"Laugh all you want, Jess," Karen Sue said. "We'll see who's laughing last in court."

"Karen Sue," I choked, between chortles. "What have you got that thing on for? You look completely ridiculous."

"I am suffering," Karen Sue said, primly, "from a contused proboscis. You can see the medical report."

"Contused pro—" Ruth, who'd gotten a perfect score on the verbal section of her PSATs, went, "For God's sake. All that means is that your nose is bruised."

"The chance of infection," Karen Sue said, "is dangerously high."

That one killed me. I nearly convulsed, I was laughing so hard. Mr. Vine finally noticed and said, "Girls," in a warning voice.

Karen Sue's eyes glittered dangerously over the edge of her bandage, but she didn't say anything more.

Then.

When the bell for lunch finally rang, Ruth and I booked out of there as fast as we could. Not, of course, because we were so eager to sample the lunch fare being offered in the caf, but because we wanted to talk about Heather.

"So she said 'they,'" Ruth said as we bent over our tacos, the entree of the day. Well, I bent over my taco. Ruth had crumbled hers all up with a bunch of lettuce and poured fat-free dressing all over it, making a taco salad. And a mess, in my opinion. "You're sure about that? She said, 'They’re coming back'?"

I nodded. I was starving, for some reason. I was on my third taco.

"Definitely," I said, swilling down some Coke. "They."

"Which makes it seem likely," Ruth said, "that more than one person was involved in Amber's attack, as well. I mean, if the two attacks are related. Which, face it, they must be."

"Right," I said. "What I want to know is, who's been using that house as their party headquarters? Somebody's been letting loose there, and pretty regularly, from the looks of it."

Ruth shuddered delicately. I had, of course, described the house on the pit road in all its lurid detail. . . including the condom wrappers.

"While I suppose we should be grateful, at least, that they—whoever theyare—are practicing safe sex," Ruth said with a sigh, "it hardly seems like the kind of place one might refer to as a love shack."

"No kidding," I said. "The question is who have they—whoever they are—been taking there? Girl-wise, I mean. Unless, you know, they're having sex with each other."

Ruth shook her head. "Gay guys would have fixed the place up. You know, throw pillows and all of that. And they would have recycled their empties."

"True," I said. "So what kind of girl would put up with those kind of conditions?"

We looked around the caf. Ernest Pyle High was, I suppose, a pretty typical example of a mid-western American high school. There was one Hispanic student, a couple of Asian-Americans, and no African-Americans at all. Everyone else was white. The only difference between the white students, besides religion—Ruth and Skip, being Jewish, were in the minority—was how much their parents earned.

And that, as usual, turned out to be the crux of the matter.

"Grits," Ruth said simply, as her gaze fell upon a long table of girls whose perms were clearly of the at-home variety, and whose nails were press-on, not salon silk-wrapped. "It has to be."

"No," I said.

Ruth shook her head. "Jess, why not? It makes sense. I mean, the house is way out in the country, after all."

"Yeah," I said. "But the beer bottles on the floor. They were imports."

"So?"

"So Rob and his friends"—I swallowed a mouthful of taco—"they only drink American beer. At least, that's what he said. He saw the bottles and went, Townies."'

Ruth eyed me. "Has it ever occurred to you that the Jerk might be covering up for his bohunk friends?"

"Rob," I said, putting my taco down, "is not a jerk. And his friends aren't bohunks. If you will recall, they saved me from becoming the U.S. Army's number one secret weapon last spring...."

"I am not trying to be offensive," Ruth said. "Honest, Jess. But I think you might be too besotted with this guy to see the writing on the wall—"

"The only writing I'm looking at," I said, "is the writing that says Rob didn't do it."

"I am not suggesting that he did. I am merely saying that some of his peers might—"

Suddenly an enormous backpack plonked down onto the bench beside mine. I looked up and had to restrain a groan.

"Hi, girls," Skip said. "Mind if I join you?"

"Actually," Ruth said, her upper lip curling. "We were just leaving."

"Ruth," Skip said, "You're lying. I have never seen you leave a taco salad unfinished."

"There's a first time for everything," Ruth said.

"Actually," Skip said, "what I have to say will only take a minute. I know how you girls value your precious dining moments together. There's a midnight screening of a Japanese anime film at the Downtown Cinema this weekend, and I wanted to know if you'd be interested in going."

Ruth looked at her brother as if he'd lost his mind. "Me?" she said. "You want to know if I'd go to the movies with you?"

"Well," Skip said, looking, for the first time since I'd known him—and that was a long, long time—embarrassed. "Not you, actually. I meant Jess."

I choked on a piece of taco shell.

"Hey," Skip said, banging me on the back a few times. "You all right?"

"Yeah," I said, when I'd recovered. "Um. Listen. Can get I back to you on that? The movie thing, I mean? I've kind of got a lot going on right now...."

"Sure," Skip said. "You know the number." He picked up his backpack and left.

"Oh . . . my . . . God," Ruth said as soon as he was out of earshot. I told her to shut up.

Only she didn't.

"He loves you," Ruth said. "Skip is in love with you. I can't believe it."

"Shut up, Ruth," I said, getting up and lifting my tray.

"Jessica and Skip, sittin' in a tree." Ruth could not stop laughing.

I walked over to the conveyor belt that carries our lunch trays into the kitchen and dumped it. As I was dumping it, I saw Tisha Murray and a few of the other cheerleaders and jocks—and Karen Sue, who followed the popular crowd wherever they went, thus making her deserving of Mark's nickname for her, the Wannabe—leaving the caf. They were going outside to lounge by the flagpole, which was where all the beautiful people in our school sat on nice days, working on their tans until the bell rang.

