And if you’re thinking that was too much to hope for—you’re right.
Obviously, I couldn’t see anything from where I was, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next. I guess that garbage barrel must have rolled right in front of the bathroom door while I was climbing inside, and I guess Mr. McQuade must have come out a second later, because the next thing I felt was a hard BUMP! against the side of the can…
… right before the whole thing started zipping across the floor…
… right before—
I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside a plastic garbage can while it’s rolling down half a flight of stairs, but believe me, it’s not as fun as it sounds. (Even if it doesn’t sound fun at all.)
By the time I hit the first landing, it wasn’t just me and a bunch of used paper towels spilling out of that can either. It was also Zeke’s sculpture, which had been bumped, rolled, slammed, crashed, and smashed back into the million separate pieces it started out as.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is what you call blowing it, big-time. Because this wasn’t just a case of art-napping anymore. No, sir.
Now it was art murder.
EVERYTHING I DESERVED, AND THEN SOME
They kept me in the office that afternoon, all the way through sixth and seventh periods, until Mom could get there for my execution.
I mean, for a meeting with Mr. Crawley.
Actually, I guess I mean both.
There were also a lot of heavy stares, and shaking heads, and me being told to wait outside. By the time it was all over, my punishment was kind of like Zeke’s sculpture. It came in a whole lot of parts.
First of all, I wasn’t allowed to take Mrs. Ling’s class for the rest of the year. I could still take drawing, painting, and everything else, but I’d have to make up half a year of sculpture in eighth grade—if they even let me get that far.
Second, I actually had to apologize right to Zeke McDonald’s face. They even pulled him out of eighth period so I could do it in the office while Mom and Mr. Crawley watched. I just tried to get it over with as fast as possible and not throw up.
Just for the record, I know that what I did was messed up. If someone demolished my sculpture, even by accident, I’d want more than a little “I’m sorry” from them.
But at the same time, none of that took away everything Zeke had done to me, and we both knew it. Maybe he deserved an apology for the sculpture, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t also deserve to be dropped into the lion cage at the zoo with a couple of pork chops stapled to his butt.
Meanwhile, all I could do was sit there and take it while Mom and Mr. Crawley kept handing out the consequences.
The third part of my punishment was a three-day in-school suspension—one day for stealing the sculpture and two days for destroying it. I don’t know whether that was more or less than I deserved, but it didn’t matter, anyway. In sixth grade, I had a one-day suspension and practically died of boredom. The chances of surviving all the way to day three seemed kind of small.
And just in case you’re wondering, Matty did the smart thing. He waited inside the girls’ bathroom until the coast was clear. Then he snuck down to Mrs. Ling’s room and put Kenny’s palm tree away before anyone even knew it was gone. So, obviously, I didn’t say anything about him, or even Kenny, because what was the point?
I just wish I’d been smart enough to get out of this myself. Or lucky enough. Or whatever enough.
But this is me we’re talking about. Mr. None-of-the-Above himself.
And it wasn’t over yet. In a way, the worst part was still to come.
RAFE KHATCHADORIAN, WORST SON EVER
All the way home, from Cathedral until we were driving up Killarney Avenue, Mom didn’t say one word to me.
Not one word.
I guess I was supposed to talk first, but I couldn’t think of anything good to say. “I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it when you’re in trouble for the third, fourth, fifth… or hundred and twenty-seventh time, like me. So I just sat there and tried not to freeze to death.
Finally, after Mom found a parking spot near the house and turned off the car, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Mom, I’m really sorry,” I said. “I really, really am.” (See? Totally lame, but I had to say something.)
“Sorry for getting caught?” Mom said. “Or for taking that sculpture in the first place?”
“Both,” I said, before I realized that the right answer was “Sorry for taking that sculpture in the first place.”
Oops.
“I mean—”
“It’s not just that I’m angry, Rafe,” she said. “I’m also really disappointed. After everything that happened last year, I was hoping Cathedral could be a fresh start for you. I guess it hasn’t worked out that way, has it?”
I shook my head. I was feeling worse about this by the second.
“Maybe I don’t belong at Cathedral,” I said. “That’s what everyone else thinks.”
“Everyone?” Mom said.
“All the best artists, anyway. Like Zeke McDonald and his friends.”
Mom took a deep breath. “Rafe, look at me,” she said, so I did. “Has it ever occurred to you that those other students might feel threatened by you?”
Now I wanted to laugh. “Threatened?”
“Trust me—you’re not the only kid walking around Cathedral wondering if you’re good enough. Art is a competitive world, even in middle school. But if this is the way you’re going to deal with your fellow artists, then maybe you’re right. Maybe you shouldn’t be there.”
“No!” I said right away. “I want to be in art school.”
She smiled, just a tiny bit. “I thought so,” she said, and for about a tenth of a second, it seemed like she was done being mad.
Wrong.
