“Remember, you only get one step off the back wall before you have to shoot. I don’t want you running in too close to Michael—that wouldn’t be fair,” I said.
Alexis said nothing. She knew the rules and just kept throwing the tennis ball into the air, waiting for Michael to give the “ready” sign.
Michael looked all set and light on his feet. But just as Alexis started to bring back her stick, Michael stepped out of the goal and took off his helmet.
“Sorry, Alexis, I just want to check one thing. I’m not a big fan of the Pucker-Up Ice Lemonade. Do you have any Kiwi Strawberry?” asked Michael.
Alexis’s death stare was intimidating. She didn’t like waiting, and now Michael was trying to be funny. She gripped her stick extra tight. Here comes the ATOMIC!
Michael got back into the goal and nodded it was okay. With a mighty scream, Alexis unleashed a blistering, canon-like blast toward the top-right corner. She had practiced that shot a thousand times. And knew with certainty it was going to hit its target.
The only thing she didn’t count on was Michael’s insane goalie abilities.
Before the ball even left the stick, Michael was already moving to the right spot to make the save. With the oversize head of the goalie stick swung across his body, Michael effortlessly gobbled up Alexis’s shot and calmly rolled the ball back to her.
Alexis was the only one shocked by what happened. She just stood there and stared at her beloved Tiger in disbelief. As it turned out, Alexis didn’t have any Kiwi Strawberry.
But Michael decided to enjoy a Pucker-Up Ice Lemonade anyway. Why not? He earned it.
Good Guys 2–Alexis 0.
As soon as Monday morning rolled around, it was back to school and Ms. Cane. Michael and I sat on the bus dreading our new reality.
The Question Rock? Was she kidding? What if I had to go to the bathroom? Should I just leave and not ask permission? So confused.
“By the way, thanks a lot for telling me how ‘great’ and ‘AWESOME’ the advanced class was,” said Michael sarcastically. “I definitely felt safer in Mr. Yeatter’s class.”
As soon as I walked into class, I knew something was wrong. Ms. Cane was standing in front and she looked angry. Well, I mean, angrier than usual.
“So, guess who got called down to the principal’s office on Friday after school?” Ms. Cane asked the class. “I did. Apparently, one of you complained to Mom and Dad about the rules in this class,” said Ms. Cane. “Are you guys kidding me? We had a deal! You don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you.”
Walking from the front to the back of the room, Ms. Cane slowly scanned the class, thinking aloud: “Now, I want to know who did it. Which one of you ruined it for all of us?”
Coming closer and closer, it didn’t appear she had a prime suspect in mind. Which was good, considering I suddenly remembered an innocent dinner conversation the week before with my mom. Not sure, but I MIGHT have mentioned the whole “no homework” arrangement in Ms. Cane’s class.
Since Mom was a hovering helicopter parent with Principal McCracken on speed dial, I knew immediately who called. My mom was the snitch. And I was about to get called out.
“Right now, I want to hear from that person. I’d like a sincere confession. This is the court of Ms. Cane, and I am the judge and jury,” the pacing teacher said with a sneer.
Ms. Cane was staring at each kid individually. Looking, analyzing, and searching for any sign of guilt. Once she passed my desk, I thought I was in the clear. But she suddenly turned around and headed back in my direction.
“We’ll sit here all day. I WILL find out who you are!” announced Ms. Cane as she locked in on me. Gulp!
But she wasn’t dealing with some rookie. I knew I had to stay cool and quickly decided to go with my standard confused face: tilted head, squinted eyes, serious nose scrunch. I wasn’t about to confess anything.
Besides, there was NO WAY Principal McCracken would ever tell Crazy Pants anything about my mom. BFFs don’t do those sorts of things. Nice try, lady. Who’d she think she was dealing with?
Tapping her finger on my desk, Ms. Cane stood in front of me. It looked like she was about to say something when a highly agitated and practically hysterical Dudley Malone leaped out of his seat screaming and crying.
