He had stories? About my dad? What kind of stories? How many?
“Well, look who it is,” Dotty said. “My favorite grandson.”
“Hey, Rafe-asaurus,” Mom said. “Thanks for making it home on time.”
I came over and she gave me a hug and kiss hello, which Mom always likes to do, even when she’s working.
“What are you painting?” I asked her.
“It’s a cityscape,” she said. “The idea of one, anyway.”
I can never tell what Mom’s abstracts are supposed to be until she clues me in, but then I can almost always see what she’s talking about. This one had a lot of straight lines going in all different directions. Kind of like city streets.
I could tell she was excited about it too. Mom hadn’t sold a painting since we moved to the city, but she sure was trying.
“What do you think, mister art student?” she said. “Am I headed in the right direction?”
“Definitely,” I said.
Mom just kind of smiled at that and went back to painting.
And even though my brain was still overflowing with everything that had happened that day, I decided right then that I wasn’t going to talk about it after all.
Not yet, anyway. I’d just barely gotten ungrounded, and Mom was as happy as I’d seen her in a long time. Also, Dotty was making pancakes, and I love breakfast for dinner.
Why would I want to mess with all that?
So instead of having some big, uncomfortable conversation that night, we talked about painting instead. And drawing. And school. And the family of pigeons living on the roof across the street.
I didn’t know when it was going to be a good time to start asking Mom all those Dad questions. I just knew that right now wasn’t it. So for the time being, I was going to keep them to myself and my drawing pad.
(And to Leo, of course.)
THIRTY-TWO TRILLION AND COUNTING
A few weeks into the quarter, Mrs. Ling came around to all the art classes and made an announcement.
“Boys and girls, it’s that time of the year,” she said. “Time to start thinking about your projects for the Spring Art Show.”
But of course, I was already thinking about mine. I’d been thinking about it for months.
I’d never been in a real art show before, and I was going to make this the 195th thing on my list of 195 things. It was like the big finish line for Operation: Get a Life.
My project was going to be awesome!
Just as soon as I figured out what it was going to be.
“Remember,” Mrs. Ling said, “this is your chance to really show us who you are as an artist, as well as the kind of artist you might become if you continue on here at Cathedral.”
And that was a big part of my problem right there.
First of all, how was I supposed to show who I was “as an artist” when I didn’t have the first clue?
And second—hello, pressure! The Spring Art Show was my last chance to prove I belonged in art school. I still didn’t know whether I was going to make it back for eighth grade… or not.
In fact, it seemed like the more Mrs. Ling talked, the more problems I had.
“This is an open assignment,” she told us. “That means you can work with any materials you like, to create anything you can think of.”
That may not sound like a problem, but it was. See, it’s one thing when they tell you to make a self-portrait, or a junk sculpture, or whatever. But when you can do anything, it’s like getting a multiple-choice test with one question and thirty-two trillion possible answers. Good luck choosing the right one.
It didn’t help that all the students but me seemed to already know what they wanted to do either.
“In the meantime,” Mrs. Ling said, “to help you along, we have a lovely field trip to the Art Institute coming up. I hope you’ll use that opportunity to take in some of the amazing art in this city and get inspired to reach new heights with your own work.”
New heights? Who said anything about new heights? I was still working on reaching some old heights. Or any heights.
All of a sudden, that big finish line I’d been thinking about all year was starting to come up—fast.
FIVE-DOLLAR POSTCARDS, SOME GUY NAMED MONDRIAN, AND A FEW OTHER THINGS THAT WENT OVER MY HEAD
By the time the Art Institute field trip rolled around, I’d had lots of time to think about my project for the Spring Art Show. And after some long, hard, careful consideration, I’d finally managed to come up with… zero good ideas.
But maybe Mrs. Ling was right. Maybe this field trip was going to inspire me to do something I’d never even thought about before. Maybe I’d get the best idea of my life here.
And if not… well, at least it got us out of a whole morning of regular classes.
When we got to the museum, they set us loose with our sketchbooks so we could walk around the galleries and draw whatever grabbed us. Matty seemed like he knew what he was doing, so I let him lead the way.
For a while I kept expecting him to pull something Matty-ish, like taking money from the fountain out front, or trying to get up on the roof, or at least touching some of the stuff you weren’t supposed to touch in the museum.
But he didn’t. As far as I could tell, he was actually interested in the art. We just walked around for a while and sketched some of the paintings, and then we walked around some more. It was a side of Matty I’d never seen before. He seemed so normal.
Which, for Matty, was so weird.
Finally, when Mrs. Ling came around and told us we had fifteen minutes left, Matty closed his sketchbook and started putting his stuff away.
“Come on,” he said. “We don’t want to miss the best part.”
I followed him out to the front of the museum and then into the gift shop near the entrance.
