Secret Identity Read Free Page B

stuffed it in his desk.
    I smiled a little at Trinity.
    She smiled a little back.
    Then I opened my paper again. Mr. Green had written something on the bottom of it, and I wanted to see what it was.
    I smiled big when I saw it:
Nolan
—
You shred, man! Awesome!
    I shred?! Shred was special. Beyond awesome. He only said that about his favorite guitar players.
    Or bands.
    Or
presidents.
    I put the paper carefully in my folder.

    Inside I could feel it— things were changing.

CHAPTER 5
Secret Identity
    By the end of the day, Miriam's hair was missing a chunk, Slow Jim, the class tortoise, had a new design on his shell, and Ian and Danielle's green sheets had disappeared.
    I thought I'd gotten a picture of Slow Jim's run-in with the Magic Markers. I really did. But at recess when I hid in a bathroom stall and checked out the shot, all I saw was Bubba's butt. It took up the whole frame.
    I was too slow with Ian and Danielle, too. Their green sheets were gone before I could get ready.
    So I got no good shots the first day. But I didn't give up. I started taking my backpack everywhere with me because one, I didn't want anything tohappen to my camera, and two, I didn't want to miss catching Bubba red-handed.
    Kids called me a nerd, but for once I didn't care. Not that much, anyway.
    I was on assignment.
    I was on a mission.
    Bubba started it, I was going to finish it.
    All week during lunch recess I didn't play foursquare. I wore my backpack and tried to get better at taking pictures with my back turned. I wrote down what I was doing in a little notebook. Every shot. Then I went into a bathroom stall with my backpack and scanned through the pictures. Sometimes the remote hadn't worked. Sometimes I was off by a mile. My notes would say,
Miriam at fountain
, and my shot would be half of somebody I didn't even know.
    Then on Friday I caught him. On camera. In the act of dumping one of the trash cans. Looking over his shoulder. Can in the air. Trash flying out.

    It was the perfect shot.
    I stayed in the stall ten minutes just looking at it.
    After school I got to work. I loaded the picture into my computer, tweaked the color, cut the frame. It was beautiful.
    And now…what? I had to write an article. Actually, according to the green sheet, I had towrite a lot of articles. One of which was supposed to be an interview.
    Uh-oh.
    And now that I had my picture, I didn't really know what I wanted to
do
with it. What was going to happen to me anyway, once I turned my project in? Mr. Green always displayed projects.
    Everyone would see!
    Which was what I'd wanted, only now I was scared. When Bubba saw it, he'd pound me!
    The more I thought about it, the more stupid doing a project on Bubba Bixby seemed. If only there was a way for everyone to see it, but not have anyone know who'd done it.
    But how was I going to do that?
    I took a break to watch
The Gecko and Sticky.
It was another rerun, but one of my favorite episodes. In it, Chase Morton—who is
The
Gecko— and Sticky—who is
a
gecko—save their town from the clutches of Damien Black. It's one of myfavorites because in the end Damien falls—
aaaaaaaarrrrrr
—into a pit of tarantulas. You should see him freak out and call, “Mommy! Mommy!” It's hilarious.
    But after the show was over, I went back to thinking about my project. How was I ever going to do it without Bubba knowing it was me?
    Maybe I should just change subjects. Dad and Mom still asked me about my project, but not as much. And I knew that Dad was sort of upset that I didn't want his help. Maybe I should just forget about Bubba. I'd lived with him this long, I could survive a couple more years, right?
    But something about the past few days had made me feel… strong. Like I was finally
doing
something about being pushed around. But I didn't know where to go from here. Forward was scary, but back seemed worse.
    I decided to do an extra credit math puzzle Mr. Green had passed out. They were always fun! Butas I was going