Rafe arrives at Hills Village Middle School as a sixth-grader and is immediately bullied by a boy called Miller the Killer.

Encouraged by his friend Leo, Rafe decides to break every single rule in the school's Code of Conduct and launches Operation R.A.F.E.

Rafe sneaks away from the opening school assembly, pulls the fire alarm, and races back to blend in with the evacuating students.

Rafe disrupts Mrs. Donatello's English class by reading a crude parody of Romeo and Juliet, delighting his classmates including Jeanne Galletta.

On Halloween, Rafe sprints through the school hallways in a ninja costume, then strips it off and runs in only his underwear.

After the underwear incident lands Rafe in the principal's office, he accidentally reveals his crush on Jeanne while talking to her in the hallway.

At Jules's birthday dinner at Swifty's Diner, Georgia blurts out that Rafe ran naked at school, causing Jules to cry.

Miller steals Rafe's Operation R.A.F.E. notebook and forces Rafe to pay one dollar per page to buy it back.

Rafe receives terrible second-quarter grades and burns both the report card and the letter requesting a parent conference.

Jules discovers Rafe's grades on the school website and gives Bear authority to check Rafe's homework daily, shattering Rafe's trust in her.

During a tutoring session, Jeanne tells Rafe his third-quarter grades are so bad he may have to repeat sixth grade.

Rising at 4am, Rafe sneaks to the school and paints a massive mural on a blank exterior wall depicting himself as a knight.

Bear shoves Jules off the front porch steps, and Rafe pushes Bear away and stands guard over his mother until police arrive.

The morning after Bear is removed, Miller taunts Rafe about the copied notebook pages, and Rafe immediately charges and attacks him.

Mrs. Donatello interrupts the expulsion meeting to propose Airbrook arts school, and Jules spreads Rafe's notebook illustrations across the principal's desk as a portfolio.

Rafe Khatchadorian arrives at Hills Village Middle School dreading the year ahead, and his worst fears are quickly confirmed when a bully singles him out and a vice principal reads a suffocating 26-page Code of Conduct. Inspired by his only friend Leo, Rafe decides to break every single rule in that book and launches Operation R.A.F.E., beginning with pulling the fire alarm on his very first day. His pranks escalate through the fall — including a legendary Halloween stunt — but each act of rebellion draws more adult attention, more trouble at home, and deeper embarrassment with the girl he likes. After his mother discovers his hidden failing grades and hands discipline over to her brutish fiancé Bear, Rafe reaches his lowest point and pours everything into one final, spectacular act of defiance: a massive mural painted on the school wall in the middle of the night. A violent incident involving Bear forces the family into crisis, but it also sets off a chain of events that leads to an unexpected second chance, a portfolio revelation, and the truth about someone Rafe has kept close all year.

Rafe's war against the rules — the biggest moments of Operation R.A.F.E.

At the opening school assembly, Rafe spots the popular and pretty Jeanne Galletta for the first time and immediately develops a crush.

Vice Principal Stricker reads aloud from the Hills Village Middle School's 26-page Code of Conduct at the opening assembly, boring Rafe intensely.

After school on the first day, Rafe returns home to find Bear — his mother's hulking live-in fiancé — parked on the couch watching television.

After a week of minor mischief, Leo warns Rafe he must start breaking significant rules or lose a life in the Operation R.A.F.E. game.

Rafe creates the No Hurt Rule, declaring that only he should bear any risk of punishment or injury from Operation R.A.F.E.

Vice Principal Stricker leaves a voicemail for Jules about Rafe's behavior, and Rafe secretly erases it before his mother can hear it.

To get back at Bear and fund his notebook buyback, Rafe steals Bear's hidden Zoom colas and sells them from his school locker.

Jeanne surprises Rafe at his locker by asking why he misbehaves, and he explains Operation R.A.F.E. and the No Hurt Rule.

After Jules cries over his behavior at the diner, Rafe shuts down Operation R.A.F.E. temporarily despite Leo's objections and tries to behave.

Rafe agrees to help Jeanne with a Thanksgiving charity fundraiser and spends the afternoon wearing a bulky high school falcon mascot costume.

