COVERT OPS

By the time I left Mr. Crawley’s office, everything had changed. I wasn’t just the new transfer student at Cathedral anymore. Now I was the new troublemaker, as far as he was concerned.

I don’t understand how this keeps happening to me. I’ve never been very good at being good, if you know what I mean, but sometimes it’s like all the trouble in the world is made of metal, and I’m just one big walking magnet. I could change schools every two weeks, and it wouldn’t matter. That permanent record of mine might as well be tattooed across my forehead.

And then, just when I thought my morning couldn’t get any weirder, it did.

I was headed straight up the hall to first period when someone grabbed me from behind. The next thing I knew, I was pulled into some kind of broom closet, the door slammed shut, and everything went pitch-black.

I didn’t wait around for instructions. I just started swinging. I figured if this was Zeke and Kenny, I might as well do as much damage as I could before they got me.

But then I heard “Ow! OW! Cut it out! It’s me—Matty!”

“Huh?” I stopped with my fist in the air. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I wanted to know why you got called to the office,” he said, like it was completely normal to have a conversation in a pitch-dark closet. (And for all I know, it was normal—for Matty.)

“Why do you think?” I said. “Crawley basically knows I dropped those balloons off the roof.”

“Rubber gloves,” Matty said.

“Whatever.”

“And what’d you tell him?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “He couldn’t prove it, so I just kept my mouth shut.”

I don’t know if this will make sense, but I swear I heard Matty smile right there in the dark.

“Awesome,” he said.

“Yeah, for you. Meanwhile, Zeke and Kenny trashed my locker.”

Now I heard him laughing. “Don’t worry about them. There’s still plenty of time for that little war.”

“I don’t want a little war,” I said. “I don’t want any kind of war. I just want to get to first period. Crawley’s going to be watching me like I’m free HBO from now on.”

“Yeah, all right.” Matty cracked the door open and checked the hall for me. “But I owe you one. If you ever change your mind, I’ve got your back.”

It wasn’t until I was walking away that I even realized something good might have come out of this after all.

Unless I was mistaken, I’d just made a real, live human friend for the first time since I started middle school. (And no, Jeanne Galletta doesn’t count. She was my math tutor, for one thing, and she might have been friendly, but we were never friends. At least, not for her.)

Matty said it himself—I’ve got your back.

That has to be worth something, doesn’t it?