ONE MORE SURPRISE. Guess what we have at Union Middle School now?

Chess club! We’re doin’ it big at Union now, baby. Yeah, seriously. It was my, Arthur’s, and Ray-Ray’s idea. Anyone who stays after school for detention or whatever, and wants to, can come down the hall and learn chess for an hour. G-ma even paid for some extra chess sets, so we’re all good to go.

Of course, that means I’m hanging with the D-Squad a lot more than I was before. And those are the ones I spent the whole beginning of sixth grade trying to stay away from!

But here’s the thing. Tiny, and Kwame, and Jerome, and all of them still think I have some secret rep. Like I’m connected to the streets somehow. The way they look at me, they’re not even sure I didn’t have something to do with sending Nicky Powell to jail. And let’s just say that whatever those guys don’t know won’t hurt them.

No, wait. More like whatever they don’t know won’t hurt me.

So am I going to let them know that I’m just a mild-mannered, easy-to-get-along-with chess geek who’s still almost as scared of them as I always was?

Yeah, right. Do I look crazy to you?

I didn’t think so. And while I’m keeping it one-hundred, I’m really not as scared of them as I once was. I don’t even sweat it, really. They’re just a bunch of regular kids, just like I am. I mean, they may have a few rough edges, but we’re really not all that different.