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absent-mindedly. "Grandma calls me Jessie Bean."
    "Why?" asked Maxwell.
    "It's a nickname."
    "I hate nicknames," Maxwell said loudly. "Nicknames are mean."
    Jessie looked up, surprised. She'd always thought the same thing but had never heard anyone say it before. "Yeah, I hate nicknames, too! I wish everyone would just call people by their real names. Right?"
    "Right," said Maxwell, snapping another piece in place. He pointed at the cluster of puzzle pieces he had fit together. "You don't see that every day."
    "What?" asked Jessie, looking at the pieces.
    "Oklahoma," said Maxwell. And sure enough, Jessie could see that the pieces made a shape that looked like Oklahoma.
    Jessie watched as Maxwell added piece after piece to the puzzle. She was starting to get annoyed. At this rate, she wasn't going to get to do any of her own puzzle. "You know what?" she said. "I like to do puzzles all by myself, without any help." This wasn't true, but it was no fun doing a puzzle with someone who could finish the whole thing before you even got a corner done. It was like someone giving you the answer to a math problem before you even started. "Let's do something else. What do you want to do?"
    "
Get Smart!
" said Maxwell.
    "What?"
    "The best TV show ever made.
Get Smart.
Six seasons, 1965 to 1970, one hundred and thirty-eight episodes produced in all." Maxwell walked over to the TV cabinet and opened the lower cupboard. Inside, Grandma had a few DVDs, mostly babyish movies that Jessie and Evan didn't watch anymore. But Maxwell pulled out a boxed set that Jessie had never seen before.
Get Smart
was the title, and there was a picture of a man in a suit and a tie looking very surprised.
    "Season one, the pilot episode," said Maxwell. He popped the DVD in the player, and they both sat down on the couch to watch. The title of the first episode was "Mr. Big."
    It was a funny show. Jessie laughed and laughed. There was this dopey secret agent who worked for a super-secret government agency called CONTROL. The agent's name was Maxwell Smart, but his code name was Agent 86.
    "I get it," she said, turning to Maxwell. "That's why you say you're smart all the time. Maxwell Smart! It's a joke!"
    Maxwell bobbed his head up and down. "Yep! My name is Maxwell, and I'm smart. That's what Mrs. Joyce always says! She says, 'You're smart, Max well.' It's a joke!"
    Maxwell Smart was a no-nonsense secret agent. He liked to take charge, and he was always confident he would catch the criminal in the end. Some people might think he was kind of bossy, but Jessie thought he was great.
    There was another secret agent—a dark-haired woman named Agent 99—and a dog named K-13. Together, they got to use all kinds of great gadgets, like bino-specs and an inflato-coat and a shoe phone. Jessie especially loved the bino-specs.
    "We should do that," she said at the end of the first episode. "We should be like spies and have a stakeout and figure out who stole the bell. We could solve the crime, just like Maxwell Smart and Agent 99."
    "Okay," said Maxwell. "Let's do that."
    "No, I mean for real," said Jessie. "Real secret agents, not just pretend."
    "Okay," said Maxwell. "Let's do that."
    "Really?" said Jessie. She was surprised that Maxwell agreed with her right away. She figured it would take a while to convince a sixth-grader to go along with her plan. After all, she was only a fourth-grader, and a pretty young one, at that.

    "We have to think of something fast," she said. "New Year's Eve is the day after tomorrow."
    "It's like a puzzle," said Maxwell.
    "You're right. It's like a puzzle, and I'm good at puzzles."
    "Me, too," said Maxwell. "I'm smart."

Chapter 6
Afternoon Shadows
    Evan didn't want to stop. He and Pete were fixing the holes in the roof. Pete was outside, up on the extension ladder, ripping up shingles and tossing them through the hole to Evan. Evan was inside, crouching under the sloping ceiling so that he could catch the shingles as they fell and