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  “You must leave now, sir. I'm sorry someone put you up to this, but you are disrupting my classroom.”

  Everybody tried to refocus on the surprise quiz.

  “No, no!” the deliveryman shouted. “This will come out of my pocket! There was an order here! Someone must pay!”

  “Please leave,” Etchingham said. “I don't like pranks.”

  At that, the deliveryman yelled in Italian, or what I imagine was Italian.

  Ms. McClusky, the biology teacher across the hall, opened her door for a peek at the problem. The quick sight of her frightening face (bulging eyes, almost no eyebrows) rattled my nerves, and I immediately lost the thread of the problem I was trying so hard to solve.

  Then something beautiful happened that forever redeemed Edward Carney in my eyes. Apparently, all that noise was also not so good for a student striving for valedictorian status.

  “Mr. Etchingham,” Edward said firmly, “this test was designed for a full class period, and I don't think it is right to judge us on this. I need full concentration.”

  “I second that,” said Sara Schwartz two seats in front of him. I was shocked. Sara was in my homeroom. Even so, I didn't know her well. She had long and pretty light brown hair and warm brown eyes, but she was the mousiest person you could ever meet. Even by junior year, she had few friends. I'd long suspected that there was really a sweet person underneath all that awkwardness, like Zane, but when I'd tried to engage her in conversation, she'd barely said anything other than “Uh-huh.”

  With Edward and Sara's lead, our beleaguered class braved the revolution.

  “Let's have it tomorrow,” someone said loudly.

  “Throw this one out,” Jeremy said.

  “This test is void, as far as I'm concerned,” Zane said.

  “So who is going to take responsibility for this prank, Zane ?” Etchingham said.

  The pizza man listened intently to the conversation, like he was listening for names.

  “Who is on the order?” Zane was now crimson red.

  “A Vaughan?” the deliveryman said, looking at the bill.

  “Mr. Etchingham, I did not order this,” Vaughan protested. “Someone is messing with me.”

  Why did Zane suggest to Etchingham to check the order? Was he setting Vaughan up?

  “Class is dismissed,” Etchingham said. “I am getting to the bottom of this, Mr. Nussman, don't you worry. I don't think for a second that you would do this. I will find out who this man is and how he got past the guard.”

  But the man was gone.

  Etchingham raced down the hall toward the stairs.

  Most of my classmates, including Vaughan, exited as well. I looked at Jeremy and Zane.

  “I'm kind of hungry,” Jeremy said now that my classmates could actually look at each other again.

  “Me too,” Zane added.

  The pizza man had left the hot pizza box just outside Etchingham's door. Didn't I know that man's silly grin from somewhere? The lingering students grabbed a slice.

  It came to me: that was Marcus! Was he out of his mind?

  I was still sitting there floored when I heard Jeremy whispering to Zane, “You didn't do this?”

  “No!” he said.

  Jeremy then narrowed his eyes and looked at me for even the slightest hint that I was the culprit.

  “What?” I said. “What are you trying to insinuate?”

  “Is this payback for Vaughan hinting you could never be a gifted writer?”

  Zane made a face at that ugly memory. I was sure now that Zane was not Vaughan's buddy.

  “Jeremy, I am dumb but I am not stupid.”

  Etchingham returned a minute later with Myra, one of Manhattan Science's three security guards. “I have no idea where that guy went,” he said. “Someone is going to pay for this.”

  He then realized how many of us were eating and stared in disbelief.

  Jeremy said, “We didn't want the food to go to waste, Mr. Etchingham.”

  Myra was clutching her record book and pointed to an open page.

  “There was the president of the PTA, and Ms. Herman's brother—”

  “I've met him before. Obviously not the pizza delivery-man. You're going to tell Mrs. Herman her brother is sneaking pizza in?”

  “Of course not,” Myra said, like the possibility was almost too preposterous to mention.

