Next to join our celebration is our one and only fan, Mom. She screams, “What a game!” spreads her arms wide, and delivers a big hug to . . . Mr. Aidact!

  Not her own daughter. The coach. Sheesh!

  It’s disgusting, but I don’t let it spoil the triumph of the moment. I only joined this team so it could look good on my record. Now, thanks to Coach Aidact, I’m a Bobcat till I die!

  14

  CONFIDENTIAL REPORT

  * * *

  To: Department of Education, Washington, DC

  From: Paul Perkins, PE

  Project: AIDACT

  Teachers at Brightling Middle School continue to dump unwanted tasks on AIDACT, and AIDACT, for obvious reasons, is tireless. AIDACT’s ability to adapt to new situations is proving to be even better than we expected. However, there is a possible downside. AIDACT picks up enthusiasm observed from others and sometimes overdoes it. (See attached document: complaint from field hockey umpire.) Also, because AIDACT absorbs so much so quickly, singing and/or rapping is becoming a concern.

  PROJECT STATUS: Green

  SPECIAL EXPENSES

  Repairs to dented roof of school bus

  15

  Steinke Newhouse

  Detention sure isn’t what it used to be.

  It used to be just Mia Spinelli and me pretending to do homework and putting in time. It was punishment, but it also kind of wasn’t. At least we had the satisfaction that some poor teacher had to stick around babysitting us, hating it even worse than we did.

  What a difference a few weeks make. Oh, sure, Mia’s still here—and always me. But instead of a new teacher every day, we have Aidact and Perkins. And since the faculty aren’t all sharing detention duty anymore, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at Mr. Aidact. Every kid who breaks the tiniest little rule gets sent to room 233 at dismissal, so it’s crowded. Some days it’s practically a mob scene and they have to bring in extra chairs. What’s next, huh? A bouncer at the door, with a red carpet and a velvet rope?

  I miss the old days.

  Today’s the worst. It’s so packed that we have to double up at the desks. And just as I’m settling in to not do homework, things get rowdy on the other side of the room, with a dozen hands in the air and kids shouting out the names of cities in Asia, like Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

  “What the hey?” Mia, my desk-mate, complains.

  I wave Mr. Aidact over. “There’s no yelling in detention,” I inform him. He’s still new, so maybe he doesn’t know.

  “Oh, that’s not yelling,” he replies. “That’s the Trivia Club.”

  I’m amazed. “The whole Trivia Club got detention?” They seem like a bunch of goody-goodies, heavy on the sixth graders. Sixth graders always aim to please. Except me, but I wasn’t your average sixth grader.

  “I’m their faculty adviser,” he exclaims. “They meet at the same time as detention, so it has to be here.”

  That’s partly my fault. I told Kevin Krumlich that Mr. Aidact knows any song lyric you can think of. Turns out Krumlich has a big mouth—I mean planet-size. Pretty soon there was a rumor going around that the new teacher is unstumpable and it became a game to try to stump him. I don’t get how that turned into a club, but I don’t get a lot of things, just like I don’t get why people can’t pronounce my name.

  “They’re horning in on our thing,” I complain.

  “Their thing can be your thing,” the teacher invites. “Join our trivia quiz.”

  “Quiz,” I repeat dubiously. “That sounds a lot like school.”

  “Trivia is fun,” Mr. Aidact explains. “And it keeps the mind sharp and engaged.”

  “Yeah, but the questions are too boring,” I argue. “They never ask important stuff, like what rapper died on December eighth, 2019.”

  And just like that, the hands shoot up again, and the trivia kids are shouting answers to my question

  “Wrong!” I bray. “It was Juice Wrld! Ha—in your face!”

  And instead of being mad at me, they laugh and even clap a little. Nobody’s ever clapped at anything I said before.

  “You should join the Trivia Club,” Mr. Aidact advises.

  “I can’t join a club!” I snap at him. “I have detention?”

  “Trivia Club is detention,” Mia reasons. “At least, they’re in the same place.”

  And that’s how I end up a member of my very first club. We’re going to get our own page in the yearbook. Can you believe that? Me in a yearbook. According to Mr. Aidact, a photographer is going to come and take our picture for it.

