Just My Rotten Luck Read online

  You know when you think someone’s talking to the person behind you, but then you look and nobody’s there? It felt like that. Except this was Flip, so I figured it out pretty fast.

  “I decided we’re going to call that crazy play of yours Khatch and Scatter,” Flip told me when I put my tray down. “Khatch, like Khatchadorian,” he said. “Get it?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I told him. “But I couldn’t run that play again if I tried.” I remembered Miller passing me the ball, and I remembered getting power-mugged in the end zone. But the rest was kind of a blur.

  Still, once Flip made up his mind, that was it. So okay, Khatch and Scatter. I liked it, actually. I’d never had a football play named after me.

  I’d never sat at a cool kids’ table either. It was like visiting a foreign country.

  “Yo, Khatchadorian!” Jeremy yelled from the other end of the table. “We’ve got your MVP trophy over here. Stand by for delivery.”

  I looked over, and Jeremy was opening a carton of chocolate milk. But he was also smiling in this way that said, I’m not JUST opening a chocolate milk, so pay attention. Everyone else was starting to watch too.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Flip.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  Jeremy opened the milk carton up wide and passed it to Richie Franklin. Richie dropped a Tater Tot inside and passed it on to Calvin Penn. Calvin added a couple spoonfuls of creamed corn and passed it over to Miller. Then Miller ripped open a packet of ketchup.

  “Can’t have Tater Tots without ketchup,” he said, and squirted it in. Then he closed the carton, shook it up, and slid the whole thing over to me.

  If Flip hadn’t been sitting there cheesing away, I would have thought this was Miller and the guys picking on me, all over again. But something about this felt different. This was more like a dare. The good kind.

  “Drink, drink, drink, drink,” Flip said, right before the rest of the team started saying it too.

  I mean, it’s not like I was excited about drinking that chocolate-corn-tater milk. But I did kind of like the way they were all looking at me, waiting to see what I’d do.

  So you know I went for it, right?

  The first swallow was the hardest. It tasted like… well, like chocolate, corn, potato, and ketchup. The guys all laughed like crazy when some of the milk spilled right out of the sides of my mouth.

  Which made me laugh too.

  Which made me spit.

  Which made all of us laugh even harder—but not as hard as we did when some of that chocolate milk came dripping out of my nose. There might have been some creamed corn in there too. It was hard to tell. Meanwhile, the guys were yelling my name, and pounding their fists on the table, and it was completely amazing, and totally hilarious…

  … right up until Mrs. Stonecase came swooping in for the kill.

  “WHAT is the nature of this disturbance?” she said. “And WHO is responsible for this mess?”

  Just like that, I knew I was busted. Stonecase looked ready to start slicing and dicing as soon as someone pled guilty, but I was still trying to swallow what was left in my mouth.

  And here’s where things got even more interesting.

  Before I could tell Mrs. Stonecase anything, Flip piped up. “I did it,” he said. “It’s my mess, Mrs. Stonecase.”

  “No, it’s my mess,” Jeremy said.

  “Actually, it’s mine,” I said. But everyone kept on going.

  “Me too,” Miller said.

  “Me three,” Quinn said.

  Within a minute, every Falcon at that table took credit for the whole thing. Mrs. Stonecase thought it was hilarious too, and gave us all the rest of the day off from school.

  Yeah, right after she quit her job, little green men landed on the lawn outside, and Jeanne Galletta decided to fall in love with me after all.

  “Enough!” Mrs. Stonecase said. “Is there anyone at this table to whom this mess does not belong?”

  Nobody made a move.

  “Fine,” she said. Then she whipped out her phone and took a picture of all of us sitting at that table.

  “I will see every one of you in detention, first thing after school on Friday,” Stonecase said, looking at the picture. “No getting out of it now.”

  “Detention?” Quinn said.

  “Seriously?” Jeremy said.

  “That was smooth,” Flip said. “Did you see how she did that?”

