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  "See you," Scott said.

  But even then—even though the two of us had separated and weren't alone with each other anymore—things were still weird. Because I noticed that Scott waited until I got past the reporters—"Jenny, Jenny, what's it like knowing you're going to the spring formal with the winner of the People's Choice Award for Sexiest New Star?"—and had the door open and everything before he pulled away. He wanted to make sure I got in all right, even though it was, you know, broad daylight and all.

  What did that mean? I mean, seriously?

  And it occurred to me that, now that Scott and Geri were broken up, I could have gotten online and written to Trina about it. You know, have been all, Ohmygod, just now when Scott dropped me off, he waited to make sure I got in all right before he pulled away. What do you think that means? Because, you know, Scott wasn't taken anymore.

  Only I couldn't write that to Trina. Because we still weren't speaking.

  And also because it would have just been too weird. Because I don't think of Scott that way.

  Do I?

  Should I?

  Only I didn't really have time to think about it, because the minute I walked through the door, the phone started ringing.

  At first I'd been almost sure it was her. Trina, I mean. Calling to say how sorry she was about what had happened in choir that day, and asking me to forgive her.

  Except that it wasn't Trina. It turned out to be Karen Sue Walters.

  I couldn't imagine what Karen Sue wanted—she'd never called me at home before.

  What Karen Sue wanted, it turned out, was to make sure I was all right. She joked about Mr. Hall's temper, saying, "We theater types. We just can't help it." Then she said she hoped she'd see me tomorrow in rehearsal.

  "I don't think so," I said slowly, wondering what was going on. I mean, it was kind of weird that Karen Sue was wondering if I was all right now, hours after the fact. I hadn't noticed that she'd been so concerned earlier in the day, when it had all actually happened.

  "I don't think I'm cut out for the whole show choir thing," I told her. "You said it yourself . . . theater types. I'm just not one of them."

  Karen Sue's voice got different then. She asked me if I realized how much I was letting everyone down. Not just her and the choir but the whole school. The whole school was depending on the Troubadours to win for them at Bishop Luers.

  That's when I realized why Karen Sue had really called. Not because she cared about my mental health or anything. Obviously, since she hadn't run after me when I'd left the choir room that day.

  But because they hadn't found anybody else to give Trina her hat.

  So I told Karen Sue that the only way she'd see me at rehearsal the next day was if someone dragged my cold lifeless carcass onto the risers and left it there.

  Then I hung up before I could apologize for saying it.

  Karen Sue wasn't the only person from Troubadours who called that evening. I heard from a bunch of other sopranos. Not Trina, of course. Not the person who should have called me, whose fault the whole thing was. But a few of the others.

  But I told them all the same thing I'd told Karen Sue: No, I was not coming back to show choir.

  When the phone rang at eleven that night, my dad—who, like my mom, had no idea what was going on . . . and I preferred to keep it that way—grumbled, "And I thought it was bad back when you and Trina were still speaking. . . ."

  But when I picked up the phone, it wasn't another Troubadour, begging me to come back to the fold.

  It was Luke Striker.

  "Jen," he said. "Hey. Hope I didn't wake you up. It's only nine out here in L.A. I forgot about the time difference. Are your parents mad?"

  They were, of course, but not at Luke. I assured him it was all right. And then I wondered why he was calling. Was he, I asked myself, calling to cancel on me? About the Spring Fling, I mean.

  I know it sounds crazy. I know any other girl in America would have been dreading a call like this. You know, Luke Striker canceling a date with them.

  But me. I was trying to ignore my leaping pulse. Because if Luke canceled on me, I'd be free . . . free to go to Kwang's anti-Spring Fling party. Free to hang out there.

  I didn't ask myself why this thought should be so appealing. I didn't ask myself who it was I wanted to hang out with at Kwang's party.

  And I didn't ask myself if maybe this had something to do with the question a certain person had wanted to ask me earlier in the evening. . . .

  OhpleasecancelSpringFling. PleasepleasecancelSpringFling. ComeonLukecancelSpringFlingwithme. . . .

  But that wasn't why Luke was calling me. That wasn't why he was calling me at all.

