The apartment building hallway smells of curry, and the odor gets stronger and stronger as I hurry past apartment 3F. I want to fling open their door and tell Mrs. Singh, who’s probably inside cooking dinner, “My teacher quit! My teacher quit!”

I imagine running down the entire hall screaming at the top of my lungs.

Someone would probably yell at me to stop running in the halls.

But I can’t say a word, anyway. I’m sworn to secrecy. It’s hard to keep secrets. And yow, yow, yow, do I have an epic secret.

This afternoon was fantastic. We played Eraser Wars, which is a game Seth, Brian, and I made up, and threw Lacey’s book back and forth while she shouted at us to stop. I just laughed, but at the same time I was laughing, a small voice inside my brain kept telling me that this was all too good to be true. Come on! said the voice. You can’t goof off for the rest of the year.

Shut up, I told that voice. Why not? Go away! Let me goof!

We have to keep our traps shut. That’s all, and then nothing will go wrong.

So I march down my apartment hallway without banging on doors and without hollering my secret to everyone in the building.

As soon as I open my door, Nate rams into my leg. “Be careful, little guy,” I say.

My almost-four-year-old brother wears a blue superhero cape but nothing else. He bounces up off the ground and runs into the kitchen, calling, “I’m Captain Nate!”

“You go, superhero,” I say with a laugh.

In the kitchen, two-year-old Leah sits on the floor banging pots and pans. CRASH! BIM! TANG! Nate sits down and joins her in the mayhem.

Mom yells from a back bedroom, “Kyle? Is that you? Can you take out the garbage and put the pizza in the oven for dinner? I’m going to give AJ a bath and then put him to bed!”

I want to ask if she’s taken that promotion yet. When she does, and we move to a bigger apartment, I hope I’ll finally get my own bedroom. I’m sick of sharing one with Nate.

“In a minute!” I yell. I walk back into the hallway and close the front door, which I accidentally left open. Mom hates when I do that. In the family room, my six-year-old sister, Marley, watches cartoons. “Move over, Squirt,” I tell her.

She frowns but wiggles over.

I drop my backpack on the floor. For the first time in forever there is no homework inside it, and no tests to study for. I spread my arms and smile. This is how prisoners must feel when they are let out after months or years of being locked away.

Freedom! I lean back on the couch.

“Twenty years!” cried the judge. The crook sobbed, “You’re too cruel.”

The judge shrugged. “Could be worse. I could send you to school.”

On the television screen, Squiggle Cat gets poked in the eye. He yells, “Yow! Yow! Yow!” I stretch out my legs and laugh.

The show is an hour long, with lots of short episodes. Each is funnier than the last one.

“How long until the pizza’s done?” Mom yells from a bedroom.

When I hear my mom, I sit up. The pizza. Dinner. “I’m starting it now!”

I spring off the couch.

Back in the kitchen, Leah and Nate have grown bored with pot banging and are hitting the floor with a pair of wooden spoons. Leah hits my leg with the spoon, and I growl at her, like a bear. I raise my arms as if they are claws and bend down. “Roar!” She laughs and hits me again with the spoon.

I suppose she thinks I’m more the teddy bear than the grizzly bear type. I doubt most of the kids in school would agree with her, though.

A commercial blares from the family room television. I need to get the pizza in the oven and my butt back on the couch fast. I don’t want to miss the show.

I take the pizza from the freezer. The directions are on the box. Preheat the oven. Put in the pizza. Set the timer.

Easy.

I turn on the oven and then—

Wait. Stop. Take a breath.

Mom needs two chores done. What was the other one?

The garbage. Right.

The trash smells like it hasn’t been emptied in days. Then I remember that Mom asked me to do it yesterday, but I forgot.

“The show is back on!” Marley says from the family room.

“Yow, yow, yow!” yells Squiggle Cat.

I’m a blur of action. I grab the garbage bag and heave. The top of the plastic bag tears, but I slide it out, anyway. I cram the pizza carton inside, although it doesn’t fit so well. But it’s only garbage. It doesn’t have to look neat.

“You’re missing the show!” yells Marley.

“I know!” I holler back.

The garbage chute is all the way at the other end of the hallway, so I’ll walk the trash down later. After dinner. Or after that.

I place the bag in the hallway. Then I hurry back to the kitchen, toss the pizza in the oven, set the timer for exactly eighteen minutes, and bang, bang, I plop back on the couch just as Squiggle Cat gets poked in the eye. “Yow, yow, yow!” he screams.

It’s a funny show. Marley and I roll over on the couch, laughing. I close my eyes to take a short, happy nap.

“What’s that smell?” Mom asks a few minutes later. Or maybe it’s a lot later. I pop open my eyes. A strong, burning plastic stink streams from the kitchen. The oven timer is buzzing.

Mom dashes through the hall and into the kitchen. Then she’s yelling words that, if I said them, would get me grounded for a week. I jump up from the couch and peek into the kitchen.

Smoke swirls and it would probably set off our smoke alarm if I had changed the batteries like Mom asked a few weeks ago. The new batteries still sit on the counter, a daily reminder to put them in, which I always swear I’ll do later. Mom removes the pizza from the oven, melted plastic merging with cheese, and tosses it into the sink.

I was supposed to unwrap the plastic film from the pizza before I put it into the oven.

But the directions didn’t say that! At least, I don’t think they did.

The timer is still ringing, and Mom turns it off. I think it must have been going off for a long time. The buzzer is hard to hear over the TV when you’re napping.

“All I ask is for a little help!” Mom yells at me. And yells and yells, as if I’m not good for anything.

I was trying to help.

And then Leah, who’s sitting on the floor gnawing on her wooden spoon, starts crying.

Mom stops screaming and bends down, wrapping little Leah in a big hug. “Look what you’ve done!” she snaps at me, although it was her shouting that made little Leah cry.

I stomp back to the family room, where Marley’s still watching TV. I walk with loud, angry stomps. I bet our neighbors downstairs can hear me, their ceiling shaking under my footsteps.

I just wish I could snap my fingers and be back in school. My friends don’t act like I’m good for nothing. They don’t care if I can’t follow a few stupid directions.

Now, without a teacher, I won’t have to worry about following directions in school again, anyway. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.

Without a teacher, we won’t have any rules, which sounds perfectly awesome to me.