Holding her head high, she looked the Terminator in the eye and said, “Why do you only call on people who don’t have their hands raised?”

Mr Petracelli did not look happy. “Whom I call on is my choice,” he said sternly. “Sit down.”

Raven didn’t.

“But see. I had my hand up plenty of times today, and you only called on me when I didn’t know the answer. And I know why,” she said, waving her hand in the air to make her point. “Because you have more fun embar-rassing us than teaching us. And trust me, the whole class has my back on this right here.”

Raven expected the entire class to stand up and cheer. But they didn’t. Instead, every single student slid his or her desk away from Raven — in unison.

Uh-oh, thought Raven. Was my vision totally bogus?

“Oh, well,” she said, just a teensy bit less confident. “This is probably the wrong time to be talking about this, right? Right. And maybe, you know, after school, we could just toss it around a little bit. You know, toss it around.”

“Good idea,” said the teacher with a grimace. “Why don’t you and I ‘toss it around’ tomorrow after school? And hey, let’s ‘toss in’ your parents, too?”

When the bell rang, Raven trudged into the hallway outside, totally defeated.

Suddenly, she was surrounded by all the kids from her history class. They were clapping and cheering—just like her vision.

“All right, Raven!” cried Larry.

“You really told Petracelli off!” said Brendan.

Eddie was smiling and clapping, too. And so was Head Cold Kenny.

Traitors, she wanted to scream. You’re all a bunch of spineless chickens. Where were you when I needed you?

Finally, Raven noticed Kenny giving her a thumbs up and stepping toward her to offer his thanks. But instead of words, he accidentally let out a big, wet, sloppy sneeze—all over her!

Oh, great, thought Raven, a perfectly awful end to a perfectly awful class. And with the Terminator totally steamed at her, Raven knew future forecasts for this classroom weren’t about to get any sunnier.

‘‘Hey, my parents have to meet with Petracelli, and they are going to freak,” Raven told Eddie as she walked with him to his locker. “How am I going to tell them?”

“Just fake being sick,” said Eddie. He opened his locker to exchange a few books. “They can’t get mad if you’re sick.”

“I stopped doing that kind of stuff when I was eight,” Raven told him. Then she thought for a minute . . . “It’s brilliant,” she said.

“Yeah, and I’ve got a great recipe for fake vomit,” said Eddie. “A little bit of creamed corn, some yoghurt, and some dog food. And if you pop it in the oven at 350 degrees, it’ll actually steam.”

Raven shuddered. She didn’t know if she wanted to go that far.

Just then, a big, tall kid brushed past Eddie. “’Scuse me,” said the giant as he threw a book hard into Eddie’s locker. He was holding a sandwich in his mouth and a half-eaten bag of chips in his hand. He put both inside the locker, too.

Continues next week

Based on the popular TV series created by Michael Poryes and Susan Sherman. Illustrations: Uday Deb