“It was me . . . It was me . . . IT WAS MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!” Dud shouted with tears streaming down his face. “My father called yesterday. I begged him not to, but he wouldn’t listen.
“I told him how great you are!!!” moaned Dudley as he rolled on the floor between desks. “I’m sorry—I never thought my dad cared so much!”
Dudley spent the rest of the day sitting in Ms. Cane’s wooden chair of self-reflection. OUCH! It was a torturous contraption with no cushion, and it looked like it belonged in a grandma’s living room. Would it have killed her to get a rocker?
The rest of us were hit with an avalanche of class work.
The only happy kid was Ajit. He was beaming with delight and kept yelling “Yeah, boyyyyy!” every time Ms. Cane handed out a new assignment.
Underneath Ajit’s pretend “gangsta” exterior was a true geek. All the hip-hop clothes and gold chains still couldn’t hide his inner nerd. It REALLY didn’t help that he rapped about geometry:
My name is Ajit, and I love quadratic equations.
Mess with me, son,
and you’ll be covered with abrasions.
I’m a super-duper math star reppin’ B’more, yo!
You think that triangle’s obtuse?
Lord have mercy, you gots to go!
So go get your TI-84 plus, your apps,
and your momma;
I do this stuff in my head, boy,
like a math-boss Dalai Lama!
Considering he was already doing high-school calculus, Ajit made quick work of the grade-level math questions. As fast as Ms. Cane handed them out, he turned them back complete and perfect.
“It looks like you are quite the smarty, Mr. Jaokar,” said Ms. Cane, who was clearly annoyed by our resident math whiz.
“Thank you very much, Ms. Cane. Yes, math does come easy to me. Perhaps you have something more challenging?” asked a cocky Ajit.
“I am SO glad you asked. I do have something very challenging for you,” said Ms. Cane.
“Ajit, see that dry-erase board in the corner? One careless classmate mistakenly drew on it with a permanent Sharpie. The custodian said it’s ruined and can never be cleaned. I don’t believe that,” said Ms. Cane as she dropped a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle on Ajit’s desk.
“I want you to prove him wrong, Mr. Jaokar!” encouraged Ms. Cane as she helped Ajit to his feet and gently nudged him in the direction of the board.
Not the challenge MC Ajit was counting on. He wanted to say something so bad but caught himself just in time.
Ajit was too smart to make it worse. Lesson learned—be careful what you ask for in Ms. Cane’s class. Too funny!
During that first week of Ms. Cane’s rule, it was so hard not to tell my parents everything that was going on: no real class work to speak of and NO homework, ever. Ms. Cane apparently didn’t believe in it.
Having dodged a bullet with my mom’s first phone call, there was no need to aggravate the academic police. Nothing to see here, officer. Everything is fantastic. I’m learning so much!
Instead, I skillfully directed the nightly dinner conversation to my latest obsession: conquering Facebook and Twitter. Sure, both of these are nothing more than online popularity contests . . . BUT . . . for some reason, they were contests I desperately wanted to win!
I don’t think I was insecure or desperate for attention—it was just the competitor in me. And I especially wanted to crush my sister, Alexis, in this contest.
Although she is probably the meanest person on the planet, for some completely unexplainable rea
son, she has loads of friends. And I had to find a way to get more friends and followers than her, without resorting to fear-based tactics.
For years she’s been secretly intimidated by my AWESOMENESS. I was self-confident; I didn’t need to go to the mall surrounded by ten “yes-kids” I barely knew. Gossiping about my “friends” wasn’t the limit of my human interaction.
Though my popularity had blown up earlier in the year when everyone fell in love with my Kid Cards, those glory days were far behind me. That rocket ship to fame and fortune came crashing back to earth after Bo Wilson ruined it for everyone.
It turned out Bo was too immature to express his true love for Katie Whipshaw. Instead of calling her up, asking her to a dance, or passing her a note, he decided to create a highly unflattering Kid Card of her. Makes perfect sense to make fun of the girl you supposedly like, right?! Principal McCracken immediately put an end to all Kid Card activities.
