The Next Great Paulie Fink: Parts 1–2

I mean, the banana-peel debacle? Mini-geddon? His food wars with Principal Glebus? Wait, you haven't heard those stories?

Like, maybe a good place to start would have been back in June, when I came home toward the end of sixth grade, and Mom greeted me with three fateful words: Caitlyn, we’re moving.

Look at those faces, how quickly the kids moved from excitement to disappointment. All of them: the pink-haired girl with a tiny guitar in her lap. The kid in the soccer jersey, one leg jutting casually to the side.

There are three kids in headbands with pom-pom ears, two identical boys in camouflage, a girl in a lavender sweatshirt, the word MEGASTAR emblazoned across the front, and a small freckled girl in a bright red pantsuit, like it’s Halloween and she’s decided to dress as a middle-aged senator.

It’s a common story in rural towns like ours: schools closing after a steady decline in population and tax revenues, combined with rising costs.

Yes, you can tell Caitlyn her class is comprised of the Mitchell School’s first-ever students.

It’s funny, because these three kids look nothing alike—in addition to the redhead, there’s also a wispy girl in yoga clothes with perfect posture and a kid who could be either a girl or a boy, lean and wiry, with hair buzzed practically to stubble—but somehow you can tell they’re a threesome.

I guess she sees me noticing her boots, because she says, sort of brusquely, “I spent much of the morning helping settle the goats.”

“Student records are confidential, Diego,” she answers curtly.

Mags stops talking. “Fiona,” she says, exasperated.

He furrows his brow in concentration, like he’s studying for a test.

Megastar is the best reality show there is, and I should know—I've watched almost all of them: American Hermit, Man vs. Toddler, Are You a Secret Superhero?, Extreme Scrapbooking, Stunt Grandmas, Project Photobomb, DumpsterDiving Divas, and a whole bunch of others.

A stone footpath winds its way through the statues, and the lawn is flanked on both sides by looming dark pines and drooping willows.

By now we’ve reached the cafeteria—which, naturally, isn’t a cafeteria at all, it’s more like an atrium, with more windows than walls.

It was bad. Catastrophically horrible. Cataclysmically distressingly terrible.