RE-REVENGE

The next day at lunch, I took Matty into the computer lab and showed him the fake page Zeke and Kenny had made.

Before you could say “payback,” he already had an idea. He pulled out his notebook right there and started drawing, really fast, the way he always does.

“We’re going to get them back the same way they got you,” he said.

“You mean like another web page?” I said.

“No, something better,” he said. “But when it happens, they’re going to know exactly who did it to them, and they’ll never be able to prove it.”

See, this is why it’s good to have a professional freak on your side. I didn’t even know what Matty’s idea was, and I already liked it.

Meanwhile, he just kept scribbling and drawing, scribbling and drawing.

“So, the junk-sculpture crit is this Friday, right?” he said. “That means Thursday fifth period, everyone’s going to be finishing their sculptures and leaving them in the back of Mrs. Ling’s room.”

“Yeah?” I said. “And?”

“What time does fifth period let out?”

“Eleven forty-five,” I told him, because I always know when lunch is.

Matty wrote Ling and 11:45 on two different parts of the page. That’s when I realized what he was drawing. It was a map of the school. But I still didn’t understand why.

“I’m thinking we’ll need maybe five minutes before Mrs. Ling comes down,” he said, and wrote that too. “Then maybe another three minutes until—”

“Slow down a second,” I said. “You’ve got to catch me up here. What happens at eleven forty-five on Thursday?”

Finally, Matty put down his pen and gave me this look like he was sitting on the world’s best secret. Which he kind of was.

“Just the first professional art-napping in the history of Cathedral School of the Arts,” he said. “That’s all.”