Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (9 page)

I
have detention. I, Georgia Khatchadorian, straight-A student and Most Outstanding Effort winner, have detention.

This did not compute, not even when I was sitting in Ms. Donatello’s classroom wondering what fresh torture awaited me. What was Rafe going to say?

Come to think of it, he’d probably be
proud
. Ugh!

Ms. Donatello sat behind her desk, looking at me and Sam Marks (Sam is Blond Kid, the random guy who tried to help). Rafe used to call her the Dragon Lady, and I guess she does have a sort of dragonish quality. She seems smart and kind of intimidating. But, also according to Rafe, she’s nice.

I guess she falls somewhere between
Eragon
and… well, Puff the Magic Dragon.

Ms. Donatello interlaced her fingers and looked at me steadily. “Georgia Khatchadorian,” she said, leaning forward slightly. “You’re Rafe Khatchadorian’s sister.”

Wow. She didn’t even use all caps.

“Yes, I am,” I told her. And then, for some unknown reason, I spouted, “Rafe says hi.”

Ms. Donatello smiled. “Hello to him. I understand that you’re so smart you skipped a grade.”

I felt myself blush, and sneaked a look over at Sam, who didn’t seem impressed. “Yeah,” I said.
Then I let out a little snort of embarrassment, which made me feel like an even bigger dork.

“Are you an artist?” Ms. Donatello asked.

“Uh, I like to draw,” I said. I flipped open my notebook and showed her one of my drawings. It happened to be a portrait of Rafe and me—Rafe as a giant blob who’s trying to eat me while I fend him off with a sword and a shield.

Ms. Donatello made a little noise as if she were trying to hold back a sneeze. “I see you have a vivid imagination, Georgia,” she said. She was struggling with her mouth, but I could tell she wanted to smile. “Sam has a vivid imagination too.”

“I’m more of a writer,” Sam admitted. “I can’t draw at all.” His ears turned red.

I wanted to ask him what he liked to write about, but the door flew open. Flames spewed into the classroom. A hideous creature slithered up to Ms. Donatello’s desk. “I see you have the perpetrators,” Mrs. Stricker said.

“The
students
arrived right on time,” Ms. Donatello said. I was starting to see more of her dragon side—the vice principal didn’t intimidate her at all.

“Good,” Mrs. Stricker snapped. “I’ll take over from here.”

“I’m usually in charge of detention, Mrs. Stricker.”

“Not when there’s a Khatchadorian present,” Mrs. Stricker snarled. “I have plans for these two.” She held up something that looked like a cross between a butter knife and a chisel.

“They can scrape the gum off these desks.” Mrs. Stricker smiled. It made her look even scarier than before.

The Dragon Lady huffed out a puff of smoke. I could tell she wanted to say no—but couldn’t. She’d lost this round.

So that’s how I ended up spending detention with Mrs. Stricker standing over me, watching me remove fossilized gum from the bottoms of booger-encrusted desks.

I ask you: Is life fair?

I answer you: Nope.

I’m a good student. I work hard. I try not to break rules.

Rafe is a bad student. He tried to break every rule in the book. And yet when Rafe got detentions, he would draw and chat with Ms. Donatello. She probably brought doughnuts.

If I ever wanted to get out of here, I was going to have to show Mrs. Stricker that I wasn’t a bad kid, like Rafe. I was going to have to get ALL the gum off these desks in record time….

It actually wasn’t that hard to hack them off once I pretended each piece was Rafe’s head.

W
e were halfway through scraping the desks when the school secretary came for Mrs. Stricker. Her husband was on the phone. Surprisingly, Mrs. Stricker dropped everything to go talk to him. Even more surprisingly, someone had married Mrs. Stricker in the first place.

“You two just keep scraping,” Mrs. Stricker said. “I’ll be back to check on you.” She looked right at me when she said that. Then she slithered out the door.

“What did you do to make Stricker love you so much?” Sam whispered once she was gone.

“It’s a case of mistaken identity,” I told him.

“Right.” Sam grinned, like he thought I was joking.

“No, seriously. My brother, Rafe, got detention a lot. So Stricker thinks I must be the same way.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “That’s pathetic.” He chiseled at a chunk of fossilized gum. “But that’s how this place works. They treat everyone the same way—like you’re a juvenile delinquent waiting to happen.”

“Everyone except the Princess Patrol,” I corrected.

“Who?”

“Oh—that’s what I call Missy Trillin and her friends.”

Sam laughed. “I call them the Cheeses.”

“Why?”

“Well, because they’re cheesy. And because they think they’re, like, the Big Cheese. And also because they’re so… fake. Like that bright orange spray cheese.”

“And yet they rule the school.”

“Yeah, Stricker probably wishes we were all like them.”

“She’d turn us into them if she could,” I agreed. I scraped at yet another chunk of gum, but it wouldn’t budge. “Life would be so much easier if I could just fit in,” I admitted.

Sam shrugged. “Easier in some ways,” he agreed. “Harder in others.”

“Harder how?” I asked.

“Fitting in takes a lot of time. Effort. You have to keep trying and trying, and even then it probably isn’t going to stick.” He shrugged. “Why bother?”

I looked at him with a kind of amazement. How did he understand so much? Sam wore jeans and a rugby shirt. His hair was longish and tousled, and he had two deep dimples that showed when he smiled. He looked like the kind of guy who could fit in anywhere.

He smiled at me, and I smiled back.

And that was when it hit me: Detention with Sam Marks was the best thing that had happened to me since I started middle school.

W
e were
jamming
! Detention was over, and the Awesomes were grooving in the garage. We must have been making some amazing noise, because the neighborhood pets were coming to investigate and then howling along. I bet we would have been a hit if we ever got booked to play at the zoo. They say music tames the savage beast, right?

“THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!” Rhonda screeched when the song finished. “CAN I SING WITH YOU GUYS?”

Yes, Rhonda was there. She was standing in front of my garage, waiting, when I got home from detention. True, this afternoon, while we were
playing our now-familiar game of Twenty Questions: Rhonda Edition, I might have mentioned that I had rehearsal today. The funny thing is, I don’t remember inviting her to watch. Did
you
invite her?

No? Why am I not surprised?

Anyway, there she was. And she wanted to sing.

Mari was looking at me with lifted eyebrows, as if to say
She’s
your
friend. What do you think?

Rhonda was doing her very best impression of a puppy begging for a treat. I swear there were tears in her eyes.

“Um, Rhonda, we really need to practice,” I explained.

Rhonda nodded. “OKAY, MAYBE LATER.”