  Jeremy handed Myra and Etchingham each a slice of pizza. Myra walked off, talking to herself, and Etchingham sat back down at his desk, looking a little dazed even as he fumed. He glared at the desk as he ate his slice.

  I glanced up at the clock in mock horror. “See you later, fellows,” I said to Zane and Jeremy. Of course, I would see Zane in a few minutes anyhow. As I raced to Moskowitz's French class I passed Dr. D in the hallway. She was walking with Marcus.

  Of course I couldn't say anything to him in front of my principal except hi. I shook my head at him in subtle code.

  Marcus's eyes twinkled. “Hey, sis, take a minute for an introduction. This is my brilliant intern.”

  “We've met before,” Dr. D said. She was a little cold, per her usual lovely self, but I could see she was impressed with Marcus's choice of adjective.

  “Is this your first time visiting Manhattan Science?” I asked, like he wasn't the lunatic he had just proven himself to be.

  Delores Herman was stopped by a vice principal who had an urgent question for her.

  “Marc, just wait a second,” she said to him.

  “Got his photo,” Marcus whispered to me when the coast was temporarily clear.

  “Whose photo?”

  “Vaughan's. There was a spy camera in my left hand.”

  I looked up. Was that what this insanity was about?

  “Paulette wanted me to get a picture of him.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Close your mouth,” Marcus said quietly. “My sister is trying to figure out how security could have been breached. I'm working fast to keep that guard's job.”

  “How did you even know where to find Vaughan?”

  “ 'The God of Room 207' and 'i was early for seventh-period precalculus—the class we share. Words ring a bell?”

  Dr. D was back. “Where shall we go for dinner?” She smiled warmly at me. “I so rarely get to see my brother.” Her voice was really deep for a woman's voice, but quite pleasant to hear when she was being nice to other human beings. If she ever wants another career, she could narrate culture documentaries. “This is a treat. And keep up the good work, Ms. Popkin.”

  “So, am I supposed to be one of your buzzing agents?” Zane asked after French class. That was a term Marcus had used and I'd put in my official and private notebooks. I'd written that maybe Jeremy could sing my praises to Vaughan.

  My heart practically stopped, and I tried my best to sound like I was not dumbfounded by that comment. “Excuse me? Why would you say that?”

  He read from a book. My second notebook.

  “Bankability of Jordie Popkin. Cute, funny.”

  “Zane! What are you doing?. That is private property. My property!”

  “I'd thought you'd want it back. You must have dropped it while you were eating pizza.”

  I didn't let him finish. “That was so not right to read it through.”

  “I didn't know who it belonged to. So I had to read it.”

  Like that was likely. My name was written on the inside cover. “How much did you read?” I snarled.

  “I just want you to know something. Vaughan is not a very nice guy.”

  “And you are?”

  I stormed off.

  “Jordie,” I heard a voice call to me.

  Zane again. Bright red.

  “I'm sorry. I just don't want you to get hurt. He's so into himself—”

  I didn't respond. Considering how mortified he was, you'd think I could scrape together some sympathy for him. But I couldn't. As I saw it, he was a total ass.

  I was still mad when I heard the grinding o
f the subway train pulling into the station. Miraculously, there was a free seat to recover in. I remembered my slope homework, and finally looked at it.

  An 80.

  An 80 is so bad?

  Etchingham had made it seem like I failed!

  I was angry at everything and everyone now, and when my train ground again into my home station, I tore my homework into a million bits and dropped them all into the overflowing garbage can on the platform. I almost chucked my private notebook. I was going on instinct now.

  The next morning I walked into the premium division of Out of the Box just as Marcus was Scotch-taping a huge blown-up photo of Vaughan onto the flip chart. Over my official crush's photo in black marker he'd written the words OPERATION VAUGHAN.

  “When did you get that printed?” I cried out.

  “Don't you love our new Xerox?” Joel explained. “You did not lie. Vaughan is a very good-looking boy.”

  Paulette, minus her glasses—even in my anger I noticed how amazing she looked—had new words of “wisdom.”

