Revenge of the Loser
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
Copyright
* ME AT-A-GLANCE
Name: Danny Shine (rhymes with “whine”)
Age: 12
School: Gerald Ford Middle School
Likes: M&M pancakes, Asia O’Neill
Dislikes: Gym class, chili squares
Obsession: Comics
Secret fear: Being picked last in volleyball
Most embarrassing moment: Getting caught in the girls’ bathroom
Favorite compliment: “I like the way you draw vomit.”
Ty Randall must die.
That’s what I vowed as I sat in the cafeteria, watching him take over the lunch table, the school, and the only girl I ever liked. After an excruciating hour, I’d had about all I could take.
And I’d started lunch period feeling good. Really good. I had just finished drawing my new comic book, and couldn’t wait to show it to Emma, Morgan, Sophie, and Kendra. As I looked around for Jasper, I patted my backpack to make sure it was still there.
Drawing is what I live for, pretty much. There’s nothing like getting the stink lines on a smelly sock just right, and hearing the girl next to me in pre-alg say, “Wow — did you copy that out of a book, or something?”
“Yo, Danny!” My best friend, Jasper, shouted across the cafeteria. We’d eaten lunch together almost every day since we started Gerald Ford Middle School. I like how he does his own thing, no matter how unpopular it is — having a toy band, chess-boxing, or collecting weird animals.
* JASPER AT-A-GLANCE
Personality: Freakishly smart
Goal: To put a vending machine in his locker
Wears: Two different-colored sneakers
Eats: Swedish Fish (“for the riboflavin”)
Ratio of action figures to friends: 8 to 1
For the fifth day in a row, he’d nailed us a spot at a table I thought of as Semi-Normal, a step up from our usual spot at Tech Geeks. It was mostly girls, and they didn’t seem to be an official clique. They’re not the ones writing hottie lists in the second floor bathroom. They’re the ones you’d want as your lab partner, or sitting behind you in percussion ensemble.
Sophie De Mano
Emma Priestly
Reputation: Likeable gum-chewer
Reputation: Bookish, semi-funny
Enjoys: Wacky Wednesdays
Last read: More Dog Stories
Morgan Chatterjee
Kendra Maxtone-Cousins
Reputation: Mad scrapbooker
Reputation: Cute overachiever
AKA: “Picasso with unicorn stickers”
Screensaver: Insects of the World
I kept waiting for someone to stop Jasper and me from sitting there. On the food chain at school, we’re a quarter of the way up. We’re not outcasts, but no one’s texting us about the latest party, either.
* FIVE TEXTS I’VE NEVER GOTTEN:
The girls at the table seemed to tolerate us, even if they didn’t exactly talk to us. The moment we slap our trays down, I’m always nervous. Would we get away with it again? As I hovered near the table, Emma looked up from her book. She moved over to make room, and my chest felt lighter. We were in.
“So, Petrokis and I were debating best superpower….”
This was Jasper’s idea of a good opener. He doesn’t get that you have to talk differently when girls are around. They don’t want to hear about the latest sci-fi movie, and in what direction it reeked.
“He said mind control.” Jasper bit into a sandwich. “But I said —”
That sent Emma straight back to her book.
Meanwhile, I was plotting out my big Vampire Slugs reveal. I couldn’t just say, “Look what I did!” No, it had to be more offhand….
I reach for a sandwich, and Vampire Slugs spills out of my backpack. Emma picks it up, intrigued. “What’s this?”
“Oh, ’s nothing,” I say, but Emma swipes it and reads every word.
“You … you drew this?”
I shrug modestly. Now Morgan and Sophie are straining for a look….
“Danny!” Jasper thumped me on the arm. “Did you even hear what I said?”
“I missed the part about teleporting.”
As he launched into his rant, I slapped my backpack on the table. Time to unveil my masterpiece. I tilted the backpack to release the comic. Nothing came out — just crumbs. Where was it? I turned the backpack upside down, and THWAP! A torrent of paper, garbage, and Cool Ranch Doritos blasted the table.
Emma gasped. “You’re getting chips all over me!”
“GEEZ.” Morgan sighed.
Even Jasper asked, “What are you doing?”
“Trying to find my … um …” I tried to think of something cool. “Frisbee.”
“Frisbee?” Jasper repeated.
Where was the freakin’ comic? I stuck my hand in — Vampire Slugs was wedged in a side pocket. I pulled it out violently, spraying more Doritos, and kicking off another round of cries.
“Danny!” Morgan brushed off her shirt, and Sophie sighed.
Now everyone was mad. But … there it was.
“Is that your new comic?” Jasper reached for it.
“What comic?” Despite her annoyance, Emma sounded curious.
Jasper held Vampire Slugs up so everyone could see it.
Just like I’d hoped!
“Is this the sequel to Mutant Maggots With Bad Breath?” asked Jasper.
“No!” I said. The title was embarrassing. “That was, like, a million years ago.”
