Chapter 2

As a superhero, I always have a plan to get out of tight situations. After twenty minutes of thinking up that plan, I put it into action.

“Let me out! Let me out!” I yell. “Hello? Anybody out there? It’s me . . . Aver—um . . . it actually doesn’t matter who’s stuck in here! Someone is stuck in their locker and needs help!”

I want out, but I also have a reputation to maintain. However, it looks like I don’t have to worry about this embarrassing story getting out. Even though I can see other kids walking by the lockers, no one seems to hear me.

This is when I remember a conversation I had with my dad a couple of nights ago.

“The problem with kids today is they’re not aware of what goes on around them,” Dad said to me. “They’re always staring at their phones or have headphones on that drown out everything else. Kids are tuning out the world and missing out on real life. It’s ridiculous!”

To be fair, I didn’t hear my dad the first time he said this because I was sitting next to him watching a video with my earbuds in. But after Dad nudged me, he repeated himself.

Now I am in a dark locker, remembering his words. Lots of kids just walk past my locker, totally ignoring me. I think Dad might have been on to something.

I see Mark, Luke, and Jordan walk by, but they don’t respond to my shouting either. I used to call them the Terrible Threesome because they played so many pranks on me. Then I invited them all to church, and they came! They might have showed up for the root beer floats, but at least Mark was a lot nicer to me after that.

They do pause for a moment. Jordan even looks right at my locker. But evidently he remembers a joke I had told during the year because he starts laughing. “It’s AB,” he says. “Now that’s funny.”

Luke laughs too, as they walk away.

I really wish I could recall what I said that was so funny. Then I could repeat the joke. But that can wait. Right now, I need to repeat my cries for help—not that I’m crying or anything.

“Help! Help! Please let me out!” I yell.

Why is no one hearing me?

Then it hits me. I need to check the top of my locker to make sure there’s no secret safe. Sure enough, there’s nothing there.

I don’t know why I thought a secret safe might still be a possibility, but seeing for myself that Donny tricked me makes me super mad. I have to get someone’s attention.

I peer through the tiny air slots in the locker door again. That’s when Sarah and Everley walk past. This is my moment!

I press my lips to the air slots and shout, “Girls drool!”

Sarah slowly turns toward my locker and takes a closer look. She must be thinking of the same joke that I told Mark, Luke, and Jordan earlier, because she also bursts out laughing.

“Sarah, can you let me out?” I ask.

“I can’t hear you over all this drooling,” Sarah jokes.

“Come on!” I plead. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

“Well, you’ve definitely got my attention now. How did you get stuck in your own locker?”

Girls sometimes ask the most ridiculous questions. I quickly explain everything. I tell her how I stepped in the locker to make sure it was clean and that there were no secret compartments for storing treasure.

“. . . and that’s when the door slammed and locked me in,” I conclude. (I don’t think she needs to hear about Donny.)

Sarah shakes her head. “Only you could do that, AB,” she says, laughing.

I really wish I could remember what joke I’d told earlier, because it really seems to be making everyone in school laugh a lot.

“What’s your locker combination?” Sarah asks.

“My combination is written on the flip side of my school ID, which is attached to my backpack,” I explain.

“You don’t have it memorized?” she asks.

“I only memorize important stuff, like the cheat codes to Motorcycle Mania and all the important dates from history . . . like last Tuesday when I set a new record on Motorcycle Mania. After that my brain is full.”

Sarah laughs again as she reaches for the school ID that’s clipped to my backpack.

“Why were you eating bread in your school photo?” she asks.

“I wasn’t,” I insist.

“Then why is it so grainy?”

She makes several other jokes about my ID photo which I won’t include here, because I don’t think they were that funny. But she’s still not letting me out.

“What’s the problem?” I ask. “Can’t you open my locker?”

“Of course I can. But first I’d like to hear how girls rule and boys drool.”

“Yeah, and I’d like to hear that I’m better at catching frogs than you or Billy,” Everley adds.

Here’s the deal. Everley is better at catching frogs than me and my best friend, Billy. Also, anyone who looked at my pillow in the morning would know that boys do, indeed, drool. At least at night. Admitting it to these giggling girls isn’t going to be fun, but it seems I have no choice.

“Fine,” I say. “Girls rule and boys drool.”

“And?” Everley prompts.

“And Everley is better at catching frogs than Billy.”

“And you,” Everley adds.

“And you,” I repeat.

“Say it!”

“It!”

The girls turn and start to walk away.

“Everley is better at catching frogs than Billy and me!” I scream.

I lose the fight for self-dignity, but thirty seconds later I’m finally free from my locker!

I collapse to the floor and look up at Everley and Sarah. Girls may totally drool, but sometimes they can be helpful. I start to thank them when the final school bell rings.

It’s officially the end of the school year and the beginning of all my summer plans!

I try getting up, but my legs are asleep. I roll around on the floor like a fish at the bottom of Mr. Polvado’s boat. If you don’t know Mr. Polvado, he lives nearby and he’s the best fisherman in our town—as long as I’m not in town at the same time.

But that’s not important right now. What is important is figuring out why my legs have decided to take a nap when all I want to do is run out of the school building.

“Boys are so weird,” Everley says.

Sarah just laughs. “So, now that you’re free,” she says, “what do you have planned for the summer?”

“Billy and I are going to finally build that tree house we’ve been talking about,” I begin. “Also, I found an antique book from the past that my parents call a ‘phone book.’ It contains the names of almost every person who lives in our town. I’m going to invite everyone to church this summer!”

I decide to leave out the part about my teeth-brushing goal. I’m not completely sold on that one anyway. (I also have a few other plans up my sleeve, but completing them depends on how much time I have and if I can get my hands on a rocket.)

So it isn’t my best start to a summer, but this summer has officially begun. I roll like a log down the hallway—toward the sunlight outside the school doors and into a bright future.

“Hang on,” Sarah says, following behind me. “I get that you climbed into your locker, but how did the door shut and the lock get turned to trap you inside?”

Like I said, girls sometimes ask the most ridiculous questions.