Thoroughly enjoying Mom’s pasta that evening, I discussed my strategies for social-media domination. As usual, my dad couldn’t help but interrupt.
“Technology!? That’s what’s wrong with kids today. All plugged into your Blue Teeth i-Tablet, Cloudy-Thingy. Just happy lambs going to the intellectual slaughterhouse. Not me! I still read the paper and love a good book. My business is built on REAL personal relationships . . . face-to-face . . . mano a mano! I don’t live my life behind a computer screen. That doesn’t prepare you for the real world. When I was a kid, we played outside! Do you even know what tree bark feels like?”
I had to admit, I didn’t. But I was curious as to why he thought it mattered. I could just read about tree bark online.
“So, Jake, why do you want so many ‘friends’? What’s the big deal?” asked Alexis, pretending not to be too interested.
“Why? Because everyone knows that once you hit one hundred thousand friends, you automatically win a brand-new Lamborghini,” I said matter-of-factly. “I just hope they still have a yellow one in stock when I get there.”
“WHAT! Are you kidding me?!!!” screamed Alexis.
Gotcha. Those were Alexis’s weaknesses—a shiny yellow LAMBO and being WAY too gullible. Everyone knows five thousand friends is Facebook’s maximum allowance. Besides, who gives away super-expensive sports cars?
From reading her browser history, I knew Alexis spent hours online looking at Lamborghini pictures, reading about the cars, how much they cost, and the celebrities who drove them.
I bet she imagined her and her goofy friends cruising around with the top down and acting too cool for school. Of course, they’d be wearing oversize sunglasses and carrying those tiny annoying dogs in their purses.
“No, genius! Do you really think they give away free cars?” I asked.
“I knew that . . . jerk!” shouted Alexis.
“But seriously, it’s just fun. You get to meet a lot of kids you’d never have the chance to know,” I said.
“Meet? You don’t ‘meet’ anyone,” said my dad.
“That’s enough,” said my mom calmly as she turned her focus on me. “But, sweetheart, having so many friends and followers puts a lot of pressure on you to maintain those relationships. Right?”
Uh-oh! DANGER! DANGER! Mom’s academic success protection system detected a disturbance in Sector Nine. She was about to unleash the hounds and destroy all potential threats and distractions.
“Not at all! Basically, my network does the work for me,” I said.
“What do you mean?” asked Alexis, not so innocently.
Alexis and Mom both stared at me and waited for an answer.
I had nothing to hide. It’s not like Alexis could use any of my strategies, anyway. Without good content, the system doesn’t work. And by good content, I mean funny content. Alexis was a lot of things . . . aggressive, selfish, intimidating, slimy, manipulative, quick to anger (I could go on and on) . . . but funny, she wasn’t.
“It’s easy. All you have to be is funny. If you can make your readers R-O-F-L you’ll get tons of friend requests, group invites, retweets, and followers,” I explained to Alexis. “Your problem is, sorry to say, you post boring girl stuff! Boring!” I said, pulling out my phone and looking at some of Alexis’s recent tweets.
I explained in detail how my swelling numbers of friends and followers was basically built by posting the most hilarious thing I’d found that day!
Awkward photo of a teacher with funny Instagrammed thought bubble? It went up. Epic-fail video of some skateboarder from Australia? Bam! On the wall. Little kid nailing his father in the crotch with a bat? I’m all over it!
With each post and tweet, I always included language sure to capture the attention of any kid audience: OMG WEG, SOOO CUTEEEE, or GOTs to Retweet This! The more the content got seen and heard, the more people tuned in.
A little immature, maybe . . . but what do you expect? I’m in sixth grade! Unsophisticated? Just giving the people what they want! Effective? I had already put together 490 friends and 3,900 followers . . . enough said. And I was just getting started.
