Middle School: Get Me Out of Here!

  My mind scrambles for something to say.

  “That was all just a misunderstanding,” I tell him. “I’ve changed since then. I turned over a new leaf. That’s not me anymore….”

  Now I’m saying too much. I can tell he’s not buying it. I try to look him in the eye, but it’s hard to know which of those six eyes to look into.

  “Rafe, I’m going to ask you one more time,” he says. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about all this?”

  “I’m sure!” I tell him. “I swear!”

  The lair goes quiet as he stares me down for a good long time. All I can hear now are those pincers clicking away, ready to start slicing and dicing at any moment.

  But then The Crawley reaches up and cuts right through the threads of his own web. A second later, I fall out onto the floor in a heap.

  “You can go,” he says.

  Already I’m back on my feet, running for daylight as fast as I can.

  “But I’ve got my eye on you, Rafe!” he screeches after me. “I’d hate to see what happens if you land in here again!”

  Yeah, I think. Him and me both.

  COVERT OPS

  By the time I left Mr. Crawley’s office, everything had changed. I wasn’t just the new transfer student at Cathedral anymore. Now I was the new troublemaker, as far as he was concerned.

  I don’t understand how this keeps happening to me. I’ve never been very good at being good, if you know what I mean, but sometimes it’s like all the trouble in the world is made of metal, and I’m just one big walking magnet. I could change schools every two weeks, and it wouldn’t matter. That permanent record of mine might as well be tattooed across my forehead.

  And then, just when I thought my morning couldn’t get any weirder, it did.

  I was headed straight up the hall to first period when someone grabbed me from behind. The next thing I knew, I was pulled into some kind of broom closet, the door slammed shut, and everything went pitch-black.

  I didn’t wait around for instructions. I just started swinging. I figured if this was Zeke and Kenny, I might as well do as much damage as I could before they got me.

  But then I heard “Ow! OW! Cut it out! It’s me—Matty!”

  “Huh?” I stopped with my fist in the air. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “I wanted to know why you got called to the office,” he said, like it was completely normal to have a conversation in a pitch-dark closet. (And for all I know, it was normal—for Matty.)

  “Why do you think?” I said. “Crawley basically knows I dropped those balloons off the roof.”

  “Rubber gloves,” Matty said.

  “Whatever.”

  “And what’d you tell him?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “He couldn’t prove it, so I just kept my mouth shut.”

  I don’t know if this will make sense, but I swear I heard Matty smile right there in the dark.

  “Awesome,” he said.

  “Yeah, for you. Meanwhile, Zeke and Kenny trashed my locker.”

  Now I heard him laughing. “Don’t worry about them. There’s still plenty of time for that little war.”

  “I don’t want a little war,” I said. “I don’t want any kind of war. I just want to get to first period. Crawley’s going to be watching me like I’m free HBO from now on.”

  “Yeah, all right.” Matty cracked the door open and checked the hall for me. “But I owe you one. If you ever change your mind, I’ve got your back.”

  It wasn’t until I was walking away that I even realized something good might have come out of this after all.

  Unless I was mistaken, I’d just made a real, live human friend for the first time since I started middle school. (And no, Jeanne Galletta doesn’t count. She was my math tutor, for one thing, and she might have been friendly, but we were never friends. At least, not for her.)

  Matty said it himself—I’ve got your back.

  That has to be worth something, doesn’t it?

  TIPS FOR SURVIVAL

  Flash forward!

  If I tried to write down everything that happened during that first quarter at Cathedral, you’d need a wheelbarrow to carry this book around. So I’m going to skip over some stuff.

  The short version is this: I spent a lot of time just getting used to my new school, new home, new city—and I learned a ton, usually the hard way. Here are some handy FYIs, just in case you ever find yourself in the same situation.

  NUMBER ONE

  When you’re the only boy in a small house with one grandmother, one mother, one sister, and one bathroom, all I can say is—learn how to be patient. Oh, and plan ahead.

  NUMBER TWO

  Art isn’t easy! It turns out there are just as many rules for making art in art school as there are for anything else. If you don’t believe me, just try holding your paintbrush the wrong way in Mrs. Grundewald’s class sometime, and see what happens.

  NUMBER THREE

  Art school is smart school. As far as I can tell, most of the kids at Cathedral were born with a math book in one hand and an extra brain in the other. So if you’re a dummy like me, don’t expect to blend in! (And just in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes, all those famous dead artists had to learn pre-algebra too. At least, that’s what Mr. Frum told me when I asked.)

  NUMBER FOUR

  You want to live in the big city? Man up! People here will walk right over you if you let them…

  … so don’t let them.

  NUMBER FIVE

  What are you listening to me for? If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ll know that your best bet is to very carefully watch everything I do—and then do exactly the opposite. Because my paths tend to lead to trouble.

  (Just don’t say I never warned you.)

