“Hang on. There’s a list?”
“We’ll call it Operation: Get a Life. What do you think?”
That’s another thing about Leo. He’s always about a step and a half ahead of me.
“I think you’re not the one who has to actually do all this stuff,” I said. “Did you happen to notice all that homework? I can’t start some whole new project now.”
“Or,” Leo said, “maybe you can’t afford not to. Remember what Mrs. Ling said? ‘Not every student is invited back.’ I mean, unless you’re trying to set some kind of record for getting kicked out of middle schools…”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, I just turned over and put a pillow on top of my head.
It wasn’t like I thought Leo was wrong, exactly. It was more like, after the day I’d had, my brain felt like a stuffed mushroom, and there wasn’t room for anything else.
“I’m going to sleep now,” I said.
“I seriously doubt it,” Leo said.
And, of course, he was right about that too.
CRIT-ICAL CONDITION
The next day, I found out what crit means.
It’s short for critique, and it’s an art school thing, where you have to put your assignment up in front of the whole class so everyone can talk about it. Kind of like getting up in front of a firing squad.
Actually, it’s exactly like that.
I figured if I sat really still in the back and tried to blend in, Mr. Beekman might not call on me. But right near the end of fifth period, my luck ran out.
“Rafe… Khatchadorian,” he said, looking at his attendance book. “Our new transfer student. Let’s see what you have for us, shall we?”
He came over and took my self-portrait and stuck it on one of the bulletin boards at the front of the room.
“All right, everyone, let’s have some comments. What does this portrait tell you about the artist?” Beekman said.
Right away, Zeke McDonald raised his hand. You haven’t met him yet, so I’ll just tell you right now—I hate Zeke McDonald. Him and all his friends. You know the type—the kids who walk around school like they’ve got invisible crowns on their heads? That’s them. Zeke was basically good at everything, and he knew it, and he spent most of his time making sure everyone else knew it too.
Of course, I’d just gotten to Cathedral, so I didn’t know enough to hate anyone yet. But that part was just about to start.
“Mr. Beekman,” Zeke said, “I know Rafe wasn’t here last year, so should we take that into account with our crit? I mean, like the way his drawing is so… you know… basic?”
“You can critique the work on its own merits,” Beekman said.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but obviously it had something to do with tearing me into little pieces, because right away Kenny Patel’s hand popped up like a piece of toast. (He sits by Zeke in the front, which is all you need to know about him.)
“To be honest, I don’t think Rafe’s portrait tells us very much, except what he looks like,” Kenny said. Then he turned around and looked back at me like there was a pile of doggy droppings on my chair. “Well, maybe not even that,” he said, and a bunch of people laughed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will keep our critiques respectful,” Beekman said, about five seconds too late. “If you have nothing constructive to add, then keep your comments to yourself. Now, how about some positive feedback? What do you see that you like about Rafe’s drawing?”
And nobody… said… a word.
I think I heard a pin drop. Maybe some crickets. Also, the sound of my face turning the color of a stop sign. I could have farted out loud, and it would have been less embarrassing than the silence.
Finally, Beekman jumped in again.
“I think this is a good start, Mr. Khatchadorian,” he said. “You’ve got a sure hand—I can see that. But I think you’re holding back here. I’d like to see more of Rafe next time, do you understand?”
“Sure,” I said, but honestly, I would have told him I was wearing ladies’ underwear if it meant getting that crit over with faster.
And then, just when Beekman finally turned around to take my drawing off the board, good old Zeke McDonald held up his sketchbook for everyone else to see. He had drawn a portrait of me, and I sure didn’t like it.
I’ve heard that every once in a while, there are these things called sinkholes that open up in the earth out of nowhere and swallow people whole. I don’t know how often it happens, but right about then I was thinking, Not nearly often enough.
Maybe sometime before the next crit.
BATHROOM BLUES
So if I told you I went straight to my locker, got my lunch, took it to the boys’ bathroom, flushed my self-portrait down the toilet, and then ate my PB and J in one of the stalls, would you think I was a total loser?
Yeah, I thought so.
For me, bathrooms are kind of like bomb shelters. You can’t live there forever, but they sure do come in handy sometimes.
“So what happens now?” Leo said.
“You’re looking at it,” I told him. Maybe it wasn’t too late to transfer over to Meat Grinder Public Middle School.
“That’s it? You’re just going to give up?” he said. “You know what Jeanne Galletta would say, don’t you?”
I knew, I knew. She’d say, “Don’t give up—buck up.” It’s like her favorite expression. But that’s easy for her to say. Jeanne’s version of a bad day is an A-minus, or if the cafeteria runs out of chocolate milk.
Still, Jeanne is pretty smart.
For that matter, so is Leo. And I knew exactly what he was thinking right then. Operation: Get a Life was looking better and better, and more necessary, all the time.
“Okay, I’ll think about it,” I told him.
“Yes!”
