Duncan invited Flinch to stay with his family now that Mama Rosa was in quarantine, but Flinch declined. He didn’t want to be too far away from his grandmother, so he stayed in the Playground on a foldaway cot. Mama Rosa was his only family, and knowing that she was sick kept him up half the night.
He wasn’t alone. Agent Brand drifted from one room of the Playground to another watching Heathcliff and studying the tests the science team had done on the virus. He looked worried and frustrated, but Flinch suspected he wanted to be left alone.
In the morning, Flinch got himself ready for school. Mama Rosa usually made a huge breakfast for the two of them, so it was strange to eat alone. With Ms. Dove’s “no junk food” policy, he decided to load up on sweets before his first class. Mama Rosa would never have allowed him to eat something called Not Really Sugar Smacks, let alone four boxes of it. By the time Flinch was finished with breakfast, he was so wound up, he thought he could see ghosts. But he knew he needed all that sugar to get through the day.
When he got to his first class, he was a sweaty, panting mess. Pushing aside his fears for his grandmother, he took out his books and paper and prepared to take notes. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure in the doorway. Ms. Dove’s eyes were glued on him. He gave her a sheepish smile, wanting her to believe he didn’t mind, but he hated being watched. He knew she would eventually see something she shouldn’t, and the team’s secret would be exposed. He had to find a way to distract her, but his mind was so jumbled with half possibilities that he couldn’t focus. The more he thought about it, the more nervous he grew until he was ready to scream. He squeezed his nose and waited for Brand’s voice.
“What is it, Agent?” the director asked. He sounded tired.
“The principal is staring at me,” Flinch whispered.
“That woman!” Brand growled. “Don’t let her shake you.”
“Please, everyone, would you pass your homework to the front of the class,” his teacher said.
Flinch froze.
“Homework!” he whispered. “I didn’t do my math homework. Aaack! I didn’t do any of my homework. Yesterday I was too busy saving my neighborhood from giant ball-stealing robots and grandmothers with homemade flamethrowers. I went to bed without eating dinner! I didn’t even eat dessert! I never do that!”
Suddenly, his teacher, Mr. Poole, leaned over him. “Who are you talking to, Julio?”
Flinch gulped. “No one, sir. Just taking some mental notes.”
“I see. The only thing I don’t see is your homework.”
Flinch tried to smile. “I didn’t get a chance to do it.”
“You didn’t get a chance to do it?” Mr. Poole turned to the class. “Did anyone else not get a chance to do their math homework?”
The room was silent.
“I see. I wonder why they found time to do it and you didn’t. It’s a mystery. Would you care to explain?”
In a panic, Flinch tried to explain, but he was so hyper it came out as nonsense. “I broke my face on a chili pot and there were monkey pirates invading from the sun!” Then he let out a strangled cry. “Aaarrggggheeeeeee!”
“Agent Flinch, you need to relax,” Brand’s voice said in his ear. “It’s obvious Ms. Dove is after you. She’s told your teacher to give you a hard time to try to get some kind of reaction out of you. Maybe she wants you to say something disrespectful or to make a scene in class so she can have another excuse to send you to detention. Don’t give her the satisfaction.” Flinch looked at the door again. Ms. Dove was hovering there, as if waiting for her turn to smack the piñata with a stick. Brand was right, but it didn’t make Flinch feel better. In fact, he felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“I’m waiting, Mr. Escala!” Mr. Poole said.
“OK, kid, listen up,” Brand said. “I went to boarding school and I know how to handle teachers who spend all their time trying to embarrass you. Just repeat everything I say and say it as sincerely as you can.”
Flinch listened to everything Brand said, and he recited it word for word, as seriously as he could.
“There’s no mystery, Mr. Poole. I didn’t manage my time well last night because I was preoccupied with family issues. I realize that by not doing the assigned work I slow down an ambitious lesson plan and make it harder on my peers to learn. I apologize to you and everyone in class for my lack of commitment and vow that this will not happen again.”
Mr. Poole blinked hard as if he had just seen Bigfoot. His eyes were wide and his mouth seemed to be working out some kind of silent response. Flinch watched him struggle to make a sound. “Very well, Julio.”
Brand’s voice was in Flinch’s ear again. “If you talk to them with respect, they will do backflips for you. A teacher never expects an apology. It works every time.”
Flinch glanced back toward the door. Ms. Dove was still watching him.
When class was over, she followed him to the next one, and then the next, and then the next after that. In each class, Brand told him the right thing to say to the teacher to get him or her off his back. By the time lunch rolled around Flinch noticed that Ms. Dove was losing her smile. In fact, her face was curling up in a scowl fit for a hawk.
Flinch sat at his lonely cafeteria table picking at the chicken casserole surprise the lunch lady had prepared. Though Flinch had hoped the pilot had slipped in some candy corn as the “surprise,” there was nothing there when he got to the bottom of the bowl.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Flinch turned and saw a group of kids standing over him. They were the same four bullies who shoved him into his locker. He mentally prepared himself for a barrage of spitballs or an atomic wedgie. “Listen, guys—”
The boys grabbed some chairs from other tables, including a few that still had kids sitting in them, and sat down next to him, uninvited. A moment later they were all talking at once about a million different things, shouting over one another, and occasionally punching each other in the arm.
“So, that was pretty awesome how you threw us down the hallway,” the red-haired boy said. He had introduced himself as Wyatt.
“Yeah!” his buddy Jessie said, whistling with every word. “I’ve got a huge purple bruise.”
The short boy, who called himself Toad, lifted up the back of his shirt. “Me, too! Mine is shaped like Texas!”
“We’re going down to the train station to throw rocks at pigeons after school if you wanna come,” the chubby one said. His friends called him Hooper.
“You want me to come with you?” Flinch asked.
“Yeah,” Toad said.
“Um, didn’t you guys shove me in my locker the other day?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said.
“You realize that bullies don’t usually hang out with—”
“You think we’re bullies?!” Wyatt exclaimed.
All the boys shouted protests.
“We’re not bullies! We’re juvenile delinquents,” Toad croaked. His voice was much deeper than the others’.
“What’s the difference?” Flinch asked.
“There’s a world of difference!” Hooper cried. “A bully is a moron who has to pull down others to make himself feel big. A juvenile delinquent is an artist!”
“An artist?”
“Absolutely!” Jessie whistled. “We don’t paint or sculpt, but what we create is a masterpiece of havoc, whether it’s stuffing squeezable cheese into your socks or unscrewing the cap on the saltshaker in your favorite restaurant. We’re the Michelangelos of Mischief.”
“You guys are pulling all the school pranks?” Flinch asked. These boys must be the ones running Agent Brand ragged as a janitor. “Aren’t you guys afraid of getting caught?”