Middle School: Get Me Out of Here!

Every masterpiece comes at the end of a long line of failures.

People always talk about how great it is to get older. All I saw were more rules and more adults telling me what I could and couldn't do, in the name of what's " good for me." Yeah, well, asparagus is good for me, but it still makes me want to throw up.

Now, like all the other schools I’ve ever attended, the hallways of Long Beach Middle School are plastered with all sorts of NO BULLYING posters. There’s only one problem: Bullies, it turns out, don’t read too much. I guess reading really isn’t a job requirement in the high-paying fields of name-calling, nose-punching, and atomic-wedgie-yanking.

That’s right: Never underestimate the power of a good laugh. It can stop some of the fiercest middle-school monsters.

Excuse me, sir, you got dog poop on your shoe.

This was the weird part with me and Miller. We both hated each other, but even more than that, he wanted my money and I wanted my notebook back. Neither of us had said anything about it to Stricker, even when we both got suspended. It was like middle school Mafia or something.

The next forty-five minutes in that office was about as much fun as a day at Disney World—when it’s pouring rain. And all there is to eat are hot-dog buns. And you get electrocuted on the rides.

Thirsty?” I said, trying to stay cool. “You know, this is totally against the rules,” she said. “That makes it taste better,” I said. (Good line, right?) Jeanne

I’M RAFe KHATCHADORiAN, TRAGiC HeRO I

that kid’s nothing but a little hoodlum.

Five minutes,” I said, and walked away, but my heart was still going just as fast as before. This was only half over. Was it five minutes until I pulled this off? Or five minutes to live?

It’s just you, your homework, and the homework room. All. Day. Long. I turned thirteen in that room. Winter ended, and then spring came and went. Wars happened. Trees grew. Babies were born and people died.

That’s me, by the way, arriving at “prison”—also known as Hills Village Middle School—in

I may have been dressed as a falcon, but I’ll tell you what. I felt like the biggest

Here are some other people I don’t trust as far as I can throw a truckload of pianos.

Rafe jumped Miller!” Gabe said. The problem was, it was true. There were about three dozen witnesses.

It feels as honest as the day is crummy that I begin this tale of total desperation and woe with me, my pukey sister, Georgia, and Leonardo the Silent sitting like rotting sardines in the back of a Hills Village Police Department cruiser.

What?” says Kosgrov. “You think I won’t lay you out just because you’re stuck in a wheelchair, funny boy?” “Yeah,” I say. “Pretty much.” Turns out I’m pretty wrong.

Who cares?” I told him. “I’m already in trouble. Keep talking.

Stevie Kosgrov punched me just like I was a regular, normal kid

Okay? Now you know all this stuff about me, and I still don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know if you’re still there. Are you? And if you are, can I trust you with the rest? I still want to know—are you a good person? Maybe that’s not fair of me to ask, since I haven’t even figured out whether I’m a good person or not. I guess you can be the judge. Here’s the deal. If you’re okay with me so far, then keep reading. But if you’ve gotten this far and you think I’m the lowest of the low and I don’t deserve to have my own book, then maybe you should stop right now. Because it only gets worse from here. (Or better, depending on how you look at it.) Signed, your friend (?), RK

I can see why you, sir, are the champ. You bully without regard to race, religion, creed, national origin, or physical abilities. You are an equal-opportunity tormentor.

family we choose. You don’t know how lucky I am that Pierce and Gaynor chose me. These two guys are awesome. The best.

Mom and Bear got into a big fight that afternoon when she told him what had happened. He kept yelling about how she wasn’t “hard enough” on me, and she kept telling him to back off. I just stayed in my room, wishing for it to be over. Finally, Mom said something about how she was late for work, and she slammed the door on her way out.

Now, I don’t know if you can appreciate this without actually knowing her, but getting Mrs. Stricker to laugh is like getting an octopus to stand up on two legs.

pay somebody to go to school for me.

alarm box, and put my finger on the little white

she told me, and now she was just annoyed. By the time I said

All teachers who were telling everyone where to go were wearing outfits made of aluminum foil , like robot aliens .

I mean Zeke McDonald and Kenny Patel, the left and right butt cheeks of Cathedral School of the Arts.

TWENTY-TWO HOURS AND FORTY-NINE MINUTES LATER (NOT THAT I WAS COUNTING OR ANYTHING) To:

My father left when I was four and Georgia was two. That was about a year after Leo died. Once he was gone, we never heard from him again. End of story.

I could have farted out loud, and it would have been less embarrassing than the silence. Finally,

Twenty-three thousand years ago, someone created this image on the wall of a cave,” Mr. Beekman said. “Now, who do you suppose was the artist here?” “Was it you?