Get with the Program

When I heard that name—Stonecase—I knew right away who she was. This lady was a legend.

“You teach at Airbrook, don’t you?” I said.

“Wrong,” she said. “I used to teach at Airbrook.”

“Oh, right,” I said. Airbrook Arts Community School was gone, gone, gone. Duh. That was what I was doing there.

I’d never met Mrs. Stonecase before, but at Airbrook, they called her the Terror from Room 666. She had a killer reputation and kept a real human skull in a jar on her desk. Supposedly.

“Mrs. Stricker says you have some idea about how Rafe can be re-enrolled?” Mom asked Mrs. Stonecase.

“What I have is an opportunity for Rafe,” she said. “The rest will be up to him.”

She handed Mom some kind of brochure.

“ ‘The Program’?” Mom said, looking at the cover. “What is this?”

“A highly effective one-week intensive program for behaviorally challenged students.” Mrs. Stonecase looked at me like I needed to be scraped off the bottom of her shoe.

In other words, this was something for screw-ups like me. I could only see a little of that brochure, but on the cover it looked like people were doing outdoor stuff, like hiking and rafting.

“Is it a camp?” I asked.

Mrs. Stricker and Mrs. Stonecase laughed. That didn’t seem like a good sign.

“So you’re saying that if Rafe participates in The Program, he’ll be readmitted at the beginning of the school year?” Mom said, using her trying-to-be-patient voice.

“Wrong,” Mrs. Stonecase told her. “We’re saying that if Rafe participates—”

“—and if he completes The Program—” Stricker said.

“—then we’ll consider re-enrolling him,” said Stonecase.

Seriously, these two were starting to creep me out.

But that didn’t even matter. I already knew I had to do this thing, no matter what. Not for my own sake. For Mom’s. She deserved the best. And since I couldn’t give her that, I’d have to give her my best.

Whatever it took.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “And I won’t mess it up. That’s a promise.”

“All right, Rafe,” Mom said, looking at me like she was mad, sad, and proud, all at the same time. “I have to talk with Mrs. Stonecase and Mrs. Stricker a little more about this. Why don’t you wait outside?” She handed me the brochure.

And that’s when I got my first real look at what I had signed up for.

The kids in the pamphlet weren’t hiking. They were marching through the mud. And they weren’t exactly rafting either. It looked to me like they were just trying not to drown. There was also some writing at the very bottom that I hadn’t seen before. It said in boldfaced letters, “The hardest week of your life is about to begin.”

As far as I could tell, that pretty much said it all.

I couldn’t imagine what could be in store for me at The Program. I was kind of used to being a loser, sure, but I might need a miracle or two to make it through this one.

It was time for a little art therapy.