world record on Planet Rafe.
I felt like I was in some kind of movie, starring someone else. Anyone but me.
Except… it WAS me.
And in the weirdest possible way, it was all thanks to Miller.
LIKE TALKING TO A BRICK WALL
After I got hugged by Mom, crushed by Dotty, and congratulated by a bunch of people (even though I noticed Marley didn’t come around this time), there was one other thing I wanted to do while I still had the chance.
> See, if you hadn’t noticed, Miller gets in a good mood about once a century. I figured that if I ever wanted to ask him a favor, now was the time. So I told Mom I’d meet her in the parking lot, and then I went to look for him.
I know—kind of like looking for a speeding bus to walk in front of. But this was important.
When I found him, he was standing behind the snack bar, which was good. It gave me a tiny bit of privacy to ask him what I wanted to ask.
“Hey, Miller?” I said.
“What?” he said.
When he looked me in the eye, I lost a little of my nerve. But I couldn’t stop now.
“You know our little deal, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. You score, you get to live,” Miller said.
“Right,” I said, “Well, I was thinking—”
“I’m bored already. Hurry up,” he said.
“Let’s say I score again next game,” I said. “How about if you start leaving Maya, Jonny, and Dee-Dee alone too? Not just me.”
Miller laughed right in my face, like he actually thought that was funny.
“What are you trying to do, renegotiate your contract? This isn’t the NFL, Khatchadorkian,” he said.
“I know,” I said, “but—”
“I have a deal with you. Not every loser in this school,” Miller said. “And the only reason I’m being so nice is ’cause I want to win games.”
“Will you just think about it?” I said. “Please?”
“Yeah, I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Thanks,” I told him.
“I’m done thinking,” he said. “Now get out of here. I’ve gotta whizz.”
“On the snack bar?” I said.
“GO!” Miller said, in that voice that usually comes right before something more painful.
But then the back door of the snack bar opened, and Jeanne was standing there, holding a bag of garbage.