“Hey.” Sophie pointed to an X-ray monster. “This is kind of funny.”
YESSS!!
This was it — the moment I’d been waiting for. “See, my major influences are —” I leaned in.
Emma’s and Sophie’s heads turned. “TY!!!” they called out.
A tall guy with caramel-colored hair and rimless glasses sailed by. He stopped and blinked, as if trying to remember who they were. “Okay if I sit here?” He was out of breath. “No room at the other table.” He pointed to a bunch of soccer players.
The girls fell over each other to clear a spot.
“Definitely!” “Right here!” “Plenty o’ space!”
Emma’s leg pushed against me. “Move over.”
“Who’s Ty?” Jasper chomped a French fry.
“Ty Randall.” Emma lowered her voice. “The new guy. From California.”
I’d seen him around, talking earnestly. My coolness radar — “cool-dar” — pegged him as someone to watch out for. New kids in school usually have to prove themselves — by getting into a fight, mouthing off to a teacher, or hitting a long home run. But he seemed pre-approved, somehow.
As soon as he sat down, the energy changed abruptly. The girls started fidgeting with their headbands, bracelets, or juice boxes. Everyone’s eyes were glued to Ty.
It was maddening.
He dumped his stuff on the table: a slim notebook — not the clunky spiral kind our moms bought us, but a leather bound one with graph paper. A brightly colored CD tumbled out, and some leafy thing wrapped in tinfoil.
“Eggplant burrito,” he expl
ained, while people stared.
My stomach sank. How could I get everyone’s attention back?
“Hey, Ty.” Morgan pointed to Ty’s CD. “What’s that?”
“Sierra Leone All Stars,” he said. “Awesome.”
Sophie tilted her head. “I think I’ve heard of them.”
Right.
“Yeah?” Ty bit into his burrito. “You like world music?”
There were excited murmurs. “For sure,” Morgan said loudly. Suddenly they were all great fans.
* WHAT’S (PROBABLY) IN TY’S BACKPACK
Ty sighed. “I hope there’ll be African drumming in Green-a-palooza,” he said. Everyone leaned in to hear more. “It’s this Earth Day festival I’m putting on with different acts about the environment and global warming.”
More oohs and ahhhs. Was there anything this guy wouldn’t do to impress girls?
“That’s so great,” Emma breathed, nodding her head strenuously.
“Student council could help,” said Kendra.
I broke into a sweat. How could we get off climate change and back to Vampire Slugs? Ty had hijacked my one moment of glory! Those girls had been complimenting my stuff before he showed up. Picking up the comic, I waited for an opening.
“Where will it be held, Ty?”
“You need volunteers?”
I had to jump in.
“So, Vampire Slugs, yeah, it was just this idea I had….” I must have been shouting, because everyone turned.
“Hey,” Ty pointed at me. “Let me see that.”
A second later, I realized Ty meant my comic book. I passed it to him, hoping that would get the girls’ attention. Their eyes grazed the cover as it traveled down the table.
Ty didn’t crack a smile as he paged through it. “I never saw a plant with teeth before.”
“Guess you don’t get around much.” I shrugged.
“So, about this festival …” Emma said.
“Yeah! Sorry.” He tossed the book back to me, ending the world debut of Vampire Slugs. I left it on the table, in case anyone else wanted to see it. Hopeful, I looked around: Emma? Sophie?
My chest felt very heavy, all of a sudden.
Ty blabbed on about Stupid-palooza. Never before had such kickin’ entertainment been lined up for such a worthy cause. It would single-handedly reverse the melting of the Arctic ice cap, end world hunger, and cure cancer. Or something like that.
All I knew was I’d drawn the greatest comic of my life, and no one was looking at it.
“Green-a-pa-WHAT?” Chantal came up to the table, catching the tail end of Ty’s rant. She’s the biggest diva in our class, a major busybody, and the self-appointed boss of seventh grade. If some big event was going on, she had to be in on it. “What’s this I hear about a show?”
“It’s an Earth Day Festival,” Ty said.
“You need singers for that?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Sure,” Ty said. “The music’ll be traditional. You know — folk songs.”
Chantal stroked her chin. “You call Beyoncé traditional?”
“Um —” He coughed.
“Yo, Ty —”
“TY!”
People kept coming up to him. How had he gotten so well-known already? More people had talked to Ty during lunch than had talked to me since the start of middle school. I felt completely invisible.
“Hey … Ty?”
I knew that voice.
Whoa.
Double whoa.
It was Asia O’Neill, my secret crush. She was looking good in one of her weird outfits — a baseball jacket and ballet slippers. I don’t know her well, but she’s always carrying around something interesting.
She’s smart, impatient, and a little sarcastic.
When I saw her tap Ty on the shoulder, I looked away. Direct eye contact was out of the question.
“About the Green-a-palooza article,” Asia said to Ty. “I wanted to follow up.”
“Yeah,” Ty said, smiling up at her.
