The blacktop is lighted, but once we reach the running track, we have to use our phones to see in the inky darkness. The sandpit is in the middle, where the jumping events are held, but we have trouble finding it until Nathan stubs his toe and falls face-first into it. He comes up, spitting sand.

  We start to dig. What a mess! It rained last night, so under the surface layer of dry sand is pure mud. If we weren’t so frantic, we wouldn’t be pelting each other with dirt. But it’s dark, so we can’t see where our shovels are throwing. Plus we’re in a hurry to get this over with quick so we can sneak back into the dance to pretend we were never gone.

  “Do you think it’s deep enough yet?” Nathan pants.

  I shine my phone light into the hole. “It’ll have to do.” I drop my shovel and pick up the cape-bundle containing the broken trophy pieces—and a large hand grabs my wrist.

  “Now, what have we here?” asks a deep, snarky voice from behind me.

  Several phones shine on Nathan and me, lighting us up in the sandpit. Five hulking high school guys surround us, close and menacing.

  “N-nothing!” I stammer. “We’re just—digging.”

  “Dude, they’re burying their candy!” exclaims the biggest of the five. “How stupid can you get? The ants’ll eat it!”

  “Correction”—the first kid shakes his head—“I’m going to eat it.” He rips the bundle from my hands.

  “But it isn’t candy—” Nathan begins.

  Laughing and trading high fives, they shove us into the pit and kick sand and mud all over us. With a chorus of “So long, suckers!” and “Eat dirt!” and “Happy Halloween!” they run off into the night, waving the bundle of trophy pieces triumphantly over their heads.

  We crawl back onto the grass, spitting sand and grime.

  “Now what are we going to do?” Nathan laments.

  “Nothing,” I decide. “We came out here to disappear that trophy, and it’s gone.”

  We pick ourselves up off the ground, grab the shovels, and begin to trudge back to the school.

  “I’m never going to forgive you for this, man,” Nathan says bitterly. “This is the worst night of my life!”

  “I’ll bet I can make you smile,” I retort.

  “I may never smile again!” he seethes.

  “Just picture those high school jerks opening up the cape expecting to find it full of candy.”

  By the time we make it back to the school, we’re both snickering.

  We head straight to the gym, slip inside, and immediately melt into the crowd. To our enormous relief, nobody seems to have noticed we were missing. How could they? The Halloween dance is shaping up into one of the greatest middle school bashes of all time. The sound system is cranked up so loud that the basketball nets are vibrating with the pounding bass. So many kids are dancing that the floor is actually moving under our feet. Stinky gyrates atop one of the giant speaker towers, punching the air with his half-crushed fish in time with the beat. Sweat runs down from his hairline, washing the ME on his forehead into his bushy unibrow.

  Nathan elbows me in the ribs, his horror evident through the eyeholes of his mask.

  “What’s the problem?” I ask. “Nobody saw us come in.”

  “The shovels!” he hisses. “We’ve still got the shovels!”

  I stare at the muddy implement in my hands. Oh man, talk about an amateur mistake. In all the excitement of getting jumped by those high school kids, we forgot to put back the shovels and pick up our scythes.

  “We can fix it!” I begin. “We’ll go back to the custodian’s closet—”

  At that moment the music dies abruptly, and the deejay shines a spotlight on Mrs. Arnette. “All right, people! We’ll get back to the music and the fun, but right now, I want everybody to line up for the Best Costume contest!”

  Nathan gestures desperately in the direction of the exit. I shake my head. It’s too late to slip out unnoticed now. All we can do is join the slow parade past the judges and hope nobody notices that two Grim Reapers are carrying shovels instead of scythes.

  As we make our way into the long queue, the deejay brings up the lights in the gym, and that’s when I get my first good look at myself and Nathan. Our robes are covered in sand and dirt, and every step rains grime. Heart sinking, I try to walk in Nathan’s footsteps to avoid leaving a second set of muddy prints on the parquet floor.