"Skip's never been out on a date before," Ruth said, coming up behind me to dump her own tray. "I wonder if he'll know not to bring his backpack along."

Ignoring Ruth, I followed Tisha and the others outside.

It was another gorgeous day—the kind that made sitting inside a classroom really hard. Summer was over, but somebody had forgotten to tell the weatherman. The sun beat down on the long, outstretched legs of the cheerleaders in the grass beneath the flagpole, and on the backs of the jocks who stood above them. I could not see Mark anywhere, but Tisha was sitting on the grass with one hand shading her eyes, talking to Jeff Day.

"Tisha," I said, going up to her.

She swung her face toward me, then gaped.

"Ohmigod," Tisha cried, scrambling to her feet. "There she is! The girl who saved Heather! Ohmigod! You are, like, a total and complete hero. You know that, don't you?"

I stood there awkwardly as everyone congratulated me for being such a hero. I don't think I'd ever been spoken to by so many popular kids all at once in my life. It was like, suddenly, I was one of them.

And gee, all I'd had to do was have a psychic vision about one of their friends, and then gone and saved her life.

See? Anyone can be popular. If's not hard at all.

"Tisha," I said, trying to be heard over the cacophony of excited voices around me. "Can I talk to you a minute?"

Tisha broke free from the others and came up to me, her tiny bird-head tilted questioningly. "Uh-huh, Ms. Hero," she said. "What is it?"

"Look, Tisha." I took her by the arm and started steering her, slowly, away from the crowd and toward the parking lot. "About that house. Where I found Heather. Did you know about that place?"

Tisha pushed some of her hair out of her eyes. "The house on the pit road? Sure. Everyone knows about that house."

I was about to ask her if she knew who'd scattered their beer bottles throughout the house, and what was up with that skanky old mattress, when I was distracted by a familiar sound. It was a sound that, for a long time now, my ears had become totally attuned to, separating it out from all other sounds.

Because it was the sound of Rob's engine.

Well, his motorcycle's engine, to be exact.

I turned around, and there he was, coming around the corner and into the student lot, looking, I have to say, even better in daylight than he had the night before in moonlight. When he pulled up beside me, cut the engine, and took off his helmet, I thought my heart would burst at how handsome he looked in his jeans, motorcycle boots, and T-shirt, with his longish dark hair and bright gray eyes.

"Hey," he said. "Just the person I wanted to see. How are you doing?"

Conscious that the curious gazes of the entire student population of Ernest Pyle High School—well, at least the people who were enjoying the last minutes of their lunch break out of doors, anyway—were upon us, I said, casually, "Hi. I'm fine. How about you?"

Rob got off his bike and ran a hand through his hair.

"I'm okay, I guess," he said. "You're the one who got the third degree, not me. First from the Feds and then from your parents. Or am I wrong about that?"

"Oh, no," I said. "You're right. They weren't too happy. None of them. Allan and Jill and Joe and Toni."

"That's what I thought," Rob said. "So I figured I'd come over on my lunch break and, you know, see if you were all right. But you seem fine." His gray-eyed gaze skittered over me. "More than fine, actually. You dressed up for any particular reason?"

I had on another one of my new outfits from the outlet stores. It consisted of a black V-neck cropped shirt, a pink miniskirt, and black platform sandals. I looked trés chic, as they'd say in French class.

"Oh," I said, glancing down at myself. "Just, you know. Making an effort this year. Trying to stay out of trouble."

Rob, to my delight, scowled at the skirt. "I don't see that happening real soon, Mastriani," he said. Then his gaze strayed toward my wrist. "Hey. Is that my watch?"

Busted. So busted. I'd found his watch, a heavy black one, covered with buttons that did weird things like tell the time in Nicaragua and stuff, in the pocket of his leather jacket—a jacket that was now hanging in a place of honor off one of my bedposts.

Of course I'd worn it to school. What girl wouldn't?

"Oh, yeah," I said, with elaborate nonchalance. "You loaned it to me last night. Remember?"

"Now I do," Rob said. "I was looking everywhere for that. Hand it over."

Bumming excessively, I unstrapped it. I know it was ridiculous, me wanting to hang onto the guy's watch, of all things, but I couldn't help it. It was like my trophy. My boyfriend trophy.

Except, of course, that Rob wasn't really my boyfriend.

"Here you go," I said, handing it to him. He took it and put in on, looking down at me like I was demented or something. Which I probably am.

"Do you like this watch or something?" he wanted to know. "Do you want one like it?"

"No," I said. "Not really." I couldn't tell him the truth, of course. How could I?

"Because I could get you one," he said. "If you want. But I would think you'd want, you know, one of those ladies' watches. This one looks kind of stupid on you."

"I don't want a watch," I said. Just your watch.

"Well," he said. "Okay. If you're sure."

"I'm sure."

He looked down at me. "You're kind of weird," he said. "You know that, don't you?"

Oh, well, this was just great. My boyfriend rides all the way over on his lunch break to tell me he thinks I'm weird. How romantic.

Thank God Tisha and the rest of those guys were too far away to hear what he was saying.

"Well, look, I have to get back," he said. "You stay out of trouble. Leave the police work to the professionals, understand? And call me, okay?"

"Sure," I said.

He squinted at me in the sunlight. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," I said.

But of course I wasn't. Well, I mean, I was, and I wasn't. What I really wanted was for him to kiss me. I know. Retarded, right? I mean, me wanting him to kiss me, just because Tisha and a whole bunch of people were watching.