  “Just by his face alone, though, I'd say the God of Room 207 is greatly enamored of himself.”

  “You guys are out of control!” I nearly screamed. “This must stop now. Why are you so interested in my life?”

  “Did you get in trouble?” Marcus said.

  “No,” I admitted. “You're damn lucky Mr. Etchingham didn't connect this to me. My friend Jeremy thought it could have been my doing, but not my teacher.”

  “And he never will. Even if he thinks of it, he won't find a shred of evidence. We're like the SWAT team of love. I never answered you in the hallway. That was definitely not my first visit to the school—Delores has had me come in to design a few fund-raising mailings. Because I'd been in the building quite a few times to visit my sister, I basically knew the layout. And the guards know me by now. So I walked in as me—”

  Joel rapped on his table with a closed fat pink felt-tip pen. “Only the bravest can go in as themselves. James Bond and Marcus Herman—”

  This tag-team aren't-we-just-so-kooky mentality was old.

  “Aren't you going to ask how he got the pizza in?” Joel said like an awed Robin praising Batman.

  “No,” I said testily.

  Marcus continued anyway. “So I came in as my sister's brother, carting a bass drum in a road case—those guards have known me for years, and I fibbed about securing an instrument for the music department from a friend of the family.”

  “How big is a bass drum road case?” Paulette asked.

  “Big enough to hide a pizza. Then in the restroom I did the old Superman switcheroo.”

  “You sound like a madman,” Joel said like he was actually surprised at that possibility.

  I'd had enough. “Do you even know what you risked?” I said. “If my teacher had connected me to you, I could have gotten kicked out of school!”

  “You're forgetting that Marcus is your principal's brother,” Paulette said.

  Marcus shook his head. “Paulette's right. She would have taken mercy. We are your guardian angels. We want you to get your man. We needed to see whom we were targeting, though. Research for the Boyfriend Account. We won't charge you extra.”

  I stared at them. Finally, I managed to ask, “So, how's the Burger Man presentation?”

  “It's in. It's in,” Joel said. “Three new ideas, including yours.”

  Paulette sighed. “We have nothing to do but wait.”

  “And play with my love life.”

  “Come into the kitchen,” Joel said. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I went very unwillingly.

  “Come, come,” he implored when I dragged my feet in the hallway.

  The kitchen smelled like chicken.

  Then he demanded, “Open this up.”

  There was an entire prepared meal in a metal pan covered by aluminum foil.

  “Tomorrow you should hand this out.”

  “Hand what out?”

  “The chicken. In my opinion men like to be cooked for. They may say they like a career woman, but they want to be fed like a little boy. If you can give him home cooking you will win his heart.”

  “Joel,” I started.

  “Yes?”

  “Am I just a joke to everyone here? I've given him milk so he can subliminally link me to his mother's breast, I've bared my own chest, and Marcus delivered a pizza to my pre-calculus class. Now you want me to give him chicken?”

  “That's how any war is won, my love. Keep the attack coming. Fast and furious.”

  Brad poked his head in the kitchen. “What do I smell? I told the mailroom guys to call me if there was anything good to eat in here—”

  “Have a wing,” Joel said happily. “I made plenty.”

  “You cook?” Brad said, impressed.

  “I do,” Joel said proudly.

  Marcus came bolting into the kitchen. “Come back into the room, my people.”

  We all looked at him a bit blankly.

  “Chop-chop. Big news.”

  This time we complied, including Brad.

  “I just got off the phone. They looked over the proposals. They are bonkers on the Olympic idea.”

  “What?” I practically screamed. My hatred instantly left me. All three creatives swooped upon me in congratulations. We did an impromptu game of ring-around-the-rosie without the words.

  “We are so very proud of you,” Marcus said. “Yes, you are our little protegee. But you've displayed genius right out of the gate. I knew you had it in you.”

  I blushed and lowered my eyes before all that amazing praise.

  “So you love us again?” Joel said.