  As we shuffle along the line, Coach Gilderoy scorches me with a furious glare. His specialty is basketball, and the polished gym floor is his pride and joy. I sense that the first chance he gets, he’s going to sentence us to ten thousand push-ups in PE.

  The three judges are Mrs. Arnette, Mrs. Berg, and Mr. Aidact. Since basically every kid in school is in costume, it takes twenty minutes for us all to make our way past the judging table. When we finally get there, Nathan tries to hide his shovel in the folds of his robes. I take the opposite approach, holding it over my head in triumph. If I have to be stuck with a shovel, I’m going to act like I’m supposed to have it. Never let the teachers see you look guilty—especially when you’re guilty as sin. The lady judges make notes, but not Mr. Aidact, who just peers at us with those intense eyes.

  At last, the viewing is over, and the music comes back on while the three judges confer. I grab Nathan and drag him out onto the dance floor. Not that I have any interest in dancing, but it’s a good way to escape Mr. Aidact’s steady blue gaze. We sidle over to Rosalie. She’s dancing with Kevin, who’s wearing a bushy white wig—Marie Curie and Albert Einstein. Classic Kevin, always pretending to be the genius he’s not.

  “Great party, Rosalie!” I call. “Your mom really pulled it off!”

  Instead of saying thank you, she frowns with suspicion. “What’s up with the shovels?”

  “Yeah,” Kevin chimes in. “What are the shovels for?”

  Some of the dust from my robes finds its way up Kevin’s nose, and he lets out a mighty sneeze. His big wig topples off his head and Nathan catches it neatly with his shovel.

  “That’s what the shovels are for,” I supply, deadpan.

  “But didn’t you guys have scythes when you got here?” Rosalie persists. “Grim Reapers carry scythes.”

  The general buzz of conversation covers our silence as kids speculate on their favorites to win the contest.

  One voice asks, “Hey, does anybody else smell fish?”

  I sniff. He’s right. I guess Stinky’s un-costume has finally started to defrost—although the fishy odor isn’t very noticeable amid the sweat and Axe body spray.

  Just then the music cuts out and Mrs. Arnette grabs the microphone again. “The judges have come to their decision! The winners of the best costume contest are—the two gravediggers!”

  There’s a smattering of applause, but mostly, a confused murmur ripples through the gym. Gravediggers? What gravediggers? I admit I haven’t been here for a lot of the dance, but I’ve had a pretty good look around. I definitely don’t see any gravediggers.

  “The attention to detail in these costumes is impressive,” Mrs. Arnette goes on. “The dirt on their shovels and even on their robes—you really believe they’ve been digging—”

  That’s when the deejay’s spotlight shines on Nathan and me.

  “Come on up, gravediggers, and take a well-deserved bow!”

  Luckily, our ovation covers the sound of Kevin’s big mouth: “But I thought they’re supposed to be Grim Reapers!”

  Because nobody sold any Flaxplosion bars, there wasn’t enough money to buy a prize for the contest winners. So guess what we win—the unsold Flaxplosion bars. One carton each. Contents: 144 units.

  Sometimes with these school contests, it’s hard to tell the winners from the losers.

  But the real prize will come later, when eight hundred kids head home from the dance and log into the seventh-grade chat. There they’ll find our video of Rule 24-B, totally wrecked.

  12

  Nathan Popova

  November starts off in the auditorium for an emergency assembly.

  “I wonder what this is about,” Kevin comments as Mr. Aidact and Mr. Perkins lead us to our seats. “Whatever they have to say—why didn’t they tell us when we were all together at the dance last night?”

  “Didn’t you see the seventh-grade chat?” Ainsley challenges. “That Batman on the Big Wheel?”

  Seems to me Oliver would have the brains to keep his mouth shut after all the yammering he’s done about Rule 24-B. Think again.

  “Yeah, but who was Batman?” he muses. “There was no Batman at the Halloween dance.”

  The Oliver Alert is pulsing through my entire body. It makes my stomach hurt—or maybe that’s the Flaxplosion bar my mother made me have for breakfast. Only 143 to go.

