Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (9 page)

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!

T
he 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.