“But that’s all,” I said. “I’m not making any—”
Just then the bathroom door opened, and someone came in.
I shut up quick and took my feet off the floor right away. I didn’t want anyone to think I was sitting in here, pouting my way through lunch. Actually, I didn’t want anyone to think I was sitting in here doing something else either.
One of the sinks came on next. I couldn’t see who was there, but he left the water running for a really long time. In fact, I was just starting to think I was going to be stuck here all the time until sixth period, when it finally went off again.
I breathed about half a sigh of relief—until whoever it was walked right over and went into the stall beside mine.
A second later, I heard a voice. Not next to me. Above me.
“Hey.”
I looked up, and it was the kid from drawing class. The one with the fake tattoo. He was standing there, I guess on the back of the other toilet, looking over the wall.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Get out of here!”
“They’ve got a name for that, you know,” he said.
“Huh? A name for what?”
“At the crit. You just got dinked,” the kid told me. “Don’t take it personally. It’s like a school sport around here. And Zeke McBonehead’s the captain of the team.”
Dinked… crit… it was like Planet Cathedral really did have its own secret language.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, um… thanks.” I didn’t know what to say. He was just standing there, looking at me. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” the kid said. He held up something that looked like a water balloon, except it wasn’t, exactly. It was a rubber glove from one of the art rooms, filled up and tied off at the end. I thought for sure I was about to get it in the face.
But I didn’t. Instead, the kid just smiled this evil kind of smile down at me.
Then he said, “You interested in a little revenge?”
REVENGE IS SWEET (AND WET)
There were all kinds of reasons not to do this. I couldn’t afford to get in trouble. Mom would kill me if she found out. I didn’t even know if I could trust this kid.
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But I did like that word—revenge.
The kid didn’t wait around for an answer either. He went straight through the bathroom door and kept going while I stood there trying to figure out what to do.
Then I decided it wasn’t against the rules to follow someone out of a bathroom. So I kept going.
The kid was waiting for me across the hall, near a door to some stairs.
“Where are you going?” I asked. That whole school is like a big maze. I was still figuring it out.
“Up,” he said.
When we got to the top, there were two more doors. One had a fire alarm on it, but the other opened right up. Inside was a big janitor’s closet, with a window looking out onto the roof of the school. There was a metal grate over the window, with a lock, but the lock was already broken. And I was pretty sure I knew who had broken it.
The kid opened the grate, slid the window up, and climbed out onto the roof.
“Uh… I don’t think we’re supposed to go out there,” I said.
“Uh… I don’t think I see a sign,” he said. “You coming?”
I’ll tell you this much right now: If you could have turned around and gone back down those stairs, you’re a better person than I am.
We stayed low all the way to the far side of the roof, where we ducked behind the wall at the edge. It was like we were part of a high-stakes war… or at least an intense game of paintball.
The kid held up two fingers and pointed over the wall for me to take a look. Sure enough, Zeke and Kenny were right there, sitting at the top of the bleachers like they were on their own personal throne.
My heart was beating out a major drum solo by now, but I gave the kid a thumbs-up anyway.
He opened his backpack and handed me two of those rubber-glove balloons. Then he took out two more for himself. I saw that he’d drawn bloodshot eyes right onto them, with red and black permanent markers. He’d even signed his own work with what I guessed were his initials—MTF.
What I didn’t know yet was that this kid had the world’s most perfect nickname. Everyone at Cathedral called him Matty the Freak. Nice to meet you, Mr. Freak.
Next, he took out a little piece of wire and poked a tiny hole in each glove. “So they’ll break and not just bounce,” he said.
That was basically the point of no return, like lighting a fuse. The next thing I knew, Matty the Freak was tossing his two water bombs over the edge.
And the next thing I knew, so was I.
I didn’t get to see what happened, but I heard it anyway—four big splashes and a whole lot of yelling. We were already tearing back across the roof, through that janitor’s closet window, and onto the stairs so we could laugh our butts off in private.
“That was amazing,” I said.
“Hey,” the kid told me, “it’s the stuff of art, right?”
He didn’t even know how right he was.
Operation: Get a Life had just officially begun.
I stayed up late again that night, but not for homework.
Now that Operation: Get a Life was actually going to happen, Leo and I needed to figure out what the whole thing should look like.
The basic idea was super simple. We decided that every time I did something I’d never done before, it was going to count as part of the mission. That was it. No points this time, no bonuses, no lives to lose. If I got back into Cathedral at the end of the year—mission accomplished. And if not—welcome to Loserville.
The next thing I did was look at a calendar. There were 195 days to go until the Spring Art Show at school, on March 23. After that I’d have to reapply, and I was either in or out. So I decided I was going to have to do 195 things I’d never done before—at least one new thing every single day.
One hundred and ninety-five chances to Get a Life.
“And I’m bringing back the No-Hurt Rule too,” I told Leo. “Same as last year. No one gets hurt from any of this stuff I’m going to do. If that happens, it’s game over.”