  “It can’t be the Big Wheel thing,” Rosalie argues. “Surely nobody cares about that old rule—not enough to drag eight hundred kids out of class the morning after the biggest party of the year.”

  “Quiet, everyone.” Mr. Aidact settles us down. “Here comes Principal Candiotti.”

  The principal stalks to center stage with a look on her face like a judge about to sentence a convicted ax murderer. “Last night,” she begins, her voice under tight control, “a terrible crime was committed against the entire Brightling community.”

  A perplexed murmur buzzes through the student body.

  “I get that Big Wheels are against the rules,” Kevin whispers. “But since when is it a ‘terrible crime’?”

  “While most of us were in the gym, dancing and having fun,” the principal goes on, “somebody stole the state championship field hockey trophy from its pedestal in front of the office!”

  Oliver and I don’t dare look at each other. So that’s what this is really all about—not the Big Wheel, the trophy. Her trophy! We should have known!

  The principal rakes her students with eyes of flame. “A trophy is more than wood and brass. It represents greatness—not just from long ago, but the greatness we can all achieve if we apply ourselves and work together. It’s the very best of Brightling Middle School, yesterday, today, and all the tomorrows still to come!”

  My cheeks feel so hot that you could fry an egg on me. Every word out of Mrs. Candiotti’s mouth is another knife-thrust between my ribs. I risk a quick glance at Oliver. My partner in crime radiates newborn-baby innocence. How does he do that?

  “There can never be an excuse for this unforgivable act,” the principal continues. “But because this trophy means so much to all of us, if it is returned to its pedestal, there will be no questions asked.”

  That might be the worst part of all—because I know something Mrs. Candiotti doesn’t: there is no trophy; there are only pieces of trophy. And who knows where those pieces are? When the teenagers who stole them opened up the Batman cape and didn’t find candy, they probably just tossed everything in a garbage can somewhere or dropped it down a sewer. This is an ex-trophy!

  After the assembly, we’re on our way back to homeroom, marching behind Mr. Perkins’s giant briefcase, when we pass the lost-and-found box in front of the cafeteria. Sitting on top of the usual assortment of sneakers, gym clothes, raincoats, and binders is the purple-and-pink Big Wheel.

  “Now, that’s annoying,” Oliver murmurs beside me. “We go to all that trouble to wreck a rule, and they leave the Big Wheel just sitting here, like it isn’t even illegal.”

  Oliver Alert! . . . Oliver Alert! . . .

  “Shhh!” I hiss, grabbing his arm and pulling him along. “It’s probably a trap. Whoever claims the Big Wheel took the trophy.”

  He nods. “Good thinking. That would explain why Candiotti never mentioned it during the assembly.”

  “She didn’t have to. We posted it on the chat, remember? Seems to me half the school has seen it by now.”

  Oliver is still dissatisfied. “You’d think a principal would read her own Code of Student Behavior.”

  By the time we make it to homeroom, the bell has already rung. As everybody grabs their book bags and heads off to first period, Mr. Aidact pulls us aside.

  “Oliver, Nathan. I’d like a word with you two pupils.”

  “What’s up, Mr. Aidact?” Oliver says casually.

  I can’t help noticing that Perkins has started writing in his notebook again.

  Mr. Aidact holds his phone in front of us. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the seventh-grade chat.”

  The video that plays on the screen is one we know all too well—Batman on the Big Wheel, pedaling madly up and down the main hall of Brightling.

  Oliver has the nerve to exclaim, “Hey, isn’t that against the rules?”

  With his free hand, Mr. Aidact takes out a clear plastic ziplock snack bag. At first glance, it’s empty. Then I notice a tiny gray thread trapped inside. “When you came up to accept your award last night, I picked this off your robe,” he says to Oliver. “It’s a perfect match for the color of a Batman suit.”

  Oliver’s eyes widen in surprise, but he tries to brazen it out. “Well, maybe it’s similar. . . .”

