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students, and they seemed to be everywhere, like spies. He witnessed a fistfight on day one. Before the first punch landed, there was a teacher on each combatant, pulling them apart. It was almost like the faculty knew what you were going to do even before you decided to do it.
    Classes were a joke. The teachers cared only about keeping order, and the students didn’t care about anything at all. At any given time, a third of them were asleep. The only question ever asked was “Can I go to the bathroom?”
    If I’m stuck here for long, I’m going to end up stupid….
    That thought was replaced by an even darker one. If he was convicted of stealing the Super Bowl ring, then JFK would be Disney World compared with the juvenile detention center that awaited him somewhere.
    When did life suddenly become such a nightmare?
    It didn’t really matter that they weren’t teaching anything, because he was far too uptight to concentrate. He had to stop this runaway train. He was The Man With The Plan! He had better use this free time to work out a strategy to clear his name.
    He opened his notebook to a blank page — they were all blank — and jotted a title across the top:
    OPERATION JUSTICE
    OBJECTIVE: To find out who FRAMED me .
    List of SUSPECTS:
    (i) …
    Suddenly, the paper was ripped out of the notebook. The next thing Griffin knew, a paper airplane was sailing across the room toward the teacher.
    Without thinking, he was up and chasing it through the aisle. Two people tripped him as he ran, but somehow he held it together, graspingfrantically at the missile. No one must find evidence that he was working on a plan. He was in enough trouble already.
    His foot came down in the wastebasket. The wipeout would have been spectacular, but the teacher caught him with one hand and the airplane with the other. It got a halfhearted cheer from the class — by far the greatest show of enthusiasm Griffin had seen all day at Jail For Kids.
    Like most of the JFK faculty, Mr. Huber was 10 percent teacher and 90 percent prison guard, hard-muscled and tough. He hauled Griffin’s foot out of the garbage, dropped the crumpled paper airplane in its place, and uttered a single word: “Sit.”
    “But I was just —” As he scanned the room, Griffin realized he had no idea who had done this to him.
    “Sit,” the teacher said again.
    He didn’t dare work on his plan now. So he shifted his mind into neutral and listened to the lesson for the remainder of the period. He remembered it from fifth grade. Maybe fourth.
    At least there was one thing to be thankful for: No one had noticed the contents of the page that had become the paper airplane.
    Or so he believed.
    “Hey, Justice,” came a voice from behind him in the hall.
    Griffin kept his eyes straight ahead and hurried toward his next class.
    “Yo — new guy. I’m talking to you.”
    Oh, no. Griffin turned around to face a squat bulldog of a boy, shorter than he was, but outweighing him by at least thirty pounds. The kid resembled a sawed-off bodybuilder with a neck like a tree stump and a crew-cut cement block for a head.
    “Pardon?” asked Griffin, not wanting to start anything with this mass of brawn.
    “Operation Justice — what’s the story?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Griffin stiffly. He wasn’t about to waste words on the person who had stolen his paper and sailed it across the room.
    “I’m talking about how you got framed,” the boy insisted. “You and everybody else here. Think about it — a whole school for people with problems, but nobody really deserves to be here. They were all framed, just like you.”
    Go away
, Griffin prayed, focusing his eyes on a spot on the wall over the expansive shoulders.
    The big stranger fell into step behind him. “Now take me, for instance. I’m the only inmate who actually belongs here. Everything on my record is totally true. I’m a bad person. What can I do?”
    You can go away and leave me