Just My Rotten Luck Read online

  This year, besides teaching English to the sixth graders, she got stuck teaching art class for my grade. Which is awesome for me, since she’s practically the only grown-up in this whole school who likes me. Budget cuts can come in pretty handy sometimes.

  So far, she’d been showing us all these famous works of art that she said every kid should be aware of. We’d talked about King Tut’s funerary mask, the Mona Lisa, a painting of a diner called Nighthawks, and Andy Warhol’s picture of a can of tomato soup (which I’m not so sure about, but Ms. D said it was “important”). And that wasn’t all.

  She seemed like she knew what she was talking about, anyway. And I knew I could trust her with something private, which was more than I could say about my other teachers at HVMS.

  So at the end of class, I stuck around, taking a crazy long time to put my pastels away. But really, I was just waiting for everyone to leave. I wanted to ask Ms. Donatello a question. A really basic one.

  I walked up to her desk, where she was drawing with a charcoal pencil. “Ms. Donatello, can I talk to you?” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “About the assignment?”

  “No,” I said. “Not really. It’s just that, um… well, you’ve known me since I started middle school, and you can be honest, okay?”

  Ms. D put down her pencil. “Okay,” she said.

  “I just need to know something,” I said. “Am I dumb?”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “I know how that sounds,” I said. “But seriously, not everyone can be smart, right? That’s how it works. Someone has to be dumb. And I was just wondering if you thought—”

  “I’m going to stop you right there, Rafe. Because I don’t believe in ‘dumb,’” Ms. D said. She even seemed a little mad. “Take a look around this room. What do you see?”

  That wasn’t what I expected. In fact, I wasn’t sure what she was asking, which just made me feel—hello?—kind of dumb.

  “Um…” I said, “the lock on that window’s broken?”

  “Look at the art,” she said. She had pictures on the wall, of all those masterpieces I was talking about a minute ago.

  “The people who created these were some of the greatest artists to ever live,” she said. “They saw the world differently. And that means some of them probably learned things differently too. Just like you. I don’t know what ‘dumb’ has to do with any of that, but I’d suggest you stop worrying about it.”

  “It’d be easier to not worry about it if I wasn’t in Mr. Fanucci’s class,” I said.

  “Yes, well, you are in Mr. Fanucci’s class,” she said. “You’re also in mine. And I expect big things from you.”

  “You do?” I said. Because most people don’t.

  “Of course,” she said, like it was obvious. “You shine brightly, Rafe. Sometimes on the outside, and always on the inside. Let’s see some of that with your work this year, okay?”

  I’ll admit one thing. I left that art room feeling a whole lot better than I did when I came in.

  But I also noticed Ms. Donatello didn’t exactly answer my question either.

  So I kept asking around.

  A FLIPPIN’ BIG IDEA

  Later that week, Flip was hanging at my house, and I figured I might as well get an expert opinion besides Ms. Donatello’s.

  “Hey, Flip? Do you think we’re dumb?” I said.

  “Definitely,” he said.

  Or more like shouted. Our house can be kind of noisy sometimes. Georgia and her “band,” We Stink, were practicing in the garage. Dotty was running the vacuum cleaner in the living room. And Flip and I were in my room, playing one of my favorite new games with Junior. The game is called Drive the Dog into a Psycho Frenzy with a Laser Pointer.

  Flip had the laser pointer, and Junior was running around my room trying to bite that tiny red dot on my blankets… my rug… my walls… my desk… my pile of dirty clothes. It’s an awesome game.

  “Why are you asking me that, anyway?” Flip said. He had the laser pointed at my pillow now, and Junior was going at it like we were one bite away from a room full of feathers.

  “It’s Miller,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about Big and Tall,” he said (which was Flip’s name for Miller).

  “I have to,” I told him. “Miller has hated me since dinosaurs were working the drive-thru at McDonald’s. And now this whole Learning Skills thing is just one more reason why he—”

  “You know what you should do?” Flip said all of a sudden. Flip does everything all of a sudden. “You should get on the football team!”

  He said it like it was the best idea ever. When actually it was kind of the opposite. I couldn’t even imagine myself on the football team.

  Actually, I could imagine it, but not in any kind of good way.

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” I told Flip. “Right after my next mission to Mars.”

  “I’m as serious as a goldfish funeral,” he said. “Miller would have to respect you then. You’d be on the same team.”

  “There’s just one problem with that,” I said. “WE’D BE ON THE SAME TEAM!”

  “Exactly,” Flip said.

  See? He wasn’t getting it.

  “I’ll tell Coach Shumsky everyone calls you the Cheetah ’cause you’re so fast,” Flip said.

  “They do?” I asked, impressed.

  “No,” he said. “But we could use another good runner this season. Coach likes to mix things up, and you usually don’t see a lot of rushing TDs in flag ball, except on reverses, jet sweeps, or QB scrambles—”

  “I don’t know what any of that is,” I said. I knew some about football, but it sounded like Flip was speaking a different language.

  “I’m just saying, if you can run, Coach will at least let you suit up. It’ll be great!” he told me.