  “It’s a match of more than ninety-eight percent certainty. Which means that you are the Batman in the video. And since you two were costume partners, we can conclude that you”—now the blue eyes are on me—“were the cameraman for this video.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t. My mouth is so dry it won’t open. The Oliver Alert is an uninterrupted screech in my ears. Even Oliver, for once, is struck dumb. We wait for the new teacher to connect the dots—the Big Wheel . . . the main hall . . . the missing trophy.

  “Was this another one of your pranks?” Mr. Aidact asks.

  He doesn’t see it! I practically have to swallow the words to keep from blurting them out loud. How can a guy who identified a Batman suit from a single thread overlook something so obvious? Why would he fail to notice a link between two things that happened in exactly the same place on exactly the same night?

  I toss a sideways glance in the direction of Perkins, but the student teacher is still buried in his note making.

  “We’re sorry,” Oliver says all too readily.

  The blue-eyed gaze intensifies. “Legit?” Mr. Aidact probes.

  Legit is not a word you expect to hear from a teacher who normally talks like somebody’s butler. Where would he get it? For sure not from Perkins, the most boring man alive.

  “Uh—yeah,” I manage. “Legit.”

  “Two more weeks of detentions,” Mr. Aidact pronounces.

  Oliver heaves a heavy sigh of resignation, but it’s an act.

  We both know we got off easy.

  13

  Rosalie Arnette

  Sometimes I wonder if I plan for the future too much and forget that I’m living in the present.

  Like the whole field hockey thing. Oh, I know it’ll look great on my school transcript. But now I’m starting to question whether that’s even worth it anymore.

  I thought it would be better, because Brightling has such a long field hockey tradition. After all, how many schools put a trophy for an all-girls sport on its own pedestal outside the office? And when the cup got stolen during the Halloween dance, that made it even cooler. Like a mystery—the Case of the Missing Championship.

  Well, forget it. The trophy isn’t a mystery; it’s just gone. And everybody’s already sick of talking about it, except Principal Candiotti, who’s offered a hundred-dollar reward for its safe return. Even the other girls have lost interest—if they ever had much interest in field hockey to begin with. Nobody’s really good besides Cassidy and maybe Leticia, who’s rock-solid as our goalie. Most of the other eighth graders only care about how they look in their skorts and uniforms. They spend half their time posing for their boyfriends and other guys who hang around our practices.

  The thing is, the older girls are supposed to be the leaders. And without them showing us what to do, we newbies can’t really get into the flow of the play. I’ve been practicing for three weeks and I still have no idea what a real field hockey game is like. Oh, sure, I’ve trained every skill. But how do you put them all together, to become a real player? Beats me.

  I hate to say it, but most of the blame should probably go to Mr. Aidact. He’s never played field hockey—or any kind of hockey. He’ll go on and on about rules and fundamentals and strategies, like “marking your man”—go figure: even in a girls’ sport, the player you have to cover is your “man.” He can lay on the details to the point where your head is spinning. And it’s not that you don’t understand him—you do. It’s just that it’s all theory—like how an electron orbits the nucleus of an atom in science. You believe that it’s happening, but you can’t see it.

  I finally get my position. I’m a right back, which means I play defense on the right side. And that’s pretty much all I know about it. I’ve gotten straight As every year since kindergarten; I’m captain of the mathletes and the seventh-grade quiz bowl team; when sixth graders need a tutor, Mrs. Rostenkowski sends them straight to me. But the first time an opposing player comes down the field at me, I’m going to have absolutely no idea what to do.

  We open our season on the road against the Sheridan Middle School Seahawks, about a twenty-minute ride away. I can’t believe how the other girls are laughing and goofing around, while I’m paralyzed with nervousness. Don’t they realize that we’re about to make fools of ourselves in front of hundreds of people? We’re a disgrace to our school, and I’m the only one who sees it!

  Not far from Sheridan, we stop at a red light. And when it turns green, the bus shudders and dies. The driver twists the key again and again. Nothing.

  For me, it’s the last straw. The 1974 Bobcats made it all the way to the state championship, and we can’t even get across town. But the other girls think this is an amazing adventure—like we’re shipwrecked on a desert island or something. They’re taking selfies and blowing up social media, while I want to disintegrate.