Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (20 page)

And that’s when I realized—the only person standing there was
me
.

S
ET 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.

Y
ou 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.

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.