  “And if this mess isn’t cleaned up in five minutes, you can make it three detentions. EACH!” Mrs. Stonecase told us. Then she put the phone back in her pocket like she was holstering a weapon. Which she kind of was.

  Friday detention was the worst—as in, the most work. I figured the guys were going to quit fooling around now and throw me right under the bus.

  But they didn’t. They all just shut up and took it. Even Miller! So now, maybe for the first time ever, the whole Hills Village Middle School football team was going to have one massive detention.

  I’m not saying I was looking forward to it. And I’m not saying I was proud of myself. But… it was kind of awesome.

  Just don’t tell my mom I said that.

  FANS

  Question: How did my mom feel about the detention when I told her?

  Answer: How do you think?

  She wanted to make me quit football on the spot, but I talked her into a warning instead. One more screwup and I was going to be the world’s next former Falcon.

  After dinner, Mom told me to go to my room and do my homework. Which I did. But first, I went online and checked my Art-Gunk account. Loozer was up to forty-two fans by now. I also had eighteen new comments waiting for me. And eleven of them were good!

  That blew me away. It was like the cherry on the sundae. Or forty-two cherries!

  You know what’s better than having one secret identity? Having two secret identities! It was like my new hobby or something. Now I had R. K. Whatchamacallit online and SAM at school. Which was way better than being plain old Rafe Khatchadorian all the time.

  Leo was into it too.

  “We’re famous!” he said.

  “You’re famous,” I told him. “I’m anonymous.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t forget about you when I’m making movies and millions all at the same time.”

  “Better not,” I told him. “You’re going to need me to open a bank account. They only give them to real people.”

  “Good point,” Leo said. “And speaking of good points, was I right about taking it easy, or was I right?”

  “You were right,” I said. “But does Operation: S.A.M. count as taking it easy?”

  “Sure, it’s not causing any trouble, and it might even be doing some good. Sometimes you’ve just got to relax and let the good stuff happen,” he said.

  I couldn’t argue with that. It had been a pretty amazing couple of days.

  BUT…

  BUT…

  BUT…

  There’s one big difference between me and Leo. If things are going well, that’s all that matters to him. Leo doesn’t have to worry about real-life stuff.

  I do. And this is my real life we’re talking about. I didn’t think for a second that everything was just going to keep getting better and better and better to infinity. It doesn’t work that way. No matter how good it’s going, there’s always a Tater Tot somewhere in the chocolate milk, if you know what I mean.

  It’s just a question of how long it takes to float to the surface.

  MAKE A STATEMENT

  The next day in art, Ms. Donatello had a new assignment for us.

  “I want you to think about making a statement with your art,” she said.

  “Huh?” Felicia Tollery said. “I don’t get it.”

  I was glad someone else didn’t.

  “What do you mean, a statement?” I asked. “Like, ‘I’m hungry’?” (Art was right before lunch, and I was starving.)

  “Not exactly,” Ms. D said. “Art isn’t just about images.
It’s also about ideas. It’s about saying something to the world. Maybe even changing the world for the better.”

  Then she showed us some famous examples, so we could see who we weren’t going to live up to on this one.

  The first was a painting called American Gothic. I always think that name sounds like there should be vampires in there, or at least people wearing black and listening to weird music. But it’s more like the opposite—just some farmer and his wife standing in front of a house. (Ms. D said the house was the gothic part, but I didn’t get that either.)

  “It looks like an ordinary portrait, doesn’t it? But the artist, Grant Wood, was also making his own kind of statement,” Ms. Donatello said. “It’s about the strength and dignity of Americans at a difficult time. These people represent survivors.”

  This was the kind of thing we talked about in real art school, when I went to Cathedral and Airbrook. Ms. D kept saying she wanted us to think BIG, and I guess you don’t get much bigger than changing the world.

  The question was—how? What was my statement going to be? And why would anyone care, anyway?