  "I heard what happened today," he said. "In choir."

  I nearly dropped the phone.

  "You did? How did you hear about it? Who told you? Was it Ms. Kellogg? My God, she doesn't know, does she?"

  "It wasn't Ms. Kellogg," Luke said with a chuckle. "Let's just say I have my sources."

  Sources? What sources? What was he talking about?

  "Oh my God," I said, feeling cold hard fear grip me. "Was it on the news? About my quitting show choir?" Who had told? Who could have told? And how dead was I going to be when my parents found out?

  "Relax," Luke said. Now he was outright laughing. "It wasn't on the news. I wish it had been, though. I wish I could have been there to see that hat fly into the tuba. . . ."

  "It's not funny," I said, even though just a few hours before I'd been cracking up laughing over it. "Well, not that funny, anyway. Everybody's mad at me. Luke, I've never had so many people mad at me before."

  "Good," Luke said. "That means it's working."

  "What's working?"

  "What we talked about," he said. "You can't effect social change, Jen, without ruffling a few feathers."

  "Oh," I said. "Well, I wouldn't exactly call my quitting choir effecting social change."

  "Oh, it is," Luke said. "Maybe not as much as what you did for Cara, but—"

  "Wait," I said. "How do you know what happened with Cara?"

  "I told you," Luke said with a laugh. "I have my sources."

  I wondered who on earth Luke could have been talking to. Since his "outing" in Clayton, he'd fled back to his Hollywood Hills mansion, where Pat O'Brien and people like that said he was "in seclusion," still refusing to speak to the press about Angelique's dumping him and his subsequent—one reporter called it "zany"—decision to attend high school undercover in a small, rural Midwestern town. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know what was going on with Luke Striker and what they called his "bizarre" behavior.

  But really, I didn't think Luke's wanting to be alone—or even to go to high school—was so bizarre. It wasn't as if he were climbing up trees and declaring himself to be Peter Pan, like some celebrities.

  "Listen, Jen," he said, in that soft deep voice that had made him such a convincing Lancelot. You could so totally see why Guinevere would go for him instead of the other guy, the one who'd played King Arthur "I just wanted to call and say how proud I am of you. You're doing great. How are things going on the Betty Ann front?"

  Betty Ann! Oh, Lord, I'd completely forgotten about Betty Ann.

  "I'm, uh, working on it," I lied.

  "Great," Luke said. "So I'll see you Saturday, all right? And Jen?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I knew you could do it."

  I thanked him and hung up But I didn't exactly share his enthusiasm. I mean, what, exactly, had I done? I'd alienated my best friend. I'd quit show choir right before their big crucial performance—a real team player, that's me. I'd have to skip fourth period choir tomorrow, which meant I'd probably get caught and consequently suspended.

  And now I was going to have to go up against the most popular guy in school to get my favorite teacher's Cabbage Patch doll back.

  Oh, yeah. Things were going great.

  FOURTEEN

  Operation return of Betty Ann went into action the very next morni
ng. And not a minute too soon, either: Kurt and his friends had sent Mrs. Mulvaney another ransom note. This one was even lamer than the last one. This one said, If U don't give EVERY 1 in your classes an A for the semester, Betty Ann's head goes in the disposal.

  Mrs. Mulvaney actually went pale as she read the note—which she'd found folded on her desk where Betty Ann used to sit—aloud to us. Her fingers shook as she held it.

  She didn't say anything more about it after that—just crumpled it up and threw it away.

  But I knew. I knew they'd gone too far. The abduction of Betty Ann had gone from a kind of funny prank to an outright act of cruelty.

  And I wasn't going to let it go on a second longer.

  My plan went into action during fourth period, when I should have been in show choir. Only when the bell rang, instead of going to class, I ducked into the guidance office and went up to Mrs. Templeton, Ms. Kellogg's administrative assistant.

  "Well, hello, Jenny," Mrs. Templeton said. "Do you have an appointment with Ms. Kellogg right now? Because I didn't see your name on her calendar."

  "I don't have an appointment," I said. "Actually, you're the one I need to talk to."