  “Okay, but if they put me down as Stinky, I quit,” I grumble.

  Mr. Aidact looks mystified. “Why would they do that? Your name is completely different.”

  That’s the best thing about Mr. Aidact. Even when he’s lying, it feels good to believe him.

  Mia is the closest thing to a friend that I have in this school, since we spend so much time together in detention. But I have trouble understanding her sometimes.

  “He says he dumped me, but I dumped him first!”

  I don’t think that can be the answer to question 12 of the trivia quiz, which is about exoplanets, whatever they are.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Darryl Yarmolenko!”

  I know Darryl. Everybody does. He’s the captain of the basketball team. We’ve come up together since elementary school, although he mostly ignores me now. He’s popular and I’m me.

  “What?” Her eyes narrow. “You don’t believe me?”

  I shrug. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend!” she snarls. “And I dumped him, just so you know!”

  I never wanted to know.

  The next time I see Darryl, it’s in the gym before school. He’s shooting baskets, and there’s an adult with him—his dad. The thing is, every time Darryl misses, Mr. Yarmolenko dumps all over him—“Your form is wrong! . . . I’ve seen better wrist action on an old lady sipping tea! . . . You’ll never make the high school team unless you pull your socks up!”

  Darryl’s face is bright red. You can tell that his father is making him feel like a cockroach who got stepped on and refuses to lie down and die. To be honest, I feel bad for the guy, even though he’s a sports star who normally wouldn’t bother wiping his sneakers on me.

  That’s when Mr. Aidact and Mr. Perkins enter through the door to the parking lot.

  Mr. Aidact approaches the pair. “I think that’s enough coaching for today.”

  Darryl’s dad doesn’t look away from adjusting the position of his son’s hands on the ball. “We’re working here, buddy.”

  “I don’t think it’s helpful to put too much pressure on him,” the teacher persists. “The focus should be on—”

  Mr. Yarmolenko cuts him off. “I’ll be the judge of what we should be focusing on. He’s my kid!”

  Mr. Aidact doesn’t even blink. “Yes, but he’s my pupil.”

  “It’s okay, Dad—” Darryl begins.

  His father wheels on Mr. Aidact. “Have you ever sunk a basket in your life?”

  “I have not,” the teacher admits.

  “Figures.” Mr. Yarmolenko drops the basketball and starts for the exit. “Everybody’s an expert. This isn’t over, Darryl!” he tosses back at his son.

  Mr. Aidact picks up the ball and turns it over in his hands. “Seems simple enough.” He takes a set shot and misses by two feet.

  Darryl’s father laughs out loud. “What did I tell you?”

  Mr. Aidact tries again. Another air ball.

  “You don’t have to do this, Mr. Aidact,” Darryl mumbles.

  “Sure, he does,” Mr. Yarmolenko jeers from the doorway. “These teachers act like they know everything, but what have they ever accomplished in the real world?”

  The next attempt rattles off the rim.

  “Go ahead, LeBron!”

  And the fourth try—swish.

  “Pure luck,” calls Mr. Yarmolenko.

  Here’s the thing. Mr. Aidact keeps on shooting and never misses again. From close in. From far out. Even from half court. Nothing but net.

  Darryl is wide-eyed. “Mr. Aidact—you could make the Lakers!”

  The teacher has hit fourteen in a row by the time Mr. Yarmolenko slinks out of the gym, scowling. He buries two more before the bell rings.

  Mr. Aidact returns the ball to the rack. “It’s a physics problem. Force, trajectory, arc, gravity.” He disappears down the hall, with Perkins hustling behind him with that big briefcase.

  I guess I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open, because Darryl shoots me a scowl. “What are you looking at, Stinky?”

  It might be the first time he’s spoken to me since elementary school.

  I don’t give him a hard time for messing up my name. I saw him getting bullied by his jerk dad, and that’s something you can’t unsee.

  “That was good timing,” I offer. “You know, Mr. Aidact arriving right when he did.”

  “Big deal,” Darryl mutters.

