PHASE TWO

Phase Two was all about making art. When I got home, I had a hundred and three pictures on Grandma’s phone. Most of them were garbage shots, but eleven weren’t bad, and eight of those were good enough to use.

Mom says that’s how art works: “Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks.” I guess that means eight of them were sticking. So I loaded those onto the computer and used the painting tool to do my thing.

First, I colored in the people so they were just silhouettes. I used red for the bullies and green for the kids they were messing with. That way you couldn’t tell who anyone was, but you could still see what was going on.

I put some more “statement” in there too. Ms. Donatello had asked us to think about what our art was going to say to the world, and my idea was short and sweet: Be nice. In fact, I made it even shorter than that.

Once I finished my pictures, I posted them on their own page at Art-Gunk.com. I made a whole separate account for this, so it wouldn’t have anything to do with my Loozer comics or R. K. Whatchamacallit. This was supposed to be a stealthy-anonymous, Secret Artist Man thing.

The complicated part was, I couldn’t be stealthy-anonymous and get credit for the art.But by now, this whole thing was like a car running downhill with no brakes. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. I’d figure out the Donatello stuff later.

I wasn’t done yet either. The pictures on Art-Gunk were my “statement piece,” but I still needed people to know where to find them. I mean, what good is a statement if nobody’s listening? That’s what Phase Three was all about.

And I had a plan for that too.

The next day was game day, and I mean that in two ways. After school, it was going to be the HVMS Falcons against the Belleville Raiders. But it was also game time for me. There was going to be a big pep rally in the gym, right after lunch. That was when I had to be ready.

All I needed in the meantime was a bunch of notebook paper, a big fat marker, a glue stick, a little bit of luck, and a few stealthy moves at school, just before the pep rally.

No problem. SAM 2.0 was on the case.