  Okay, got it? Good.

  Oh, and you’re welcome.

  MY NEW LIFE, STEP 1

  It turns out when you’ve got a new home, new city, and new school, it’s not exactly hard to find new experiences. I was scooping them up without even trying—which was all great for my mission. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights, lowlights, and everything-in-between-lights of Operation: Get a Life.

  LEO TURNS UP THE HEAT

  I’m not saying that five Cs and a B-minus make me some kind of genius, but those were the best grades I’d ever gotten. With Mom home all the time, she was around to help me with my homework and to make sure I did all my assignments, whether I wanted to or not.

  And Operation: Get a Life was going even better. By the time report cards came out, I had 58 things on my list, with 137 to go. I figured I must be doing something right.

  But Leo figured otherwise.

  “You’ve got to step this mission up,” he told me. “It’s time to start thinking bigger.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “I’ve got this whole huge list already.”

  “It’s called Operation: Get a Life, not Operation: Get a List. Most of that stuff is just about classes you have to go to anyway, and walking around the city on a leash with Mom. You’re not even trying to make this interesting.”

  “Oh, man. Here we go,” I said.

  This is what Leo does. He calls it making things interesting, but I call it a pain the butt.

  “New rule,” he said. “From now on, you have to do at least one really big thing for every ten little things. And no more credit for the little stuff until you do.”

  “Hang on—what counts as a big thing?” I said.

  Of course he had an answer. He always does. “For starters, it has to be something you’ll remember doing for the rest of your life,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s all?”

  “No, actually. It also can’t be anything you do at school, and there can’t be some adult looking over your shoulder while you’re doing it.”

  On top of all that, I still had the No-Hurt Rule to worry about, and none of this stuff could cost money either, because I didn’t have any.

&nb
sp; Still, Leo had a point. If this mission was going to be worth doing, I needed to do it right. It was time to step up my game. I just didn’t have any clue what that was going to look like yet.

  And then a few days later, Mrs. Ling gave us the junk-sculpture assignment.

  ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT IT

  Take a look at this,” Mrs. Ling said, and showed us a picture of an old garbage can.

  “And now this,” she said.

  “And this,” she said. “And this.

  “Quite often, the artist’s job is to show the world something familiar, but in a whole new way,” she said. “That’s your assignment this week. I want you all to take at least one object that might look like junk to anyone else, and give it a new life, as art.”

  I guess I’d been going to Cathedral long enough now, because I actually understood what Mrs. Ling was talking about. I liked the idea of giving something a whole new life. Kind of what I was trying to do with me these days.

  As usual, I was sitting in the back with Matty. He was already sketching ideas like crazy, but then he scribbled something on the corner of his page, tore it off, and passed it over to me.

  After class, he told me there were a bunch of places he knew where people threw away good junk all the time.

  “And we can just take it?” I said. “Are you sure?”

  “Relax. We’re looking for garbage, not robbing a bank,” he said. “You worry too much, you know that?”

  I thought that was kind of funny, since most people think I don’t worry enough.

  Still, he let me use his phone to call Mom. I told her I was going to be working on an art assignment after school, and she was all over it. She just asked if I wanted her to come pick me up later.

  “I’ll take the bus,” I said.

  Technically, there weren’t any lies in there. I just left out the part about where I was going to be, partly because I didn’t think Mom would like it, and partly because I didn’t know.

  I wasn’t even sure what Dumpster diving was, exactly, but it sounded like fun. It also sounded like just the kind of thing Leo thought I needed more of for my list.

  And it was.

  WELCOME TO DUMPSTER DIVING

  THE BIG PICTURE

  When I got home that night, the first thing I thought was—

  HOLY CROW, WE’VE BEEN ROBBED!

  The closet in the front hall was hanging open, there was stuff all over the floor, and Grandma’s place looked like a wreck.

  Well… even more of a wreck than usual.

  “Rafe? Is that you?” Mom yelled. “We’re back here!”

  I followed the trail of stuff like Hansel and Gretel on those bread crumbs and found everyone in the kitchen. Mom was shoving piles of newspaper into a garbage bag, Georgia was clomping around in a big pair of high-heeled shoes, and Grandma was at the table, looking through a bunch of old pictures in a shoe box.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Spring cleaning!” Grandma said, even though it was only November. “It’s time we emptied some of these closets and made a little room for you three around here.”

  I guess that was supposed to be good news. I’d been using my suitcase as a dresser, and most of our stuff was still in that storage locker in Hills Village.

  But actually, it wasn’t good news at all. Ever since we moved to the city, Mom had been talking about finding a job first, and then a bigger place for all four of us to live. But so far—no job. And now it seemed that we weren’t going anywhere soon. I could tell Mom was thinking the same thing, just by looking at her.

  “Hey, kiddos, have I ever shown you my old photos?” Grandma said. “Come over here and take a walk down memory lane. See what a cute baby your mom was?”