  I laughed. “I didn't say that.”

  “They had some serious issues, though. They want us to hammer out a few things for them, and the final presentation has to get past the big boss.”

  Paulette reached over to the costume hat rack and made me wear a gold foil crown for the rest of my day there.

  Joel handed me a chicken leg as Marcus spoke. “We've decided that in order for us to give you credit, you have to let us continue to help you win over Vaughan.”

  “This is really good. What's in the seasoning?” Maybe I could distract them from focusing on my personal affairs again.

  “Who's Vaughan?” Brad asked as he hurled his chicken bone into Paulette's wastebasket. Perfect shot.

  Paulette picked up the bone with a napkin and handed it back to him. “Food trash in the kitchen, please,” she said to Brad, as Joel not so discreetly shooed him away.

  I finally got around to saying, “You got contacts?”

  “Even better,” she whispered. “I finally followed up on that new operation I've been reading about that fixes your eyes in one visit to the ophthalmologist. I never need glasses again.”

  “Let me look at your eyes,” I said. They were really the loveliest shade of blue. “They have a sleepy quality to them.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  This time I was determined to flatter her, not insult her. “No, like Bette Davis. My father thinks young Bette Davis was the sexiest actress that ever was.”

  She gave me a doubtful squint.

  “Seriously,” I assured her.

  “Oh, goodness,” Paulette said to me after a wide grin.

  Marcus walked back in the room, and he sat down next to Paulette. “You, my lovely, are too much of a distraction this week.”

  I swear she was about to cry.

  They begged, what can I say? And now that the “operation” was officially named, I actually enjoyed their meddling.

  There were two operations really: the half-serious one of getting Vaughan to ask me out, and the serious one of securing the Burger Man account.

  I suspect my tasks as far as Vaughan was concerned were mostly dreamed up by my thirtysomething friends to entertain themselves.

  “Brand identity,” Joel said one day. “You have to brand yourself. You need a catchphrase.”

  “Maybe she could
tattoo it on her arm,” Brad said from his usual perch by our door.

  Joel looked at me intently. “Imagine you're a better-tasting cola introduced in a nationwide rollout…. What's your slogan?”

  I was not going to walk around school shouting a slogan. (What did he want me to say, “Pop one on Popkin”?) “Can I really act like this? My mom hates her boss because he's a 'shameless self-promoter.' “

  “Does anyone still think like that anymore in the age of the Internet? For goodness' sake, everyone on Earth seems to create a Web site. Since you have neither, you are not a self-promoter.”

  But another item of news was to interest me even more.

  At the end of French class, there was a call over the intercom for Jordan Popkin to go to Dr. D's office.

  An entire roomful of eyes searched mine for any giveaway of what that scary announcement was about. Was everyone in my family okay?

  I gritted my teeth as I hurtled down the hallway to the opposite side of the floor. I swallowed drily before knocking.

  “Sit, sit,” Dr. D said.

  She looked so much like Marcus just then that for a split second I thought it was him again in a wig, pulling a new prank.

  “I understand you are helping my brother tremendously,” said Dr. D.

  “I hope so.”

  “Well, I have let the paper know.”

  “It's good material,” said a young man's voice. I hadn't even noticed Perry Nelson, the editor in chief of our school paper, in another chair against the wall. “But there is so much going on, we might not need the Olympics stuff. Overkill.”

  While Vaughan had a lot going for him, Manhattan Science also had Perry.

  In addition to being our paper's editor, he was also in a popular local rock band with three college students. Can you imagine any college kids hanging around with a high schooler? And not only did the members of Chuckhole hang around him, but they'd also made him their lead singer.

  What the hell was gorgeous Perry talking about? What was the big news?

  There was a knock on the door, and in walked Mrs. Kleinman.

  She had a bunch of white roses in her hand.

  “Hi, champ!” she said in my direction.

  She must have sensed the hesitation in my face. She gave me a long, appraising glance and peered over at Dr. D. “You didn't tell her.”