“Good evening, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Dehaven said. “You missed our appointment today, so I took the liberty of making a personal visit to find out why. Your father and I have had a chat about your grades and attitude.”

“Have a seat, buster,” Jackson’s father said.

The lecture that followed this request was peppered with words like “disappointed,” “astonished,” “surprised,” “furious,” and “flabbergasted.” All the while, Dehaven sat idly by with an amused smile.

“Jackson, do you have an explanation for all of this?” his father demanded.

Jackson felt like standing up and shouting, “Yes! I have an explanation. I’m a secret agent and all day long I work with a team that saves the world from bad guys. We have a rocket and laser watches and a nose walkie-talkie and guinea pig cameras, and it is eating up every moment of my life!”

But he didn’t. Instead he dropped his head and apologized.

“Well, you can forget the marching band and all the other extracurricular activities you’re involved with. Plus, no TV or video games until your grades are back up to snuff.”

“Mr. Jones, I think those are all very good starts, but I’m afraid I have to send a clear message, not only to Jackson but to the other troublemaking students at Nathan Hale. I’m going to have to suspend Jackson for three days.”

Jackson’s father took a deep breath and pointed upward. “To your room!”

As Jackson backed out of the room, he saw Dehaven make little bull horns on the sides of his head.

Jackson climbed the stairs to his room and closed the door behind him. He flopped down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He could still feel sand between his toes and was sure there was a pound of it trapped in his underwear.

Just then, his bedroom door opened. Chaz poked his head inside. “What’s all the commotion, Nerdbot?”

“I got suspended from school,” Jackson explained.

“Duh! People on the next block know that,” his brother said. “The way dad was shouting, I wasn’t sure you were going to survive. Does this have something to do with your new friends?”

Jackson nodded.

“How could you hang out with those losers?” Chaz’s face curled up like he had just smelled something foul.

“No one else wanted me,” Jackson said. The truth was sour in his mouth.

“I’d rather be alone than hang out with those dorks,” Chaz said. “Tell Dad I went to practice.”

A moment later, he was gone.

Jackson looked over at the desk in his room. There he saw a picture of his father, Chaz, and him. His mother had taken it at a Washington Redskins game. The three of them had their arms around each other’s shoulders, and they were grinning. That day seemed like a million years ago. The next day Jackson awoke to find a strange woman standing over him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and realized she was Mrs. Pressman, an elderly neighbor. Mrs. Pressman was a cranky woman with thick glasses and an aroma of vegetable soup that followed her everywhere. Jackson wondered if it was her natural smell or if she was buying perfume from the Campbell’s Soup Company. Regardless, it didn’t explain why she was in his bedroom.

“Your father has left for work. He asked me to keep an eye on you,” Mrs. Pressman replied. “I don’t cook, clean, hold hands, kiss boo-boos, change diapers, or read bedtime stories.”

“Mrs. Pressman, I’m eleven years old.”

The old woman lifted her glasses and squinted. “So you are. Your dad gave me this to give to you.”

She handed him a note. His father had scheduled out his day, minute by minute. He wanted Jackson to clean out the garage, organize the basement, clean Butch’s doghouse, rake leaves, and trim the hedges. Apparently, being suspended was not punishment enough. Jackson sighed and got dressed. He’d start with the garage.

But when he opened the garage door, he found something other than old junk inside. All five of his teammates were waiting for him.

“You are a complete loser, bro,” Flinch said.

“Who gets suspended in the fifth grade?” Matilda asked.

“It’s all your fault!” Jackson cried to his angry teammates. “If I wasn’t busy flying off to Egypt, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

“Well, your inability to manage your life is not going to affect ours. Brand sent us here to train you,” Ruby fumed.

“Train? I’m in deep trouble with my dad. I’ve got a list of chores a mile long, and if they aren’t done by the end of the day, he’s going to put me up for adoption.”

Duncan reached out and took the list of work from Jackson. “We’ll help you with this. Training is more important.”

“What about Mrs. Pressman?” Jackson asked. “My dad hired her to babysit and she’s going to notice if I’m not working.”

“I’ve taken care of her,” Heathcliff said, gesturing to the front yard, where they could see the old woman doing jumping jacks. Her eyes were spacey—Heathcliff had unleashed his teeth on her.

“If she has a heart attack, it’s all your fault,” Jackson said.

Matilda went first, fighting Jackson with a variety of silly weapons she found in the garage, including a bucket, a pogo stick, and some old Hot Wheels race car tracks. In the meantime, the others started on Jackson’s chores. Jackson watched from the garage as Flinch stood over a pile of leaves and clapped his hands. There was a sonic boom and leaves were blasted into the neighbor’s yard.

Despite their long morning together, only Duncan would eat lunch with Jackson.

“I get that I’m not good at this,” Jackson said to the sticky boy. “I get that you don’t trust me ’cause I used to be cool. I also get that I’m not the ideal member for the team. But why do you all hate me so much?”

Duncan blinked in bewilderment. “You truly don’t know?”

Jackson shook his head.

Duncan reached into his pocket and took out a blue sphere. He pushed a button on its side and it began to spin. A moment later Jackson heard Benjamin’s voice.

“What can I help you with, Gluestick?”

“Could you pull up some surveillance tapes of Nathan Hale Elementary?”

“Anything specific?” the computer asked.

“Yes. Show us the file labeled ‘Jackson Jones.’”

There was a strange humming sound and then holograms appeared. This time, instead of a three-dimensional landscape, Jackson saw a square floating before his eyes. A moment later it flickered to life—showing video footage recorded in a busy hallway. Jackson recognized it as the hall where his locker was and quickly spotted himself in the crowd. The video was taken at the height of his popularity.

“You guys have been taping me?” he asked.

“Just watch,” Duncan said.

Suddenly, Flinch walked down the hallway. Jackson watched himself knock the boy’s books out of his hand so that they scattered all over the floor. Brett and the rest of his friends laughed.

Then the image jumped to another day when Jackson gave Duncan a wedgie. The image jumped again, and he saw himself tripping Matilda so that she fell to the floor. Then he saw himself tape a KICK ME sign on the back of Ruby’s jacket. Then he saw himself dumping a soda on Heathcliff’s head. The video went on and on, but it was always the same—Jackson tormenting nerds, his teammates in particular. He stuffed them in lockers, flicked their ears, forced them to kiss his feet, dipped their faces into the drinking fountain, pulled their hair, gave them wet willies, and put them into full nelsons. All the while, he and his stupid friends giggled like idiots.

“Do you see?” Duncan asked. “I have about twenty more hours of this if you don’t get it.”

Jackson was speechless. He didn’t recognize the Jackson in the video.

“They hate you, Jackson, because you’re mean. You think you were popular, you think you were well liked, but you weren’t. You were a bully.”

There was that word again. Bully. Jackson remembered the events in the video clearly, but not the faces of his victims. They all melted into a single, awkward, misfit kid. Teasing nerds had been fun, a joke. He had never once thought of it as bullying.