After the charity fundraiser, Jeanne warmly thanks Rafe but turns down his suggestion that the two of them go get pizza together.

Rafe jumps onto Miller's back in the school hallway after Miller raises the per-page notebook price, and Mrs. Stricker breaks up the fight.

Following the fight with Miller, Rafe is assigned in-school suspension, individual tutoring with Mrs. Donatello, and peer tutoring sessions with Jeanne.

Leo persuades Rafe that he has nothing left to lose and must go through with the final Operation R.A.F.E. project.

Jules tells Rafe and Georgia that Bear will not be living with them anymore, meaning she can finally stop working double shifts.

From the very first school assembly, Rafe's year is defined by the people around him — the girl he cannot stop thinking about, the bully who makes his life miserable, the mother who works herself to exhaustion, and the imaginary friend who keeps pushing him forward. While the main plot tracks Rafe's biggest rule-breaking stunts, this pool follows the quieter decisions and encounters that give the story its heart: a No Hurt Rule invented to protect others, a Zoom cola scheme born from frustration with Bear, and a Thanksgiving charity event where Rafe glimpses what it feels like to do something genuinely good. Each moment of connection with Jeanne or tenderness with Jules is undercut by a new setback — a rejection, a fight, a punishment — until Rafe finds himself with nothing left but one final, reckless move. The resolution comes not with a dramatic confrontation but with a quiet announcement: Bear is gone, Jules will be home every night, and for the first time all year, things might actually get better.

The people and choices that shaped Rafe's year

Rafe formally structures Operation R.A.F.E. like a video game, assigning point values to all 112 rules he plans to break.

Miller confronts Rafe at school and threatens him, warning Rafe not to steal the role of school bad boy because it belongs to Miller.

Mrs. Donatello arranges to speak privately with Rafe during detention, trying to understand what is really driving his misbehavior.

When Jules confronts Rafe about the erased voicemail and asks whether Leo is involved, it comes to light that Leo is imaginary.

Jules comes home during the holiday break to find Rafe's terrible grades displayed on the school's website, exposing what he hid.

Rafe tapes a color photocopy of his own face over his head in the homework room, and when Mrs. Stricker discovers him, she laughs.

Rafe makes 100 copies of a drawing showing Miller as a chicken laying an egg and secretly distributes them throughout the school.

Rafe earns enough money selling Zoom cola to finally buy back every last page of his Operation R.A.F.E. notebook from Miller.

After hearing he may fail sixth grade, Rafe retreats to the boys' restroom, and Jeanne follows him in to keep encouraging him.

Mrs. Stricker discovers Jeanne inside the boys' restroom and issues her a mandatory detention — the first detention Jeanne has ever received.

To share Jeanne's punishment, Rafe immediately runs into the girls' restroom to earn his own detention, then permanently shuts down Operation R.A.F.E.

A package of photocopied Operation R.A.F.E. notebook pages, sent by Miller, arrives anonymously on Rafe's front doorstep.

Police arrive and take Bear away in one cruiser while Rafe and Georgia ride in a second cruiser following Jules's ambulance.

Jules reveals to everyone in the principal's office that Rafe had a twin brother named Leonardo who died of meningitis at age three.

During the expulsion meeting, Rafe speaks up and offers to paint an official mural for the school as a genuine apology for his vandalism.

Beneath the pranks and punishments of Rafe's sixth-grade year lie a series of revelations that reframe everything the reader thought they understood. The game Rafe invents to survive middle school turns out to say far more about his creativity and grief than his misbehavior. His best friend Leo — the voice that pushes him to break rules — is revealed to be imaginary, and later, something far more heartbreaking. Each turning point in this pool shifts the stakes: a detention conversation that Rafe stonewalls, a package of copied pages that triggers a family crisis, a moment in a girls' restroom that shuts the whole game down. The events here show a boy who enforces his own moral code more strictly than anyone around him, shutting down his grand project the instant someone else gets hurt. By the time Jules spreads Rafe's notebook across the principal's desk and speaks her twin son's name aloud, the full picture of who Rafe is — and why — finally comes into focus.