“Yeah, okay, but you still get credit for today,” Leo said. “That rule wasn’t in place when you dropped those balloons on Zeke’s and Kenny’s heads.”
I decided I could live with that. But I did have a few other conditions.
“I’m including myself in the No-Hurt Rule this time,” I said. “If I get a detention, it’s one week of time out. If I get suspended—game over. And most of all, if Mom finds out about any of this—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Game over,” Leo said. “I think I’m bored already.”
But I wasn’t budging on that one. The last thing Mom needed right now was to start worrying about me all over again. And the last thing I needed was for her to think I was up to my old tricks.
Even if I wasn’t. Technically, this mission was like the opposite of the last one. The whole idea back then was to break as many school rules as possible. This time around, it was about keeping me in school, but something told me Mom might not see it like that. After the way things went in sixth grade, I was pretty sure she’d put me up for adoption if she even heard the words mission and Rafe anywhere near each other.
“So we’ll just have to make sure she never finds out,” Leo said. “And that means Georgia too, because her mouth is about as big as the city.”
Again, I could live with that. No Hurt, no Mom, no Georgia—no problem.
And in the meantime, game on!
GREAT, BAD, WORSE
The second day of Operation: Get a Life started out great. Right before it turned bad. And then got even worse.
But first, the good part: Mom let me take the bus to school by myself for the first time. And I’m not talking about the big piece of yellow cheese I rode in sixth grade. I’m talking about an actual city bus.
It felt really weird (in a good way) to ride through the city alone like that.
I kept looking around at all the zillions of other people and thinking about how I was one of them now.
Rafe Khatchadorian, city kid. Who’d have thunk it?
So by the time I got to school, I’d already done my at-least-one-new-thing for the day, and I was just getting started. As far as I could tell, I was going to knock this whole mission right out of the park.
And then I got to my locker. (Here comes the bad part.)
It all looked normal enough from the outside, but once I turned the combination and opened the door, it looked like some kind of alien creature had crawled in there during the night, swallowed a hand grenade, and exploded all over everything.
Okay, it was just green paint, but still—my social studies book was green, my notebooks were green, my gym stuff was green; and all of it was dripping, wet, sticky, and gross. Someone had figured out a way to pump about a gallon in through the vents on the door.
And by someone, I mean Zeke McDonald and Kenny Patel, the left and right butt cheeks of Cathedral School of the Arts. When I looked around, they were right there, hanging out by the stairs. Zeke had his phone pointed at me, and both of them cracked up as soon as I saw them. Then they just turned and walked away.
And I thought, Revenge is a two-way street, isn’t it? Maybe those water balloons were a bad idea after all.
It wasn’t over either. I was still standing there trying to figure out how I was going to unpaint the inside of my locker, when the PA system came on in the hall, and the bad part of my morning got shoved aside for the even worse part.
THE CRAWLEY
Five minutes later, I stumble into The Crawley’s lair, far beneath the surface of Planet Cathedral.
It’s dark down here. Too dark to really see where I’m going. I hear dripping water somewhere, and there’s a bad smell in the air, like a sandwich made out of old cheese… and death.
My feet feel their way across the rocks as I go. “Hello?” I say. “Anybody here?”
“Good morning,” a voice answers from the shadows. “Come in, please.”
I take another step—but it’s one too many. The ground slips away beneath me, and the
next thing I know, I’m falling through empty air.
The place where I land is soft but sticky. Long strands like superglue-covered ropes grab on to my arms and legs and don’t let go. I struggle, but that only makes things worse. Before I’ve even started to put up a fight, I’m completely immobilized in The Crawley’s web.
He’s not even trying to appear human down here. Why should he? I’m on his turf now—and at his mercy. One quick stab with those razor-sharp pincers, and he could drain me like a juice box.
“And how are you this morning, Rafe?” he asks, cool as an eight-legged cucumber.
“I’m okay,” I tell him. It’s important that I stay calm too. They say The Crawley can smell fear a mile away.
They also say he likes to play with his food before he eats it.
“I want to ask you about a little incident we had yesterday,” he says. “Something involving a couple of water balloons?”
Not water balloons, I think. Rubber gloves. Of course, I’m not stupid. The less I say here, the better.
“Do you know anything about that?” he asks me.
“I heard about it,” I say.
“That’s all?” he says. “So you don’t know who was responsible?”
“No, sir.”
I may be totally unarmed, but there is one weapon I can use. It’s called denial. As long as The Crawley doesn’t have any proof, I still have a small chance of getting out of here alive.
He starts to circle the lair. I can’t even turn my mummified head, so I lose sight of him for a minute.
When he comes around again, there’s something in his hand.
“Do you know what this is, Rafe?” he says. At first, it looks like a plain folder. Then I see my name, and the words HILLS VILLAGE MIDDLE SCHOOL across the front. “It seems you had quite a year last year. Got into a bit of trouble on your home planet, did you?”