Even though my sixth-grade year had been turned upside down by the arrival of Ms. Cane, I was still dialed into my upcoming lacrosse tryout. Michael and I practiced all the time. On the weekends, my dad would take us to the park so we could train on the turf field.
Michael got better every time we worked out. Of course, my game was already supertight. But having Michael in goal allowed me to take my shooting to the next level. We were both ready to match our skills against the best kids in our county for a spot on one of the highly selective Cobra travel teams. I was confident the A team was in my future.
On the day of the tryouts, the weather was perfect. There were loads of kids from Kinney Elementary there. Unfortunately for me, I got put into an evaluation group with Jason the Jerk and a couple of his dopey friends. They all had flowing long hair, crazy multicolored shorts, and started almost every sentence with “bro.”
“Hey there, little nerdy guy,” said Jason as he patted me on my helmet. “You must be confused, Jake. The Squirts tryout was yesterday!” That got a huge laugh from his buddies.
“No, Jason, I’m in the right place. But if you want to talk about being confused, let me ask you this: What’s two plus two equal?” I said.
It took a few seconds for Jason to get the joke. But once he figured it out, I received a swift punch to the face mask, which sent me flying. Luckily, I was wearing my helmet and had on all my pads.
Of course, Jason still hated me because of the whole Michael “fight” thing earlier in the year. If I’d known at the time he was one of the area’s best lacrosse players, I probably would have handled the whole situation differently. But I hadn’t, and now I had to deal with it.
Trying to get to my feet, I acted cool and laughed off Jason’s surprise punch. But I was a little wobbly. After making it up to one knee, somebody grabbed me by the arm and yanked me away from Jason. It was Michael.
“WHAT!!!! No way! Wild boys don’t play goalie. They run around the woods hunting deer with their bare hands. Let’s see how tough you are now!” mocked Jason as he smashed his gloves together and jumped up and down, super psyched at his chance for payback. Although he wouldn’t dare act that way in school, Jason knew the lacrosse field was his domain.
“I’m going to make Swiss cheese out of your body, Michael. You better get ready for a whole lot of pain today,” said Jason.
Keeping his cool, Michael ignored Jason, and we walked away and began to warm up. Soon the coach blew the whistle and the tryouts began.
At the end of the tryout, I thought I had played AWESOMELY! My shot was on, I scored a few goals in the scrimmage, and I walked out of there certain I was A-team material.
I also heard from a few kids that Michael had played surprisingly well, so I was hopeful he made the B team. At least we’d be practicing on the same night, wh
ich was great.
When I received my “Welcome to the B team” email two days later, I was devastated. I spent that night reviewing the entire tryout in my head, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
I texted Michael and told him my bad news. But at least there was a chance we’d be on the same B team. It was a slim chance, but since he’d been training with ME, I thought he had a shot.
He didn’t text back right away. Usually, he zips off a funny message instantly.
Five minutes passed, and still nothing. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes went by, until finally I heard the familiar buzz.
Michael made the A team and I didn’t?! For a few minutes I thought it was some kind of bad dream. Splashing water into my face, I tried to wake up from that nightmare. Nope. It was all real.
When I told my dad, he couldn’t believe it. Not that I made the B team, but he couldn’t believe Michael made A. And man, was he excited. He asked me if it was okay if he called Michael to congratulate him. I said no.
The next day at school all anyone wanted to talk about was the new goalie phenom. He was an overnight celebrity in lacrosse-obsessed Howard County. I even noticed his Twitter account had blown up with lacrosse fan girls and all the guys from the A team. Even kids from other teams were following him now.
A kid who never picked up a stick makes the A team on one of the state’s most competitive travel clubs. That’s the stuff they make movies about. And all I wanted to do was feel sorry for myself.
Heading to my locker, I knew he’d be waiting for me. As soon as I saw Michael, I felt like the world’s worst friend. I wanted to turn around and sulk back into the crowd of kids.
All I could say was “great job” as we walked in silence to class. I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.
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