“This is the best part?” I said.
“Trust me,” he said. “Just check it out.”
So I did, and let me tell you what I learned that day. Art museum gift shops are for rich people. Everything in that place cost about ten times more than you’d think. Even the postcards were five bucks each.
After a while, Matty came over to where I was.
“Hold this,” he said, and gave me his backpack. “I have to go to the bathroom. But wait for me here, okay?”
I didn’t really think about it. I just took his pack and kept looking at this hundred-dollar book about some guy named Mondrian, who got famous for painting a bunch of red, yellow, and blue squares, over and over. It made me think maybe I should get my own art book someday.
Just after that, though, I saw Mrs. Ling waving at me to come get on the bus. It was time to go.
I could see Matty too. He was still on his way to the bathroom, so I figured I’d give him his stuff outside.
But then, as soon as I started leaving—
The gift-shop alarm was going off, like someone had just walked out with something that wasn’t paid for. And because I’m not always the swiftest boat on the water, I started looking around to see if I could figure out who the thief was.
And that’s when I realized—the only person standing there was me.
BIG-CITY TAKEDOWN!
SET DOWN THE BAG AND STEP AWAY!” the chief criminal negotiator screams into a bullhorn. It’s almost impossible to hear, with the choppers so low and all those police sirens.
Something’s gone very wrong here, and all I know is, I didn’t do it.
“This is a mistake!” I yell.
“STEP AWAY FROM THE BAG! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!”
I hear footsteps—people are running everywhere. And shouting. Police radios are blaring. Is this really all for me?
I’m not taking any chances. I keep my hands where everyone can see them. Then I bend down slowly and set the pack on the ground.
As soon as I do, a dozen lines drop out of the sky. A football team’s worth of SWAT officers rappel down to the ground all at once. Before I can even move, they’ve got me
surrounded with enough hardware to… well, to open a really, really big hardware store.
“DON’T MOVE A FREAKIN’ MUSCLE!” one of them shouts.
“PARDON ME, YOUNG MAN, BUT COULD YOU PLEASE STEP BACK INTO THE GIFT SHOP?” a third one says.
NOT IT
You can put your arms down, kid,” the guard told me. “Just step back into the gift shop, please?”
Mrs. Ling was headed over by then. I could see Matty too. He was standing with the rest of the class now and looking right at me. But he wasn’t coming any closer.
“Rafe?” Mrs. Ling said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I didn’t do it.”
The guard asked her if he could check the backpack, and Mrs. Ling looked at me, like the choice was mine.
I just handed it over. He unzipped it right there on the gift-shop counter, and a second later he was pulling out one of those stainless-steel pens, still in the package. It was the exact same kind Matty had given me for Christmas, except mine was safe and sound at home.
“Rafe, can you explain this?” Mrs. Ling said.
I kept looking over at Matty, and he was just shaking his head—no, no, no, no, no. Don’t tell. That’s what he was saying. I felt like I was trapped, with my own head on the chopping block.
Except then, I started thinking—
You know how sometimes you can have a whole truckload of thoughts all at once? That’s what happened to me. I remembered all those times I’d gotten into trouble that year—and all those times Matty had gotten away.
I’m not saying I blamed him. Most of it was probably my own fault. Or even all my fault.
But this time I hadn’t done anything wrong. And I couldn’t afford to pretend that I had.
“It’s not my backpack,” I said. “I didn’t put that pen in there.”
“Well, whose pack is it?” the guard said.
“I don’t want to say,” I told him.
“Then you’re going to have to come with me.”
“Rafe, answer the question,” Mrs. Ling told me. “Whom does that pack belong to?”
My heart was bouncing around like a pinball, and I still wasn’t exactly sure what to do. At least, not until I looked out into the lobby one more time. That’s when I saw Mr. Crawley herding the whole rest of the seventh-grade class toward the exit. And you’ll never guess who was right there in the middle of the crowd, trying to make a clean getaway and not even looking at me anymore.
Actually, you probably can guess.
“It’s Matty Fleckman’s,” I said.
MAD MATTY
I didn’t get to find out what happened to Matty after that. All I knew was that he didn’t ride the bus back to school, and neither did Mr. Crawley. And I guess he admitted to taking the pen—or maybe they even had it on a security camera—because I wasn’t in trouble anymore.
That night, I tried tracking him down with everything but bloodhounds. I called him a bunch of times, but he never answered. I e-mailed him twice, but I didn’t hear back. I even texted him from Mom’s phone and said that it was about “homework,” since Mom could see what I’d written, and I couldn’t exactly say it was about “the pen you might or might not have tried to get me to steal for you.”
That was the thing. I didn’t know if Matty had tried to set me up at the museum or if he really was going to come back and steal that pen for himself.
