Luckily, he's got an ace plan for the best year ever, if only he can pull it off: With his best friend Leonardo the Silent awarding him points, Rafe tries to break every rule in his school's oppressive Code of Conduct. Rafe Khatchadorian has enough problems at home without throwing his first year of middle school into the mix. “Not exactly,” I said, because I couldn’t really go into details.In his acclaimed and #1 bestselling middle-grade comic debut, Children's Choice Award Author of the Year James Patterson has never been more hilarious-or heartwarming. “Do you find our seating uncomfortable?” he asked me. “And how are you today, Rafe?” he said, smiling like there were cookies on the way. Rourke snapped as he checked his attendance book for my name. “Gesundheit!” someone shouted, and the entire class started laughing. Rourke looked over the top of his glasses at me. Rourke, rolled in, I was just standing there wondering what it might be like to spend the next nine months without sitting down. “That one’s mine too.”īy the time our homeroom teacher, Mr. Like maybe somewhere a little less hazardous to my health.īut then, when I went to sit down again, Miller called over. In the meantime, though, I decided to move to some other part of the room.

Give me a few more chapters, and I’ll show you what I’m capable of. So much for blending in.Īnd don’t get me wrong. I’d been in sixth grade for about four and a half minutes, and I already had a fluorescent orange target on my back. I usually like to keep my head attached to my body, so I went ahead and stood up like he wanted me to. “I don’t see your name on it,” I told him, and I was just starting to think maybe that was the wrong thing to say when Miller put one of his XXXL paws around my neck and started lifting me like a hundred-pound dumbbell. “’Cause this is where all the juvies sit,” he said, and took a step closer. “Are you one of those troublemakers or something?” he said. It’s impossible to stay off this kid’s bad side, because it’s the only one he’s got. But I didn’t know any of that yet.

There was just one problem with that plan, and his name was Miller. As soon as I got to homeroom, I went straight for the back row and sat as far from the teacher’s desk as possible. You’ve already seen what I look like, so you can probably guess which one I chose. I’ve seen enough movies that I know when you first get to prison, you basically have two choices: (1) pound the living daylights out of someone so that everyone else will think you’re insane and stay out of your way, or (2) keep your head down, try to blend in, and don’t get on anyone’s bad side.

The worst years of my life book