  When I looked up again, there was another slide on the screen. It was a creepy-looking black-and-white painting.

  “What did Pablo Picasso have in mind here?” Ms. Donatello asked. “What statement do you think Guernica is making?”

  And I thought, Good question.

  But then I started to see it. There were faces, and people kind of hidden in that painting. Some of them looked like they were screaming, and some were more like ghosts.

  “They don’t look too happy,” I said.

  “No. They’re not,” Ms. Donatello said. “This painting is about war. Picasso was using his artistic genius to speak out about events in the Spanish Civil War of 1937.

  “So you see, a statement can be quiet, like American Gothic. Or it can be loud and forceful, like the images in Guernica,” Ms. D said. “It can also be just as straightforward as this.”

  “That’s kind of goofy,” Ava Bartlett said.

  “It’s also a classic piece of art,” Ms. D said. “And nobody can mistake Mr. Indiana’s message here, am I right?”

  She showed us some other examples after that, but I already had plenty to think about with this one. Like what my “statement” was supposed to be. And how to say something that was going to “change the world.” And maybe most important of all—what to have for lunch.

  Because who can think about changing the world on an empty stomach?

  TALKING IN CODE

  When I was on my way out of the art room, Ms. D asked me if I had a minute to “talk.”

  “Okay,” I said. But I thought, Uh-oh! Where is this headed?

  “Do you have any ideas for your statement piece?” she asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s a big assignment.”

  “Don’t think about it too much,” she said. “Sometimes it’s very simple. For instance, I think even this ‘SAM’ fellow is making a statement with his art.”

  “You do?” I said. And I thought, UH-OH! I think I know where this is headed.

  “I think he’s saying ‘Art is worth looking at,’” Ms. D said. “But what do you think, Rafe?”

  And I thought, RED ALERT! RED ALERT! WE ARE DEFINITELY UNDER ATTACK!

  “Rafe?” Ms. D said, waving a hand in front of my eyes. “Hello? Anyone there?”

  “Huh?” I said. “Sorry, what?”

  “I was saying that a person can learn a lot from copying the masters like that,” Ms. Donatello told me. “But it’s good to do your own thing too. I just hope ‘SAM’ understands that. Whoever he is.”

  By now, I was about 99.9 percent sure that Ms. Donatello was talking in code, like she was giving me a message. I wasn’t going to confess about my two secret identities—they’re called secret for a reason. But it was pretty obvious she didn’t need me to.

  But she didn’t seem mad. The more I stood there, the more it felt like maybe this wasn’t a red alert. More like orange. Or yellow. Or maybe a green light.

  “Keep setting those sights high, Rafe,” she told me. “Maybe do something a little different for this new assignment. Something nobody’s ever seen before. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.” Because I’m pretty sure that I finally did.

  Ms. Donatello was a good teacher. No—not even that. She was a great teacher. The best.

  That’s what I understood.

  AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL

  That Friday, I was feeling pretty good. I’d done a picture of this painting called Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.1 and put it on one of the school bulletin boards during second period. The Vacu-Stricker 2000 didn’t even make it disappear until sometime during sixth.

  Then school was over. Usually, hearing the dismissal bell on a Friday makes me happier than Junior in a hot dog factory.

  But this Friday, the bell might as well have been an emergency alarm. I could have used a warning about the torture that was about to start, thanks to a one-two combo punch of torture from Mrs. Stonecase and Coach Shumsky.

  It started with our full-team detention. Mrs. Stonecase gave us a whole lecture to get things rolling. She said this was punishment for our “deplorable, pernicious, yet predictable stunt in the cafeteria.” I don’t know what pernicious means, but I’m pretty sure it’s not about being awesome and hilarious with chocolate milk.

  After that, she put us to work. She divided us up and got us washing desks, sweeping the bathrooms, mopping the halls, and organizing the supply closets in the office. The whole thing was about a zero on the fun scale, except for five minutes there when Flip got creative with the school’s tape supply.