So I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to be mad at him, or if he was mad at me… or both… or neither… or what. In fact, it was driving me kind of crazy.
Finally, around nine o’clock, the phone rang. I ran into the kitchen to pick it up, but Grandma beat me to it.
“HELLO, AND WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT THAT SOMEONE HAS TO CALL MY HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?” she said.
No surprise, whoever it was hung up.
“Hmm,” Grandma said. “I must have scared them off.”
As soon as she left the room, I took the phone out on the back stoop and closed the door behind me. Then I dialed Matty’s number.
I didn’t really expect him to pick up—but then he did.
“What?” he said.
“Did you just call me?” I said.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Hang on a second. Don’t go away.”
I heard him put down the phone. Then it was just quiet.
And then it stayed quiet for a long time. In fact, it probably took about three minutes before I finally figured out what was going on.
I guess that answered one question, anyway—about whether Matty was mad at me. And now that I knew, it made me think of something else. Something much scarier.
Let me put it this way: If I was going to count down the top five reasons why it was good to have Matty the Freak for a friend, it might look something like this:
THE FIRST PART OF THE WORST PART
Remember how I said earlier that Matty never did anything halfway?
That’s what I was afraid of. I’m not going to say I was paranoid when I got to school the next day, but I did feel a little bit like I was being hunted.
It didn’t take long to find out what was going to happen next either. The closer I got to my locker, the more I saw people in the hall looking at me and whispering to each other.
And here’s what they were whispering about:
I guess the good news was that all the paint was on the outside this time. Any other day and I might have thought Zeke and Kenny had struck again.
But that “GET A LIFE” was like code. Matty was the only person at Cathedral who knew about Operation: Get a Life. And as far as I could tell, he was also the only person not standing around laughing at me right now.
So I went looking for him.
He wasn’t hard to find. He always hung out on the back stairs before first period. When I got there, he didn’t even look up, which only made me madder.
“What’s your problem?” I said.
“You don’t rat on a friend,” he said. “That’s what.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t let a friend get caught with something you stole,” I said.
“I was coming back.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Because I said I was,” Matty told me. Now he looked me right in the eye—and maybe he was telling the truth, and maybe he wasn’t. I’d seen what a good liar he could be.
“Yeah, well, you’ve had your little fun,” I said. “Now back off.”
Matty closed his sketchbook and stood up. Then he got right in my face and gave me this familiar smile. I’d seen it before, and it always looked kind of evil and funny to me at the same time.
But right now it just looked evil.
“I’m not afraid to fight you, Matty,” I told him.
“No,” he said. “But you’re so afraid of getting in trouble, you’re not going to do anything about it, are you?”
I didn’t answer—mostly because he was right.
This was the worst part. Matty knew me better than anyone else at school, and I’d told him way more than I ever should have. Now it was too late to take any of it back.
“And by the way,” he said, “I’ll let you know when I’m done having fun.”
Then he just walked away while I stood there and watched.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. A day earlier, we were supposedly friends. Now, as soon as he gets into a little trouble instead of me, we weren’t friends anymore? As far as I was concerned, he was just being a big baby about the whole thing.
A big…
unpredictable…
highly dangerous…
baby.
THE REST OF THE WORST
I spent the rest of the morning wondering what Matty’s next move was going to be.
By fifth period, I was so tired of watching out, I was ready for a nap.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, I didn’t want to give Matty a chance to tattoo my face or roll me out the window.
> And for another thing… just because my day wasn’t already complicated enough… we also had a crit that period.
This one was for a digital-art unit that Mr. Crawley had been teaching. The assignment was to take our own pictures and then cut them up on the computer and make a new image with them.
In fact, I actually liked my finished thing. I’d gotten Matty to take a picture of me (back before we hated each other). Then I put parts of myself into another picture, of a brick wall, so it looked like someone had built the wall right up around me, with my arms, face, and legs sticking out in different places. I also made up my own graffiti on the computer and put that all over the wall too.
Not that I expected anyone else to like it. Zeke and Kenny basically had a rule about hating everything I did. And now I had to worry about what Matty was going to say too.
Or maybe he wouldn’t say anything, because he’d be too busy figuring out how I was going to wind up under a bus after school. Either way, I wasn’t looking forward to this.
The crits for digital art worked a little differently than the others. When you finished your assignment, you used your password to load it onto the school’s computer. Then Mr. Crawley could pull it up and put it on the big screen at the front of the room for everyone to see.
And the reason I’m telling you this is because it was the one thing I didn’t think about ahead of time.
Back when Matty and I were trying to get rid of that fake RAFE K page of Zeke and Kenny’s, I told him my password. It didn’t seem like a big deal when I did it. I figured if there was one person at school I could trust, it was Matty.
And that might have been the biggest mistake I made all year.