MEANWHILE, BACK IN my locker, nothing’s happening. I can see people walking by, but nobody stops. Nobody even lifts a finger.

“Hello?” I say again. “Hello? I know y’all hear me. Dang…”

Then the door opens and Arthur’s standing there.

“Let’s go eat,” he says.

That’s it. Arthur knows what it’s like. The last thing you want to do after something like this is talk about it. So we just head on down to the Sugar Shack and find a couple of seats.

I’m not hungry, so I skip the line. Arthur busts out his chess set and the lunch he brought from home. His dad’s a porter at some fancy Chinese restaurant. Today, he’s got doggie-bag chicken and an egg roll he breaks in half for me, but I don’t want that, either. I just want to get this day over with.

So when Ray-Ray Powell and his girlfriend Preemie come sniffing around, I am seriously not in the mood.

“What up, y’all?” Ray-Ray says.

I just ignore him. Arthur does, too.

“You deaf?” Preemie says. She’s the only white girl at our school, and probably one of the shortest, too. I have no idea why she hangs with Ray-Ray. She just does. She’s from Chevy Chase, one of the whitest parts of the Maryland/DC area, and her pops was a crazy-rich lawyer. They fell on hard times somehow and her parents got divorced, and now her mom sells shoes at the mall. Sometimes it goes down like that.

“You can keep moving, Ray-Ray,” I tell him. “We don’t have anything for you to eat, all right?”

“You sure about that?” Ray-Ray says, and steps in.

I can see it coming a mile away. He’s going to try and take another hostage, so I put my arms over the chessboard to stop him.

But there’s too many pieces to protect. Ray-Ray snakes his own skinny arm in there and pulls a white bishop and a knight off Arthur’s home row. Then he steps back, grinning like a fool.

Now, if I was Stainlezz Steel, we all know what would happen next. Ray-Ray would be straight molly-whopped.

But I’m not Steel. I’m just me. And to be honest, I’m getting pretty tired of being me. I’m up to there with Ray-Ray, and Tiny, and the Quaashies, and detention, and all of it.

So maybe that’s why I snap—like a one-eyed man with a busted telescope.

“You want something to eat?” I say. “Eat this!”

Then I pick up that half an egg roll and wing it right at Ray-Ray’s head. Some of it gets on his shirt, but most of it goes on the floor. (I don’t have a rocket for an arm. You’ll never mistake me for RGIII.)

Ray-Ray looks at me like he can’t believe it. So do Arthur and Preemie. Even I can’t believe it.

“Ohh, boyyy—shouldn’t a done that,” Preemie’s saying. She’s got her hand over her mouth, and her eyes are all lit up like she can’t wait for whatever’s going to happen next.

I’ve never seen Ray-Ray really mad before. My heart’s thumping like an 808 bass drum. So I throw my hands up to block anything coming my way.

When he comes in swinging, I jump out of the way. But it’s not me he’s after. It’s the chessboard. His arm sweeps the whole thing off the table and everything goes flying—the pieces, the board, my backpack, and Arthur’s lunch.

It makes a big noise, and it even quiets down the cafeteria—for about three seconds. Everyone looks like they’re expecting a fight. But then they see it’s just me and they go back to their business.

Everyone except for Dr. Yetty. She comes out of nowhere and swoops down on our table.

“What is the meaning of this display?” she says, looking all heated.

“Kenny threw food at me!” Ray-Ray yells.

“He took our chess pieces,” Arthur says.

“Ray-Ray didn’t do nothing,” Preemie’s saying. “Ray-Ray didn’t do nothing, Dr. Y.”

But Dr. Yetty isn’t listening to Preemie. She’s staring at me, and then at Ray-Ray, and then at me again. It’s like sitting under a heat lamp, the way she looks at us.

“Both of you—Raymond and Kenneth. Clean up this mess. And then I want you to report straight to the office, toot sweet!” she says.

I don’t know what toot sweet means, but it can’t be good. Before all this, I’d never been sent to the principal’s office for anything. Now I’m two for two and the school year’s just getting going.

I’m starting to think maybe this place is bad luck.

No, scratch that. I know it’s bad luck.