  I kind of know what he means. Yeah, Mr. Aidact came to his defense. But when Darryl gets home from school today, Mr. Aidact isn’t going to be there.

  Although Darryl and I aren’t friends, I rack my brain for a piece of advice that might help him. I may be below him in every way, but one problem I don’t have is a jerk dad.

  Finally, I’ve got it. “I think you should get a detention as soon as possible.”

  16

  Oliver Zahn

  Sitting in detention gives a guy time to think. And sitting in detention with Mr. Aidact gives a guy a lot to think about.

  “I mean, why are we here?” I whisper to Nathan, who’s serving detention at the desk next to mine.

  “Why?” He practically does a spit take. “Have you forgotten that little business with the Big Wheel? Or the costume change that was supposed to be foolproof?”

  “It was foolproof,” I insist. “I’d bet my reputation as a rule-wrecker on it. Could one teacher in a thousand have identified my Batman suit from a tiny thread? Could one in a million?”

  “Too bad Mr. Aidact is one in a billion,” he says bitterly.

  I nod. “He’s been all over me since the first spitball of the year! And the stunt with the toy cars—not only did he figure it out, but he instantly knew who to pin it on.”

  Nathan shrugs. “It was only a matter of time before a teacher came along who had your number.”

  I fold my arms in front of my chest. “I refuse to believe it. There’s something off about that guy. He knows things that are impossible to know.”

  “He’s unreal,” Nathan agrees. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Typical Nathan. I love the kid, but he’s happy to drift along like a twig floating downstream. He doesn’t care whether he controls his own destiny. He probably doesn’t even think about it.

  Lucky for him, he’s got me as a best friend.

  “There’s always something you can do about it.”

  A Google search for the name Aidact churns up over three hundred thousand hits—and none of them are people.

  “Really?” Nathan says in surprise. “Everybody’s on the internet.”

  “Not Mr. Aidact,” I conclude, sifting through the pages of links on my computer. “And I guess he doesn’t have any relatives either.”

  Our investigation begins right after school on the floor of my room. Obviously, I can’t go through all three hundred thousand, but the hits are mostly government things—bills and laws called the something-or-other Aid Act. Real boring stuff.

  “Maybe you should try to find his address,” Nathan suggests. “He might not be on Google, but everybody has to live somewhere.”

  Not Mr. Aidact. According to the online directory, there’s no one by that name in our town, the state, or the entire country. We try a few other internet resources, with the same results. Ditto the major social media sites. Nothing. We even look in the old-fashioned phone book my dad keeps around. No Aidacts.

  I’m starting to get frustrated. “What’s the deal with this guy? It’s like he doesn’t even exist!”

  “He exists, all right,” Nathan says grimly. “Seems to me we’ve been serving a lot of detention thanks to somebody—and his boomer student teacher.”

  “That’s it!” My spirits soar. “Perkins! He drives Mr. Aidact to school every day, and drives him back home again. If we can find out where Perkins lives, we can ride there on our bikes in the morning and follow him when he goes to pick up Mr. Aidact.”

  “What if he commutes from forty miles away?” Nathan challenges.

  I shrug. “One way to find out.”

  Googling Perkins presents the opposite problem. If there are no Aidacts, there are Perkinses up the wazoo. We do searches on everybody, ruling people out one by one, until we find our student teacher: Paul Perkins, 1342 Larch Street—a small apartment complex about half a mile from school.

  We put our plan into action the very next morning. My mother seems pretty suspicious when she catches me slipping my bike out of the garage at seven thirty so Nathan and I can “head in early to work on a project.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What happened to ‘being in school more than five seconds before the late bell is a waste of precious youth’?”

  I hate it when Mom uses my brilliance against me. “That was a sixth-grade thing,” I tell her. “I’m way more mature now. Education is important.”

  The look on her face plainly says she isn’t buying it, but she doesn’t stop me as I ride off. I’m joined by Nathan at the corner, and we pedal away together for Larch Street.

  We stash our bikes at the edge of the complex and continue on foot.

  “How do we know which apartment is his?” Nathan asks.