“So here’s the deal,” she told me. “You’re grounded until further notice. You’ll go to school, you’ll come home, you’ll do your homework. That’s it. When Christmas break starts next week, you’ll be staying home as well. You won’t be going anywhere unless it’s with me.”
“Until further notice?” I said.
“That’s right,” Mom said.
In other words, she hadn’t even decided how mad she was yet. This could go on anywhere from a couple of days… to infinity.
See, it wasn’t just Zeke’s sculpture that got broken that day. I’d also broken Mom’s trust, and maybe for the last time. Because after this, I didn’t think she’d ever trust me again.
I mean, would you?
THE NEXT-BEST THING
So if I told you that by Christmas break I was ready to jump back into Operation: Get a Life, would you think I was crazy? Stupid? Really, really forgetful? Let me explain.
The way I saw it, I had a kind of technicality on my hands. Technically, the mission was in a time-out when I got that suspension. So technically, I wasn’t required to call GAME OVER.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed obvious. Everything had been way better—not perfect, but better—right up until I called that time-out in the first place. That’s when I started messing everything up.
It was time to get back to Getting a Life.
And of course, I didn’t have to ask Leo twice. The conversation went something like this:
That just left the little complication of me being grounded (until further notice). We were going to have to figure out a way to come up with all new stuff without ever leaving Killarney Avenue.
But between me and Leo, I was pretty sure we could think of something. Like Mom always says—it just takes a little imagination. And if there’s one thing both Leo and I have, it’s that.
So let’s just call this next part—
HAPPY HOLIDAZE
I’m not saying all the stuff Leo and I came up with over break is going to put me in some kind of Hall of Fame for Awesomeness (or even Semi-Awesomeness), but we didn’t do too badly. I guess you can judge
for yourself.
For Christmas I wasn’t exactly rolling in cash, so I gave coupons for anything that Mom, Grandma, and Georgia wanted me to draw. They all said themselves, and for part of the day I was like a real artist, drawing each of them as they sat for their portraits. They even got to pick where they wanted to be, and I drew that too.
It was also the first time I’d given my own art as a real gift, and I guess since it was Christmastime, Leo said I could count it as three things for the Get a Life list instead of just one.
Hey, I’ll take it. Merry Christmas to me too!
GO BIG OR GO HOME
By the end of Christmas break, my Get a Life list had 114 things on it. That meant 81 to go, with 77 days until the Spring Art Show at Cathedral. I was a little bit behind, but it wasn’t too bad, seeing as I’d been chained to Grandma’s house for the last two weeks.
And I must have been doing something right, because Mom said I could be not completely grounded once school started up again. I asked her what “not completely” meant, but she just said, “Let’s see how it goes” and “Don’t push your luck.” I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
Now that I was going to have a little more freedom, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I’d been racking up plenty of small stuff over break, but it was time to start thinking big again.
Like really big.
Like Bigfoot Hairy big.
It had been a while now, and maybe if I was lucky, Hairy had taken an anger-management class or something. Anyway, I was determined to at least try to get him to tell me something about my dad.
But I wasn’t going in without backup. I needed someone who already knew about the whole Dad situation and who didn’t scare easily. Also, someone who was a real live human being. (Sorry, Leo!)
So as soon as I got to school on the first day back, I went looking for you-know-who.
I found him at his locker, drawing a new pair of eyeballs on the door to replace the ones Mr. McQuade had cleaned off over the break.
“Khatchy!” he said when he saw me. (He’d never called me that before, but that’s Matty the Freak for you.) “What’d you get me for Christmas?”
“The other half of your brain,” I said. “What’d you get me?”
Matty shrugged and unzipped his backpack. Then he took out this sweet stainless-steel pen, still in the package.
“I’m not so big on wrapping stuff,” he said, and tossed it at me.
Now I felt stupid. I hadn’t even thought about getting a present for him. And the pen looked really nice, like something a real artist would use.
It also looked expensive.
“Um… how’d you get this?” I said, because with Matty, you never knew.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I got some crazy money from my aunt this year.”
I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but it’s not like I was going to call him a liar right after he’d given me a present.
And right before I wanted to ask him a favor.
“So, listen,” I said. “You remember Bigfoot Hairy, right?”
“I remember running for my life, if that’s what you mean,” Matty said.
“How would you feel about going back over there for a little surveillance with me?” I said.
I’d learned to speak enough Freak by now that I was pretty sure I knew how to get Matty interested. And sure enough, the way he smiled when I asked that question, you would have thought I’d just given him a present, not the other way around.
I think that’s what you call a win-win situation.
STAKEOUT!
Mom said I could hang out with Matty after school one day that week, as long as I was home by six o’clock. (I guess that’s what not-completely-grounded meant.) In other words, we had to make this count.