  “Forget it,” I said, but Flip wasn’t even listening anymore. Or at least, he couldn’t hear me. Junior was licking the inside of his ear like it was filled with gravy, and Flip was laughing his head off.

  Not that it mattered, because there was NO WAY IN THE WORLD I was going to be trying out for that football team. Not in a million years. Not in a billion years.

  At least, that’s what I thought.

  But I’ve never been wronger.

  Q.T. PIE

  If that whole football thing made me think Flip was crazy, the thing that happened next clinched it for sure.

  I guess Junior had really cleaned out his ears, because right after that, Flip sat up and looked around.

  “What’s that music?” he said.

  “It’s not music,” I said. I don’t usually call We Stink a “band,” because that would be an insult to bands everywhere.

  “Let’s go see,” he said.

  “Let’s not,” I said, but Flip was already heading outside. “Okay, but don’t blame me if your brain starts bleeding,” I told him.

  We Stink usually practices in our garage. Mom brings a pie to the landlord, Mr. Tinker, every week, and he lets Georgia use the garage for practice. So I know what Mr. Tinker gets out of it (delicious pie) and I know what Georgia gets out of it (somewhere to practice). But meanwhile, all the rest of us have to listen to a group that—let’s face it—calls itself We Stink for a really good reason.

  Georgia plays the electric guitar, but she’s never taken a single lesson in her entire life. Trust me—that becomes pretty obvious as soon as she plays her first note (if you can call it that). The other members of We Stink aren’t much better.

  So far, they’d played one and a half shows. One was a birthday party for Mari, the bass player. And the other was a bar mitzvah where the mom paid them extra to stop early. I’m not even kidding. My sister’s like some kind of genius in school, but she’s never going to get rich playing that guitar of hers.

  Right now, they were in the middle of playing one of their “greatest hits.” That’s what Georgia calls them, so I guess she does have a teensy-weensy sense of humor about it all.
r />   This one was called “What’s the Square Root of U?” (Which tells you everything you need to know about my sister.) And it goes something like this:

  “Who’s that girl playing guitar?” Flip shouted in my ear. “She’s cuuu-ute.”

  I took a step away from him then, just in case whatever brain fever he had was contagious.

  “Dude, gross! That’s my sister,” I said.

  “You have a sister?” he said.

  “Are you joking?” I asked him. “You’ve probably seen her at school a hundred times by now.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me she was your sister?” he said.

  “I don’t know. It’s like owning the fart in the room,” I said.

  The other part of the answer was that I didn’t like people knowing my little sister was ten times smarter than me. But I didn’t tell that to Flip. He was just standing there smiling at Georgia while she turned the color of a stop sign.

  “Yeah, well, you know what?” he said, bopping his head like he actually liked the music. “That’s one cute fart.”

  Ugh.

  A LITTLE BIT FAMOUS

  That night, after Flip went home, I picked up my pencil and tried to draw. Usually ideas come really easy to me, but this time was different. Every time I came up with a good story for a Loozer comic, my mind would wander and I’d end up forgetting what I was supposed to draw.

  Junior wasn’t much help. When I asked him for an idea, he just wagged his tail and drooled on my pillow.

  I don’t know if it was the whole Miller business, or what Ms. Donatello told me, or everything Flip said, or Mr. Fanucci’s class, but SOMETHING was distracting me. Actually, it was probably all four, because they were all bumping around inside my head like a bunch of zombies in a dark room.

  I gave up and went online instead. I logged into Art-Gunk to see if my Loozer comics were still there or if they’d been banned for being too lame and boring.

  And then something totally unexpected happened.

  I saw that people were actually reading my comics! While I’d been busy making it through school all week, a bunch of people I’d never heard of had been checking out Loozer and Leo.

  And I mean real, actual people. It wasn’t a ton, but I did have seven comments waiting for me. Four of them weren’t even that bad!

  The crazy wasn’t over yet either. Not by a long shot. You’ll see what I mean in a few more chapters, but meanwhile, four things happened just then.

  One: I got nervous. It felt weird, knowing that my Loozer comics were out there in the world now and people were looking at them.

  Two: I got excited. Because, well, my comics were out there in the world and people were looking at them.

  Three: I couldn’t stop reading those comments over and over. I must have read most of them fifty times each, plus another fifty times for the one that said, “This is good, do more!”

  Four: I wanted to do more! Lots more! I spent the rest of that night drawing comics, and scanning them, and putting them up online.

  Hey, I figured it was the least I could do for Loozer’s die-hard fans.

  All four of them.

  CHASE SCENE

  If you know me, then you know a little about how my life usually goes. Just when I’m doing okay, something comes along and—BLAM!—blindsides me.

  Or falls out of the sky.

  Or walks up to me on the school steps and changes everything, just like that.

  Which is what happened that Monday.

  Right after the last bell, I was heading out for the day, and that’s when I came face-to-face with Miller. Plus Tug Vincent. Plus Jeremy Savin. Also known as strike one, strike two, and strike three. I could tell something was up even before Miller called me Khatchadorkian.