  Mrs. Templeton looked pleasantly surprised. "Me? Well, I can't imagine what I could do for you, Jenny. . . ."

  "It's kind of embarrassing, actually," I said, lowering my voice, as if I were afraid other people in the office might overhear. "I'm hoping we could just keep it between ourselves. Can you—Can I trust you to keep a secret, Mrs.T?"

  Mrs. Templeton—who loves gossip more than any other human being I know, and has probably never kept a secret in her life, which is why Ms. Kellogg asked me to never reveal to Mrs. T. that I'm Ask Annie—leaned forward.

  "Of course you can," she whispered.

  So then I told her.

  Oh, not the truth, of course . . . I mean, that I was skipping show choir because I'd walked out and had no intention of returning. Or that I'm Ask Annie. Or that I had a bad feeling I might be attracted to Scott Bennett.

  What I told her instead was how, due to the stress of being Luke Striker's date for the Spring Fling and having Entertainment Tonight trailing me around and all, I had forgotten my locker combination.

  Just flat out forgotten it.

  "Is that all?" Mrs. T. looked disappointed. "Well, we can take care of that in a jiffy, hon, don't you worry."

  And then, as I'd known she would, Mrs. Templeton lugged out this huge binder in which was recorded the combination of every locker in the school.

  "What's your locker number again, hon?" Mrs. Templeton asked me.

  "Three forty-five," I told her, blithely giving her not my own locker number but Kurt Schraeder's.

  Mrs. Templeton didn't know what locker number I had. She had no way of knowing I was outright lying to her. She said, "Well, isn't your combo twenty-one, thirty-five, twenty-eight?"

  I quickly jotted the numbers down. "Yeah," I said, looking at them with a funny expression on my face. "Wow. Of course. How weird that I'd forget."

  "Well," Mrs. Templeton said sympathetically, "you've been through a lot, hon. I mean, that Luke Striker . . . why, if I'd been hanging around with him as much as you have, I'd forget everything I used to know, too . . . especially the fact that I'm married!"

  I laughed very hard at Mrs. Templeton's little joke.

  "Good one," I said. "Well, I'm just going to go get my books now. So I can get to class."

  "Sure thing, hon," Mrs. Templeton said. "Oh, here, let me write you a pass so you don't get into trouble. . . ."

  It was that easy.

  I hurried down the empty hall, listening to the drone of teachers' voices behind each door I passed. "Alyx mis du sel dans le bol du Michel. . . ." "If x goes into y five times, then y must be . . ." "And Congress said, 'Well, each time we have an election, we can't have a murder,’ so Alexander Hamilton . . ."

  Finally, I reached locker number three forty-five. I gave the combination lock a whirl, then went to work.

  Left, twenty-one.

  Right all the way around, thirty-five.

  Look up and down the hallway, make sure no one's coming. Especially Kurt Schraeder.

  Then a few notches back to the left, twenty-eight. . . .

  The locker door popped open.

  Nothing.

  Oh, plenty of raunchy magazines, textbooks, stickers that said GO roosters! and blink 182 sux. A letter jacket. A box of Trojans (nice). And an extremely pungent and not very appealing odor.

  But no Betty Ann. No Betty Ann at all.

  Crushed—but not defeated—I closed the locker and slunk down to the library, where I hid until the bell rang for lunch. I never even had to show the librarian my pass. She didn't even ask what I was doing in there instead of in class. Because, you know. I'm nice little Jenny Greenley.

  I tell you, I'm starting to think there might actually be advantages to this girl-next-door thing.

  When the bell finally rang, I was one of the first people in the caf.

  And when Kurt and his friends sauntered in, I made a beeline for him.

  "Jen?" Cara called after me, as I tore from the table where we'd been sitting. "Where are you going?"

  "I'll be right back," I said. I hurried down the catwalk to where Kurt was standing in the lunch line, trying to decide between sausage and peppers or a turkey burger.

  "Kurt," I said to him. "Where's Betty Ann?"

  Kurt looked down at me. "What? Oh, it's you again. What is with you and that stupid doll?"

  "Where is she, Kurt?"

  "Relax," Kurt said. "She's in a safe place."

  "Where is she, Kurt?"