  “Simple.” It takes just a few seconds to locate the white Prius. It’s parked in space 23, a short walk from a bright green door bearing the same number. “Right there.”

  At that very moment, the door starts to open. Hurriedly, we duck into some bushes and wait for Perkins to emerge.

  And someone does step out of the unit onto the front walk. But it’s not our student teacher. It’s Mr. Aidact.

  Nathan’s brow furrows. “If Mr. Aidact lives here,” he whispers, “how come the place is under Perkins’s name?”

  I can only shrug.

  From our spot in the bushes, we can see into the apartment and down the hall. We watch, transfixed as a door opens and another figure steps out of the nearer of two bedrooms—skinny, slight, and lugging a large briefcase. Perkins.

  “They’re roommates?” I breathe.

  The two teachers lock the apartment behind them, get into the Prius, and drive off in the direction of school.

  We stay in the bushes for a few minutes after they go.

  My mind is whirling. “Okay, okay. I didn’t see this coming.”

  “It sort of makes sense,” Nathan reasons. “Student teachers don’t get paid. Maybe Perkins is bunking with Mr. Aidact to save money.”

  “Maybe,” I concede. “Except that it’s Perkins’s apartment. So it’s not Perkins bunking with Aidact. It’s the other way around. You know what’s under Aidact’s name? Nothing! Not even Mr. Aidact!”

  “Calm down,” Nathan soothes as we head over to where we stashed the bikes. “We wanted to know where Mr. Aidact lives and now we do. It isn’t what we expected, but at least it’s over.”

  “It’s just starting,” I correct him. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing we do.”

  He grimaces. “I hate when you use that word.”

  I pick my bike up off the grass. “What word?”

  “We.”

  At school, whenever I see Mr. Aidact and Mr. Perkins, my brain threatens to boil over. In homeroom; in algebra; in the cafeteria, where Mr. Aidact is on lunch duty; and at three thirty in detention, my mind works double speed, sifting through all the information I have about Brightling’s staff newbie and his middle-aged student teacher:

  Perkins never lets Aidact out of his sight. When Aidact runs field hockey practice, Perkins watches from the window of the detention room, making notes.

  Perkins eats lunch, but Aidact always skips. Aidact is never seen with so much as a water bottle, coffee cup, or any form of snack.

  The two live together, arrive together, and leave together. Perkins always drives.

  The apartment and car belong to Perkins. The name Aidact appears nowhere, not even on the list of faculty on the school’s website.

  Considering he’s a student teacher, Perkins hasn’t taught a single lesson, or even a single word.

  What does it mean? Wild ideas flash around my head. Each one provides a partial explanation, but nothing explains it all. What if Mr. Aidact is the real student teacher and the boomer is his supervisor? Then their ages would make perfect sense, and so would their behavior—Aidact teaching and Perkins making notes. But if that’s true, why bother telling everybody it’s the other way around? And why would Mr. Aidact be the only student teacher at Brightling who needs an outside supervisor?

  If Perkins isn’t a student teacher, what is he? A chauffeur? Why would a middle school teacher have a chauffeur—especially a live-in chauffeur? Could there be more to it than that? Like maybe Perkins is his bodyguard? But why would a teacher need one of those? What is he afraid of? Unless Mr. Aidact isn’t a teacher at all. He’s the exiled prince of some tiny, obscure country where Aidact is as common a name as Smith or Jones. Only that doesn’t answer the biggest question of all: What self-respecting prince would move into a dinky apartment and teach seventh grade?

  After school, Nathan and I bike together back to my house. I get the impression that he wants to drop our investigation, at least for now. It’s been a long day, and I’m tired too. But there’s no way I’m going to let this slide, not even till tomorrow. If we don’t get some answers pronto, I’m not going to be able to live with myself.

  He waits outside while I go into the garage and riffle through a box of my old toys. There it is, under the Thomas trains and the Lincoln Logs—my periscope. I never really found a use for it except to spy up on high shelves when I was trying to find where Mom was hiding the Christmas presents. I think I got it when I was about six. Who could have predicted that it would finally come in handy after all these years?