  “What’s up, Khatchadorkian?” he said.

  I tried to keep moving, but there were three of them and one of me.

  “I’ve got to go, Miller,” I said.

  “Not if we get to you first,” he said. And that’s when they started closing in.

  It was like it came out of nowhere. I didn’t even know what I did this time—but it wasn’t important. The important part was moving my feet, fast.

  I was still standing in the door, and the only place to go was inside again. So I took off running up the hall and didn’t look back. At least then if I got nabbed, Mrs. Stricker could give Miller a detention for staining the school floor with my blood and guts. Actually, she’d probably give him a trophy for that.

  “You better ruuuuuuun!” Miller said behind me.

  He didn’t have to worry about that. I winged it past the music room, booked up the main hall, took a left just before the office, and kept right on going.

  I hated running away, but it couldn’t be any more embarrassing than whatever those three had waiting for me. Mega-wedgie? Target practice? Some new kind of cruel and unusual punishment?

  Those were the things that kept me moving at absolute top speed.

  When I got to the end of the hall, there was nowhere to go but outside. I tore open the door and cut around the back of the gym. I was thinking that the best way to confuse Miller was to keep turning corners. Back and forth, inside and outside, whatever it took.

  I tried the first gym door—locked!

  I tried the second gym door—locked!

  Meanwhile, Mr. Big and Tall was closing in fast. So I gave up on the whole serpentine thing and went for a straight line out of there. But then—SPLAT! I plowed into Jeremy and Tug coming the other way.

  I guess they’d split up, like those raptors in a Jurassic Park movie. Usually right before someone gets eaten.

  “Don’t let him go!” Miller said.

  One of them grabbed me on the left. One of them grabbed me on the right. Then they picked me up off the ground and carried me over to where Miller was waiting.

  At least he was huffing and puffing a little. Maybe I’d worn him out enough so that the first punch would only be semi-fatal, instead of taking me all the way out.

  But then again—I’m not usually that lucky.

  HERE’S THE DEAL

  I’m not going to lie. I was shaking in my boxers. I started wondering who was going to take Junior on his walks while I was in the hospital. And what color my casts should be. All four of them—one for each arm and leg.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!” Miller yelled.

  “Huh?” I said. I guess maybe my eyes were just a tiny bit squeezed shut.

  “I said, are you always that fast?” he asked me.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, not sure if it was a trick question. “I’m always that fast.”

  “ ’Cause Flip said you’re coming out for football.”

  And I thought—Ohhhh. That was what this was about. Miller wanted to make sure I didn’t go anywhere near his precious team.

  I had no problem with that.

  “Flip’s wrong,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m not even thinking about going out for football. Seriously.”

  Miller took a step forward—then another. He put his face right up to mine. (My feet still weren’t touching the ground, by the way. The goons still had me by the arms. I was 100 percent helpless, and about 80 percent going to wet my pants in a second.)

  “Wrong answer,” Miller said.

  “We need some speed on the field,” Tug told me. “And you just passed the first tryout.”

  I was like—Huh???

  “So now you’re going to convince Coach Shumsky to put you on the Falcons roster,” Miller said. “Or else.”

  “Or else what?” I said.

  Miller faked a punch then. And yes, I flinched like someone had just slammed on the brakes.

  “Or else we go back to doing things the way we’ve been doing them,” Miller said, grinning like an evil jack-o’-lantern. “Except maybe a little bit worse.”

  I think “worse” meant he was throwing Tug and Jeremy into the deal, but it didn’t matter. I got the drift either way.

  “But if you’re on
the team, we’ve got no problem,” Miller said.

  In other words, I either played football or I took everything Miller (and Jeremy and Tug) could dish out, from now to the end of middle school—or until I was dead, whichever came first.

  “So… you want me on the team?” I said.

  “Wrong again,” Miller said. “You want you on the team. From now to the end of the season, football is your life. Got it?”

  Just then, the gym door opened and Coach Shumsky came outside, along with a bunch of other players. I saw Flip, and he looked at me like he was as confused as I was.

  At the same time, Tug and Jeremy let me down, and I hit the dirt like a sack of Rafe-potatoes.

  “What’s going on out here?” Shumsky said. “Why aren’t you fellas warming up like I told you?”

  “Khatchadorian wants on the team, Coach!” Tug said.

  “And he can run like his life depends on it,” Miller said. Then he looked right at me. “Isn’t that right?”

  I spent about one and a half seconds thinking about all my possible answers. And then I realized there was only one.

  “That’s right, Coach,” I said. “Please, please, please, can I play for the Falcons?”

  NOT EXACTLY A NEWS FLASH

  So unless you just picked up this book and started reading here, you already know that I made the team.

  Coach Shumsky said he wasn’t offering any promises about putting me into the first game of the season, since I’d missed some practices. But I also saw the way he looked at Assistant Coach Flynn when I was running sprints during my tryout. I guess all those activities at Camp Wannamorra, killing myself in the Rockies, and running around town with Junior had paid off just a tiny bit.

  The question is—did I want to play for the Falcons? And I guess that depends on what you mean by “want.”