  Kurt looked from me to his buddies, then gave one of his asinine little laughs. "What is with you?" he asked me again.

  "Why are you always raggin' on me? First the Cara Cow thing, now this. Jesus, we're just trying to have a little fun."

  "Just tell me if the doll's all right, will you?" I asked.

  "She's fine," Kurt said. "She's in my room somewhere, okay? Now will you stop worrying about stuff that doesn't concern you, and let me order my lunch? Or are you just gonna stand there?"

  I got out of his way and went back down the catwalk to my seat.

  "What was that all about?" Geri Lynn wanted to know as I sat down.

  "Nothing," I said. I dug into my tuna salad sandwich, only to see Scott's gaze on me. When my glance met his, however, he looked away.

  Suddenly, I wasn't hungry anymore.

  I was sitting there peacefully, wondering at my sudden lack of appetite—I'd been totally ravenous before—while Cara and Kwang took part in a spirited debate about the merit of the Rose McGowan episodes versus the Shannon Doherty years of Charmed when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see Karen Sue Walters standing there, with about half of the sopranos—though not Trina, I noticed—from Troubadours behind her.

  What on earth were they doing out of the choir room?

  "We just want to say thanks," Karen Sue said in a very high-pitched, sarcastic voice, "for letting down the choir. We'll be thinking about you tomorrow when we place first at Luers."

  I looked over at Steve to see if he'd known anything in advance about this little noontime ambush of me. But he looked as bewildered as I felt.

  I turned back toward Karen Sue to say, You're welcome, the only conceivable response to such a statement, but I didn't get a chance to.

  That's because Cara Schlosburg suddenly pushed back her chair and stood up.

  Can I just say that, busty as Karen Sue might have been, she could not hold a candle to Cara?

  "Why don't you guys just leave her alone?" Cara demanded of Karen Sue and her friends. "Don't you think she's been through enough without you guys trying to make her feel worse?"

  Karen Sue was so flabbergasted that for a few seconds she could only blink up at Cara, completely taken aback. Then she seemed to recover herself, since she tittered and said, "Oh, right! Like I really care what you think, Cara Cow."

&
nbsp; If she'd said, Hey! I found a winning lottery ticket! the silence that roared through the caf following this statement could not have been more profound. Everyone seemed to stop what they were doing and look over at our table. Our table, which for years had been an oasis of peace in a sea of unrest and intimidation.

  I don't know what they were expecting. I mean, for me to do. Launch myself at Karen Sue, fingernails first? A little catfight in the caf for their lunchtime entertainment?

  Well, they were destined for disappointment.

  I couldn't help sighing a little. Really, had Luke had any idea—when he'd given me his little speech about how it was up to people like me to effect social change—how very, very hard accomplishing such tasks could be? It was a project with absolutely no conceivable end in sight.

  I was about to tell Karen Sue exactly what I thought of her of stooping to the level of the Kurts of the world, when again I was interrupted.

  But this time, it was by Scott Bennett.

  "You know what," he said, putting down his napkin and speaking in a world-weary voice, "this is really starting to piss me off. We were just sitting here, enjoying a nice meal, and you girls had to come ruin it."

  "It's a free country," Karen Sue started to insist shrilly.

  But Kwang—all two hundred fifty pounds of him—scooted his chair back and stood up.

  "You heard the man," he said. "Get out of here."

  The sopranos, their eyes going as wide as snickerdoodles, scattered like rabbits, running off in all different directions.

  And everyone in the room went back to what they'd been doing before the girls had tried their stupid stunt.

  Well, everyone except for me. Because my heart was too full of appreciation for what my friends—my real friends—had done for me.

  "You guys," I said, feeling tears prick the corners of my eyes. "You guys, that was so sweet—"

  "Oh my God," Kwang said, looking at me in horror. "You aren't going to cry, are you?"

  "Of course she isn't," Geri Lynn said, passing me a tissue. "Don't you start crying, Jen. You'll make me start crying. And I'm not wearing waterproof mascara today."

  That made me laugh. My eyes were so filled with tears, I couldn't see my tuna fish sandwich. But I was still laughing.