Greg Heffley slid the novelty sunglasses onto his face, planted his feet wide, and shuffled down the hallway in what he hoped was a smooth, slow-mo entrance. His confidence lasted exactly two steps until his toe hit a banana peel, launching the glasses off his nose and skidding them across the linoleum. One lens cracked with a sharp tik.
He stared at the broken glasses on the floor, picked them up, and jury-rigged the crack shut with a twist of candy wrapper from his pocket. "Totally on purpose," he muttered to no one, while seven pairs of eyes tracked his crooked, tape-reinforced strut back down the hall.
Greg grabbed a locker handle to perch against it the way the cool kids do, but the rusted hinge popped and the door swung wide. A grey cloud of damp gym socks and a nest of crumpled worksheets tumbled out and buried him to the shoulders.
He coughed into a thick pair of black athletic socks, sneezed three times in a row, and the third sneeze whacked his taped-up sunglasses off his nose again. This time, they bent into a permanent, goofy tilt. "That's it, Mr. Locker," he hissed, pointing a sock at the door.
Greg ducked into the classroom and shoved himself under Table 7 to hide, pulling a curtain of lost homework and a mystery peanut-butter sandwich with him. Mrs. Patterson crouched down and peered beneath. "Greg? Why are you curled up under Table 7 holding a sandwich?" she asked, her pen tapping the tile floor.
In his scramble past her desk, Greg's elbow clipped the glass trophy case and it lurches forward. The brass trophy labeled 'Most Likely to Forget Homework, Greg Heffley, 4th Annual' clatters onto the floor with a loud, ringing CLANG and spins once before settling between his scuffed shoes.
The hallway went dead silent; two dozen heads swiveled and stared as Greg bent down, picked the dented trophy up with very small, very careful fingers, and set it back on the shelf. The silence stretched thin and brittle.
Back in his seat, Mrs. Patterson announced into a handheld microphone that the 'Forgetting Homework' award is officially retired and the case is being cleared out. Greg taps the trophy's cold, dented base with one finger, grins just a little, and writes at the top of his notebook: *Today I was the coolest AND the most forgotten kid in school.*