One thing I knew for sure: If I was going to talk to Hairy, it wasn’t going to be inside that barbershop, where there was only one exit. And all those scissors. So we set ourselves up in the building across the street, like a couple of real detectives on a stakeout.
Okay, it wasn’t exactly like that. It was more like Matty calling the barbershop with a fake voice to find out what time Hairy closed, and then the two of us sitting at a bus stop on Calumet Avenue, waiting to see what would happen.
At ten to five, Hairy started sweeping up for the day. That’s when I started getting a little nervous—and by a little, I mean I’m glad it was freezing cold out so I had an excuse for all that shivering.
By the time Hairy came out, wearing a black biker jacket, I was literally shaking in my boots. But I wasn’t going to quit now. Especially not in front of Matty.
“Let’s go!” he said, and jumped right up.
“Hang on,” I said.
I don’t think Matty was used to following other people’s plans, but I made him sit tight until Hairy got about halfway up the block. It wasn’t hard keeping an eye on him either, since he was about twice as tall as anyone else around.
“Okay, now we can go,” I said, and we started following Hairy.
At first, it was stop and go. We snuck up the street a little, then hid behind a newsstand. Then we went a little more, then stopped in the doorway of a shoe store.
“What are you going to say to him, anyway?” Matty asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll figure it out if I have to.”
“If?” Matty said. “What do you mean, if?”
“Shh!”
Hairy had just stopped in the middle of the sidewalk for no reason. I turned around fast and pulled down my hat, trying not to have a nervous breakdown right there.
“What’s he doing?” I said. “Wait—don’t look!”
“Relax,” Matty said. “He’s just tying his shoe.”
We waited for Hairy to start moving again, then fell in behind.
He was going faster now, and it was getting harder to keep up. By the time Hairy turned the next corner, Matty and I were running to get there. We hoped we’d spot him on the next block, before he took another turn.
But there was something I wasn’t counting on. Bigfoot Hairy was smarter than he looked. As soon as we poked our heads around that corner, he was right there waiting for us.
It was an ambush! He clamped one gigantic paw on the back of Matty’s shirt, and another one on my arm.
“RUN!” Matty said, like there was any chance of that now.
Because Hairy wasn’t just onto us. He had us. And I was pretty sure I’d just made the last stupid mistake of my life.
NABBED!
You know how they say your life flashes in front of your eyes when you think you’re about to die? It’s not true.
What I saw was a fifty-foot pile of hair, muscle, and tattoos flashing in front of my eyes.
“What the heck are you two dummies following me for?” Hairy said. (He didn’t actually say “heck” or “dummies,” but this is supposed to be a PG kind of book.)
“We weren’t following you!” Matty shouted at him.
“DON’T LIE TO ME!” Hairy roared back, and held on even tighter. It felt like he was twisting my arm into some kind of balloon animal, and Matty’s feet were practically off the ground.
The next part just kind of popped out of me. There wasn’t any plan, except for trying not to die.
“You’re my dad’s uncle!” I yelled. (Okay, maybe kind of screamed, but in a really manly way.) “Hairy Khatchadorian, right?”
It was weird. Hairy didn’t move a muscle. He just kind of froze. But there was about 75 percent less murder in his eyes.
Then he said, “Rafe?”
Let me tell you, I was not expecting that.
“How do you know my name?” I said.
“I can’t believe this,” he said. “I knew you when you were three years old. Heck, I knew you when you were born. I even changed your diaper a few times.”
Matty laughed when Hairy said that, which made me kind of mad. But I had bigger things on my mind, and I didn’t want
to wait around for another one of the guy’s mood swings. So I just kept going.
“Do you know where my dad is?” I asked him.
He let go of us and shoved his hands in his pockets, giving me a kind of funny look. For a second, I even thought he was about to answer my question.
But… no.
“Listen, Rafe,” he said. “That’s something you need to take up with your mom. Where is she, anyway?”
“She’s home,” I said, and he looked confused. “We live here in the city now.”
“You do? But she always hated the city,” he said.
“She did?” That was news to me.
“Come on, mister,” Matty piped up. “He just wants to know about his dad. Why can’t you—”
That’s when the old Hairy came back.
“You mind your own business, kid,” he said, but it also sounded a lot like “I could kill you with one punch, kid.” I’ve never seen anyone stare Matty the Freak down so fast. (Or at all, actually.)
“Go home, Rafe,” Hairy told me. “Talk to your mom first. Then if you want to, you can come back and see me. I’ve got some stories I could tell you about your old man.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t even know what to think. I just stood there like a statue with its mouth hanging open while Hairy patted me on the shoulder and started walking away up the street.
I even kind of forgot Matty was there until he spoke up again.
“Hey, check it out!”
When I looked down, there was a ten-dollar bill sticking out of my coat pocket.
“How’d he do that?” Matty asked.
“Beats me,” I said while my mind just kept spinning around and around, like the inside of a washing machine.
Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! Page 6