  Georgia went over to see, but I was still watching Mom. The way she kept stuffing more paper into that bag, I thought it was going to break right open.

  “Here’s another good one,” Grandma said. “Jules, take a look. It’s you and Ralph in front of Hairy’s Place.”

  That got my attention. I thought Grandma meant me when she said “Ralph”—but then I saw the picture.

  “Who is that?” Georgia said.

  “It’s Dad,” I told her. I guess she wouldn’t even remember what he looked like. “Except I thought his name was Luca.”

  “It is,” Mom said. She was still cleaning and never looked at the picture even once. “Ralph’s his middle name.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  But it did explain a few things—like why Grandma kept calling me that. So maybe she was only sort of crazy and not completely mashed potatoes.

  In the picture, my father had his arm around Mom, and it looked like they were still in high school. I’d never seen this one before. Actually, I’d never seen many pictures of my father, period. I think Mom threw them all away when he left.

  We hardly ever talked about him anymore. It was kind of a touchy subject, and whenever I used to ask, Mom always said the same thing: “That’s a short story.” After a while I got the hint and stopped asking.

  Basically, the story went like this: My father left when I was four and Georgia was two. That was about a year after Leo died. Once he was gone, we never heard from him again. End of story.

  Until now, anyway.

  “Did you know Hairy is still in business?” Grandma said to Mom. “All the way over there on Calumet Avenue.”

  At first, Mom looked like she was going to say something. But then she set down the garbage bag, took a deep breath, and walked out of the kitchen. A few seconds later, I heard the bathroom door close upstairs.

  “What just happened?” Georgia asked. “Is she mad about something?”

  Grandma pulled Georgia up onto her lap. “I think your mom’s having a bad day,” she said. “That’s all.”

  But that wasn’t all. Not for me, anyway. I was pretty sure I’d just figured out what my next big thing was going to be.

  And Hairy’s seemed like a pretty good place to start.

  QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS

  Maybe this sounds weird, but I didn’t really spend much time thinking about my father before all this. Most of my life, he didn’t really exist. I mean, not for us, anyway. I was used to not having him around.

  But now, after seeing that picture, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. What did he look like?

  Did he live in the city? Was he rich? Poor? Did he think about us much?

  I sat up late that night, drawing in my sketchbook and talking to Leo about it.

  “What do you think will happen if I find him?” I said.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll give you a ton of credit for the mission,” he said.

  Sometimes Leo has a one-track mind.

  “What happens if I look for him and don’t find him?” I said.

  “What if you stop asking questions and start figuring it out?” Leo said.

  So as soon as I heard Grandma’s TV go off upstairs, I got out of bed and went over to the computer.

  I couldn’t find a website for Hairy’s Place, but I did find an address—3921 Calumet Avenue. I pulled it up on a map and then coughed a lot while it was printing out, just in case Mom was still awake.

  Then I stuck the map in the bottom of my backpack and tried to get some sleep.

  Even that wasn’t easy, though. On top of everything else, I started thinking about that question Mr. Beekman put up on the board the first day of school: WHO ARE YOU? Like maybe if I could find out more about who my father was, I might find out more about me too.

  And if that wasn’t part of getting a life, I didn’t know what was.

  SCARY HAIRY

  The next day, when I asked Matty how to get to the corner of Calumet Avenue and Thirty-Third Street, he got right on board. First thing after school, we were back out on the streets. He showed me how to get the number 23 bus and then the number 9 bus to get to the place I’d marked on the map.

  I didn’t tell him why I was doing this, but it
didn’t even seem like it mattered. Matty the Freak was always up for anything.

  As soon as we got off the bus, Hairy’s Place was right there on the corner. It looked pretty much like the picture Grandma showed me, but I didn’t know it was a barbershop until I saw it in person.

  “I get it,” Matty said. “Hairy’s Place.”

  “Wait out here. I’ll be right back,” I told him.

  Now he got curious. “Why? What are you doing, anyway?”

  “I’m robbing a bank,” I said. “Just wait outside, okay?”

  It was either that or tell him I was looking for someone who got his picture taken on this corner about twenty years ago. Yeah, that doesn’t sound too ridiculous.

  Inside the shop, there were three barber chairs lined up in front of a big mirror, but only one barber. I knew the second I saw him it had to be Hairy, since he was so… well, hairy. And huge too. He looked like Bigfoot with tattoos.

  “Pop a squat, kid,” he said. “I’ll be right with you.”

  “Oh. Uh… okay,” I said.

  I sat down in one of the regular chairs near the front and picked up a Field & Stream magazine. Even that seemed kind of weird to me. I hadn’t seen a single field, or a stream, since I’d moved to the city.

  But before I could even crack it open, Matty came strolling in from the street.

  “We got a line going,” Hairy told him. “You can wait if you want.”