
Greg is dismissed from Safety Patrol while Rowley is reinstated as captain. Distraught at Greg's mistreatment of him, Rowley ends their friendship. To his bewilderment, Rowley is suspended from Safety Patrol, but Greg eventually confesses the truth. After being spotted by a neighbor who mistakes him for Rowley, he abandons the kindergarteners and flees.

During a Safety Patrol assignment, Greg walks kindergartners down a neighborhood street without Rowley, but panics when he encounters a truck identical to the teenagers' from Halloween and hides the kids in a construction zone. Greg accidentally breaks Rowley's arm, making Rowley popular, and Rowley also wins the cartoonist contest. The boys join Safety Patrol and try out for a contest that offers a student a chance to become the new cartoonist for the school paper. When Greg threatens to call the police, the boys chase him and Rowley to Greg’s grandmother's house, but the latter two escape them after Greg accidentally damages the truck. On Halloween, while Greg and Rowley are out trick-or-treating, a group of teenage boys drive by in a pickup truck and spray a fire extinguisher at them. Greg states his intention of becoming the most popular student in school. They also meet Angie Steadman, a 7th-grader who isolates herself from the other students to "survive". class, Greg and his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, escape from a game of Gladiator and learn from their friend, Chirag Gupta, about a moldy piece of cheese on the basketball court that makes anyone who touches it an outcast and that the only way to get rid of what is known as “the Cheese Touch” is to pass it on to someone else. On his first day, he quickly discovers the ups and downs, such as the missing stall doors in the boys' bathroom and the difficulties of obtaining a seat during lunch.

11-year-old Greg Heffley is apprehensive about beginning middle school.
