Read Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! for Free Online

got your back.”
    It wasn’t until I was walking away that I even realized something good might have come out of this after all.
    Unless I was mistaken, I’d just made a real, live human friend for the first time since I started middle school. (And no, Jeanne Galletta doesn’t count. She was my math tutor, for one thing, and she might have been
friendly
, but we werenever
friends
. At least, not for her.)
    Matty said it himself—
I’ve got your back
.
    That has to be worth something, doesn’t it?

NUMBER ONE
    When you’re the only boy in a small house with one grandmother, one mother, one sister, and one bathroom, all I can say is—learn how to be patient. Oh, and plan ahead.

NUMBER TWO
    Art isn’t easy! It turns out there are just as many rules for making art in art school as there are for anything else. If you don’t believe me, just try holding your paintbrush the wrong way in Mrs. Grundewald’s class sometime, and see what happens.

NUMBER THREE
    Art school is smart school. As far as I can tell, most of the kids at Cathedral were born with a math book in one hand and an extra brain in the other. So if you’re a dummy like me, don’t expect to blend in! (And just in case you’re wondering, the answer is
yes
, all those famous dead artists had to learn pre-algebra too. At least, that’s what Mr. Frum told me when I asked.)

NUMBER FOUR
    You want to live in the big city? Man up! People here will walk right over you if you let them…

    … so don’t let them.

NUMBER FIVE
    What are you listening to me for? If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ll know that your best bet is to very carefully watch everything I do—and then do exactly the opposite. Because my paths tend to lead to trouble.
    (Just don’t say I never warned you.)
    Okay, got it? Good.
    Oh, and
you’re welcome
.







LEO TURNS UP THE HEAT
    I ’m not saying that five Cs and a B-minus make me some kind of genius, but those were the best grades I’d ever gotten. With Mom home all the time, she was around to help me with my homework and to make sure I did all my assignments, whether I wanted to or not.
    And Operation: Get a Life was going even better. By the time report cards came out, I had 58 things on my list, with 137 to go. I figured I must be doing something right.
    But Leo figured otherwise.
    “You’ve got to step this mission up,” he told me. “It’s time to start thinking bigger.”
    “What are you talking about?” I said. “I’ve got this whole huge list already.”
    “It’s called Operation: Get a Life, not Operation: Get a List. Most of that stuff is just about classes you have to go to anyway, and walking around the city on a leash with Mom. You’re not even trying to make this interesting.”
    “Oh, man. Here we go,” I said.
    This is what Leo does. He calls it making things
interesting
, but I call it a pain the butt.
    “New rule,” he said. “From now on, you have to do at least one really big thing for every ten little things. And no more credit for the little stuff until you do.”
    “Hang on—what counts as a big thing?” I said.
    Of course he had an answer. He always does. “For starters, it has to be something you’ll remember doing for the rest of your life,” he said.
    “Oh, that’s all?”
    “No, actually. It also can’t be anything you do at school, and there can’t be some adult looking over your shoulder while you’re doing it.”
    On top of all that, I still had the No-Hurt Rule to worry about, and none of this stuff could cost money either, because I didn’t have any.
    Still, Leo had a point. If this mission was goingto be worth doing, I needed to do it right. It was time to step up my game. I just didn’t have any clue what that was going to look like yet.
    And then a few days later, Mrs. Ling gave us the junk-sculpture assignment.

ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT IT
    T ake a look at this,” Mrs. Ling said, and showed us a picture of an old garbage can.

    “And now this,” she