MINE

As soon as the bell rang for the end of class, I started looking for a safe exit.

I looked at the ceiling tiles. Any way of leaving straight up? Nope. And I definitely couldn’t dig my way out. In fact, there was only one way to leave the fishbowl, and that was through the library.

So I tried to make it quick and kept my eyes down. Like that was ever going to work.

Miller slid his chair right in my way—with him in it, of course.

“What’s up, Khatchadorkian?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said. Mostly I was wondering—if Miller killed me right now, but he did it really quietly, would Mrs. Seagrave even care?

The first thing he did was tap his pencil on Tug’s computer, with my Loozer comic sitting there on the screen.

“I always knew you were a loser,” he said. “I just didn’t know you’d made it official.”

There wasn’t any time to come up with a plan, so I went with my old standby: deny, deny, deny, deny, deny.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I told him.

“I mean…” Miller pointed back at his own computer, with that BNICE picture on it. “It looks to me like you’ve been busy. And I don’t remember giving any permission to have someone spying on me and taking pictures.”

I felt like a tree that had been chopped down and hadn’t fallen over yet. But Miller would be fixing that real soon, thanks to his gigantic fists.

But then I heard someone behind me. It was Flip.

“Actually, Miller, those are my pictures,” he said. “I took them.”

“Huh?” I said. I turned around and Flip was holding up his phone.

“See?” he said.

“Hang on a second,” Miller said. But then—

“No, they’re mine,” Maya said. She was standing behind Flip, along with Jonny and Dee-Dee.

“Yeah, right!” Tug said.

“Wrong again. They’re my pictures,” Dee-Dee said. “I did them on my iPad.”

“Obviously those were all done by me,” Jonny said. “Anyone can see that.”

Miller looked at Tug, and Tug looked at Miller.Then both of them looked from me to Flip, to Maya, to Dee-Dee, and to Jonny. You could have heard a tumbleweed blow through that library just then.

So while Miller was still picking his jaw up off the ground, we all booked out of there. I knew I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but it bought me a little time, anyway.

“Wow,” I said, once we were in the hall. “Thanks, you guys.” I couldn’t believe what had just happened.

Except, I could too.

“That was awesome!” Flip said.

“Miller’s still going to be mad,” I said. “Really mad.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he told me, but Flip never worries about anything. “Come on, you guys. Let’s go eat lunch. Chocolate milk’s on Rafe!”

They all headed for the cafeteria, but I hung back. I’d just figured out that I had another stop to make.

“You guys go ahead,” I said, and I gave Flip some money out of my pocket. “Get started without me.”

“Save you a seat?” Maya said.

“Um… I’m not sure,” I told them.

Because where I was going now, it was hard to say when I’d be coming back.