  And it wasn’t over yet. As soon as we got out of there, Coach Shumsky was waiting for us. He wasn’t too happy about the whole team getting in trouble, so he made us stay late for a full football practice on top of detention. He even threw in a little extra suffering for good measure.

  And by a little extra suffering, I mean A LOT OF SUFFERING, of course.

  We started off with our usual one-mile warmup. Then we had to do a truckload of wind sprints, a boatload of drills, and a full scrimmage after that.

  Plus, the whole time, Coach kept telling us about what it meant to be “good representatives” of the school, “on and off the field.”

  “Football isn’t just a sport,” he yelled at us. “It’s a way of life!”

  “Yeah, and a way of death too,” Flip said, right before we stumbled through our hundred and forty-eighth wind sprint.

  “If that doesn’t mean anything to you, it should,” Coach kept going. “You boys need to carry the Falcon name with pride, do you hear me? I said… DO YOU HEAR ME?”

  I heard him, I heard him. But right then, it was either run or talk. He couldn’t have both.

  The good news was, we had another game coming up, and everyone thought we had a decent shot at winning. It was against the Belleville Middle School Raiders. Coach said he was going to make sure we were in “peak form” by the time the Raiders rolled into town. But I’m pretty sure that was just code for “Detention Part Two.”

  Still, even though I’d rather have been anywhere else in the world than on that field right then, some little part of me was getting excited about that game. I’d gotten a taste of being good at something that I never in a million years thought I’d be good at, and I wanted more. Maybe I’d get to score another touchdown… or two… or three. And maybe Jeanne would get to see it happen this time. Then the Falcons would get on a roll. We’d just keep winning and winning… and winning… until we were state champions. No, WORLD CHAMPIONS! And if I played it right and got really lucky, it could all be thanks to me! So when I got up there to accept my Heisman Middle School Trophy at the internationally televised World Sports Banquet, I’d look right into those cameras, I’d smile wide, and I’d say—

  “THIS ISN’T A PLAYDATE, KHATCHA-DORIAN! PICK UP THOSE KNEES AND KEEP UP!
DON’T SLOW DOWN NOW, BECAUSE WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED HERE!”

  If Coach Shumsky didn’t kill me first.

  PARTY DOWN

  The good news was, I had a whole weekend to recover from that mega-practice. Not only that, but Quinn’s team party was Saturday night. There were going to be hot dogs and soda, movies in the basement, and a huge ice cream cake in the shape of a football.

  At least, that’s what I told Mom, because that’s what Quinn told me.

  I went with Flip. When we got to Quinn’s house, I could hear music coming from the basement, but the whole upstairs seemed kind of empty. I didn’t see his mom and dad anywhere.

  “Come on down,” Quinn said. “Everyone’s here.”

  “Where are your parents?” I asked him.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  Which started to tell me what kind of party this actually was.

  I’d never been to a real middle school party before. Not unless you count that one lame dance at summer camp—and you shouldn’t. So I was actually kind of nervous and excited on my way down those stairs.

  Well, more nervous than excited.

  Okay… just nervous.

  In the basement, there weren’t too many lights on. The music was up loud and a bunch of people were dancing in a big clump. I saw some guy-shaped shadows and some girl-shaped shadows, but it was too dark to tell who anyone was.

  Quinn told us there were some chips and stuff, so we went for those first. He even had a bunch of cold Zoom, which is my favorite drink.

  “Hey, Flip,” I said, “you want some of this?” But when I turned around, there was just an empty space where Flip used to be. You know how good he is at keeping still, right? He was already out there dancing with everyone, like there was nothing to it.

  The thing is, I’m about as good at dancing as I am at talking to girls. One-legged ostriches have better dance moves than I have.

  Which left me standing by the chip bowl on my own, like a giant flashing LOSER sign.