“Could we do the interview in Free Period?”
“I — definitely.” Ty was still smiling.
WHAT??
My mind raced to take it all in. He knew Asia? It was one thing watching the girls at the table drool all over him, but … Asia?
This took it to a whole new level.
Ty was facing her now, saying something about “building awareness.” And now she was nodding and smiling. Did this guy know how pompous he sounded? I couldn’t believe Asia was swallowing it.
“Yeah, Ty,” she said. “That’s so true.”
I couldn’t take it! I kicked Jasper under the table.
“Ow!” he said. “What was that for?”
I felt my face get hot. My crush on Asia is so unmentionable, I’ve never even told him. So of course, he didn’t get it.
It wasn’t fair. I’d liked Asia since the first day of middle school, when I saw her in a striped shirt, quietly reading a graphic novel.
She seemed quirky, interesting, and mysterious, someone who wouldn’t be interested in the typical kind of guy. If a girl was ever going to like me, it would be someone like her.
So why did the one girl I could maybe hit it off with have to fall under Ty’s spell too?
My heart was beating like crazy.
“Hey — I’ve got this comic I just drew,” I blurted out in desperation. Asia and Ty seemed startled.
I looked on the table, but it was gone. Frantically, I started moving sandwiches and napkins around. Where was it? Finally, I spotted a slice of the familiar yellow cover on the floor. YES! Reaching down to grab it, I realized that it was stuck — wadded under someone’s hiking boot.
Emma was standing on it.
I yelped and she moved her foot, apologizing.
My fantastic comic was completely trashed!
I felt like sobbing as I picked up the mangled papers.
Oh, man.
That’s when I vowed to come up with my own brilliant project — something so big, so global, and so important, no one at school could ignore it. An event that would make Asia interview me for Happenings, the hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners newspaper of Gerald Ford Middle School.
Something that would make Asia look into my eyes and say, “Yeah, Danny. That’s soooo true.”
On my way home from school with Jasper, I brought up the subject of doing our own megaproject. We could raise money for an excellent cause — like sending the whole class on a great field trip.
“Since when do you organize school events?” asked Jasper, as we trudged down the street. “You hate stuff like Spring Fling.”
Well — yeah. “I’m talking about something cooler,” I insisted. Actually, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I just knew it had to get people talking about something other than Green-a-palooza. “I just thought — why don’t we have a class trip to someplace decent for once, instead of History Village?”
“Hnnnh.” Jasper nodded.
“Wouldn’t you like to go someplace cool?” I asked. “Somewhere you actually wanted to go?”
I tried to imagine some dream field trips.
We passed a playground with a tube slide, and watched a toddler come shooting out. “Hey!” I suddenly had an idea. “Big Kahuna Water Park.”
“YESSS!” Jasper pumped his fist. “I always wanted to ride Death Wish.”
“How ’bout the Twisted Tunnel of Terror?”
We both started mimicking the radio ads, talking a mile-a-minute like the crazed announcer:
When we spat out the last words, we burst out laughing. I could almost feel the spray of cold water on my face as we bolted down the Honolulu Hurricane, a four-story mammoth wave before “free-falling” to the splash pool below. What a perfect thing to do when the weather got better….
I could see Jasper had caught the fever too. His eyes looked glazed, and I could see him mentally barreling through a six-story waterslide. We were both sweating.
“Well? Wouldn’t that be cool?�
� I nudged him.
“Uhhh-hunh.” Jasper wiped his brow. “But tix are 25 dollars. For a hundred and thirty seventh graders, it’d cost … 3,250 dollars. Plus transportation.” He was super quick at math. “That’s a lot of Rice Krispie squares. Why don’t we just make our parents take us?”
“No.” My voice rose. “They’ll never get around to it. If we organize a class trip, it’s a sure thing. Plus —” I took a breath. “We’ll get props from everyone. Look how they slobbered over Ty today.” My voice broke when I said his name.
“I don’t know,” Jasper said with a frown. “How would we raise all that money, really?”
“We’ll think of something.” I waved my hand. “Ice cream social. Guitar Hero contest. Car wash.”
“Too much work.” Jasper scowled.
“Yeah, but —” I was pulling out every stop. “Think of that sixty-foot vertical drop in total darkness.”
He gulped. “Uhhnnh —”
I smiled, and slapped him on the back. “Knew you’d come around.”
At lunch the next day, Ty was back. After seeing how in demand he was, I figured he’d find a better spot to dump his solar-paneled backpack. The girls at our table weren’t super-popular types, but Ty didn’t seem to care where he sat. I guess if you’re cool enough, it doesn’t matter.
When Jasper and I sat down, we caught the end of Ty’s story.
“… helping out at the marine habitat, really getting close to the sea life …”
That was fun to picture.
Everyone was so caught up in his story, even Jasper didn’t notice when I rolled my eyes. God, that guy could go on. But this time, I wasn’t going to let Ty take over; I had my own little bomb to drop.