I held my nose closed from the musty stench of the recently flooded, old building as Dickerson led me into his office on Thursday morning. He’d personally come to my first-hour class to escort me. That was never a good sign.

“What happened to your face?” he said as he sat down.

“Oh, just a joke some friends played on me,” I said, trying to sound casual. The ink had started to fade, thankfully, but it was still plenty visible.

I could tell from Principal Dickerson’s expression that he didn’t find the “joke” very funny at all. In fact, he was disgusted by it.

“I knew you hadn’t changed,” he said.

“But I didn’t do this!” I said, pointing at my face. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know what sorts of gang rituals you kids have these days. So who knows?”

“Gang rituals?” I said. “Mr. Dickerson, I never—”

“I know you’re up to something again, Christian,” he interrupted. “Those pipes didn’t burst on their own. That red ink didn’t just come from nowhere. Not to mention the whole fleet of school buses getting their tires slashed. Do you have any idea how much all of this has set us back? We’re going to have to lay off some teachers! Do you really want that on your conscience? If you even have one?”

“I swear I had nothing to do with this!” I said, which wasn’t entirely true.

“Why would I ever believe you anymore?” he said.

I didn’t know how to answer that convincingly so I just shrugged.

“Well, just know this, Christian. The school board determined that the pipe incident was ‘accidental,’ even though I know better. But I’m telling you, the next time anything, and I mean anything, ‘funny’ happens around here like the red-ink locker bay incident that I know was a deliberate act, you’re taking the fall for it. And you’ll be expelled immediately. Vince, too.”

“But you can’t just . . . I mean, you need proof!”

“Not when a student has a history like yours, I don’t,” he said.

I could see, thankfully, that he was taking no pleasure in this. In fact, it was likely that his hands were tied. I mean, considering what our school had been through, he was probably under a ton of pressure from the Higher-Up Suits to put an end to this type of activity here. And so his hand was being forced. I could hardly blame him, even as unfair as it was.

“I haven’t been doing any of this, though,” I pleaded.

“One. More. Incident. That’s it, dismissed.”

I got up and left feeling pretty helpless. I mean, now my choices were:

Do nothing, wait for another attack, and then get expelled.

Fight back, underestimate Kinko once again, and get the snot beat out of me by Sue and Michi Oba and then Staples, and then probably get expelled for good measure.

Start working for Kinko like she’d asked and then definitely get expelled and probably get the snot beat out of me afterward for kicks.

Beg for mercy.

And so, at lunch that day Vince and I went to the computer lab to type an email to Kinko. Option four was about all we had left. Vince was a much better writer, so he helped me, and together we came up with what I thought was a pretty professional and thoughtful email.

In it we explained to Kinko my predicament, explained how badly she had crippled the school. Expressed that we all knew she was superior. But that doing anything further wouldn’t ever get me to work for her. All it would do was ruin the school year of a bunch of kids and maybe even the lives of some teachers. And then at the end we hinted that if any further action was taken against us, we’d have nothing else to lose by waging war right back. I thought, all things considered, that she’d be stupid not to accept the truce. It made perfect sense to me. She really had nothing more to gain by continuing this any further.

We clicked Send.

Now all we could do was wait.

After school Vince and I went back to the computer lab. iBully was there, as usual, working on some top-secret coding project. I nodded at him, and he flicked a quick wave in my direction, never taking his eyes off the screen.

I logged into my email and saw the reply right away. Kinko had replaced the subject line with a smiley-face emoticon.

“Vince, I think she went for it!” I said.

Vince grinned and nodded. “Well, what are you waiting for, open it!”

I clicked the email. Instantly my computer screen turned blue. In fact, all of the screens in the lab did. Then words started flashing on the screen in bold green letters, one at a time.

 

YOU

ARE

GOING

DOWN

PUNK

!!!!!!!

LOVE,

KINKO

 

On the last screen with her name on it there were also hearts and smiley faces and an animated flower that was dancing on the back of a unicorn.

This had happened on every computer in the lab. Then the screens all flashed black, and a white animated skull appeared and it looked like it was laughing. Then everything went dark.

“Holy, Mac. She sent a virus to the whole school!” Vince said.

iBully wheeled his chair over, looking panicked.

“No, no, no, that’s not possible,” he said as he started typing frantically at my computer. “I set up all the extra security myself. The system was hack-proof . . . well, except by me, of course.”

iBully sat there and typed madly for at least fifteen minutes, the whole time muttering technical mumbo-jumbo to himself like, “Wire access net compromised” or “Cnet drive isn’t found; how is that possible?” or “Server failure at code zero zero seven?”

Of course I had no idea what he was saying, but all in all it didn’t sound good.

It must have affected the whole school, because by that time the school’s computer teacher and tech guy, Mr. Kilmer, was in the lab, watching iBully go. Even he knew that iBully was the only person who could possibly fix this.

iBully was able to get the screen from pitch-black to blue with some text on it and eventually to a green screen with some text, but in the end he never could get it back to a normal Windows screen. After twenty minutes more he pushed back from his table and looked at us, dazed.

“They did it,” he said.

“What?” Mr. Kilmer demanded. “Did what?”

“They took us out,” iBully said. “I’ve never seen work so advanced. They wiped out the whole system. All my years of hard work, gone, all of it. Backup servers, too. It’s all gone forever.”

He got up slowly. He stumbled toward the door, barely able to walk.

Mr. Kilmer went after him. “Wait, wait, what do you mean? It’s all gone? Grades, school records, all of it? Are you sure they got to the backup servers? How is that possible?”

I saw iBully nod slowly as they exited the computer lab. I looked at Vince. He looked at me.

For once, there was nothing to say.