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interview guys there?”
    “Why would they tell you any more than the ones you talked to last night?” Chloe asks.
    “Because I won’t interview them as a girl.” I lower my voice to a dramatic whisper and lean toward them. “I’ll go undercover . . . as a guy!”
    I wait for this to sink in. As it does, their eyes light up and all three of us start cackling madly like the witches from Macbeth, the second carafe of Sumatra and my brilliant idea hitting our systems simultaneously.
    “It’s so Shakespeare!” Darcy cries, clapping her hands. “Like when you played Portia in The Merchant of Venice , remember?”
    “Wait, you’re not seriously considering . . . ?” Chloe trails off.
    “I can pull it off, right?” I glance down at my chest. I’m wearing a T-shirt, no bra, and there’s very little there to write home about. “It’s not like my ample breasts will get in the way.”
    “It’s so James Bond!” Darcy twirls around like a little girl. “Undercover! Secret agents! We can have code names and communicate via walkie-talkie.”
    “Cell phones might be less conspicuous, 007.” Chloe rolls her eyes, already recovering from her brief brush with enthusiasm and returning to her natural state of bitchy skepticism. “Hold on, though. How are you going to get in? Even if they believe you’re a guy, it’s not like you can just enroll. You’ve got to apply and stuff, don’t you?”
    That stops us all for a moment.
    “I have an idea,” Darcy says. “This is probably unethical, but my cousin Granger is a seriously accomplished hacker. I bet he could get into their system.”
    “Would we have to pay him?” I ask.
    She scoffs. “It’s all he does. He lives for it. He’s twelve and he has access to FBI files! I’ll see if he can fix it so they’ll think you’re a new student.”
    “We’d have to move on it fast,” I say. “The deadline’s coming up.”
    She pulls her cell from her pocket. “I’m on it.”
    “So we’re really doing this?” My voice edges up in excitement.
    “Hold on, hold on.” Chloe puts a hand up. “How are you going to miss school without anyone noticing?”
    “I don’t have to be gone long. A week, tops.”
    “What about your mom? Everyone at Underwood lives there, you know. You can’t just go home at night. Won’t your mom get worried if you’re missing for days on end?”
    “She can say she’s staying with me,” Darcy puts in. “I’ll cover for her.”
    “And homework?” Chloe demands.
    “You guys can get me my assignments and I’ll make it up later.”
    Chloe purses her lips, considering. I bump my hip against hers playfully.
    “Come on! You know you love it. If I pull this off we’ll be legendary.”
    “Hmm . . . I don’t know.”
    “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” I ask. “It’s a mad-cap scheme full of intrigue and danger! What’s not to love?”
    “Umm . . . the fact that it’s completely misguided and insane?”
    “Exactly! That’s what’s so great about it. So are we doing this, or what?”
    “I’m in,” Darcy says without hesitation.
    Chloe’s lips curve into a reluctant grin. “It’s twisted and probably doomed to failure, but if you’re determined, I guess I have no choice.”
    I squeal and jump around while Darcy calls her cousin.

    If we really want to pull this off we’ll have to haul ass. Story of the Year entries are due at five o’clock a week from Monday. That means I have to get in, get out, and get the thing written in eight days. Even though my rehearsal time is tighter than usual, especially for such a demanding role, I’m kind of glad. This has to do with what I call the eating-insects-on-a-dare principle. The crazier the idea, the less time you can afford to spend thinking about it. If I hesitate to consider all the possible ways this stunt can go horribly askew, I’ll never have the nerve to show up at Underwood Monday morning. It’s now or never.
Saturday night Darcy, Chloe, and I talk strategy