“Nope, but we did last fall. They had us running in circles,” Steven said. “Hey, did you get a chance to study for the World Civ test today? I hate having tests on a Monday. Mr. Emmet is getting harder as the year goes on.”

“I studied last night,” I told him. “He said it was going to be multiple-choice, no essay questions, so it should be a breeze.”

“Some of us don’t breeze through our quizzes, Devin,” Steven told me. “I studied a little bit on Saturday morning but not at all last night. Would you mind cramming with me? We’ve got about ten minutes left before lunch is over.”

“Definitely,” I said. “I really don’t want to go back to our table and have another talk about poop.”

“Poop?” Steven asked as he arched his eyebrow. “You Kicks really have some interesting lunch conversations.”

I laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. Let me get my backpack—I’ll meet you in a sec.”

As I grabbed my backpack from our table, I heard a murmur in the cafeteria and the sound of rushing wheels.

I looked up, and I saw Arlo, an eighth grader, zooming past me on a skateboard, holding a cafeteria tray loaded high with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

“Arlo, Arlo, Arlo, Arlo!” I heard voices chanting from the table next to us. Arlo had been sitting there with a bunch of his eighth-grader friends, and they were laughing and pointing as they chanted his name. I grabbed my backpack and Zoe shook her head.

“They just dared Arlo to deliver lunch to Stella on his skateboard,” Zoe said. “Apparently he’s crushing on Stella.” Stella was also in eighth grade. “But if Assistant Principal Castillo sees him, he’s in big trouble.”

Skateboarding in or anywhere near the school was a big no-no. There were a bunch of kids, mostly eighth graders, who brought their boards in and left them in their lockers, taking them out at the end of the day to use at the skate park a couple blocks from the school. Because of this, students could have skateboards in their lockers but were never ever allowed to use them on school grounds. Arlo was going to get himself in big trouble.

I watched as Arlo skateboarded from one end of the cafeteria to the other, tray in hand. As he got close to Sebastian’s table, where Jessi was standing, a girl suddenly pushed her chair out to get up. She didn’t see Arlo coming toward her!

Arlo tried to steer his skateboard around her, but he was going too fast. The skateboard skidded, and Arlo began to lose his balance.

He tried to steady himself, but the tray in his hands flew up in the air. A hush fell over the cafeteria as everyone watched the plate of spaghetti and meatballs soar up into the sky in what seemed like slow motion.