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the painting for the Noel family and give them all the money, but that he had failed on all counts because of the Nazis. I was charged with the romantic mission of making things right. By the end, those beautiful blue eyes were looking kind of moist.
    â€œThat’s amazing,” she said quietly. She was actually glowing. The Nadal look-alike walked by, and she didn’t even turn her head. I could have sworn that he was a little annoyed. “If you accomplished this, Adam (she’d never called me by my first name before), that would be so…heroic.”
    Bingo.

    Over the following days, I kept up the pressure, toying with the emotions of one Vanessa Lincoln, babe of my dreams. I purposely hadn’t told her about the other two tasks. That’s because the key to telling a dramatic story is the pacing. You can’t give your listeners all the candy right off the bat. You have to dole it out bit by bit, making the payoff even better and better, until you get them to the story’s climax.
    I couldn’t, of course, tell her exactly what the other tasks were because I didn’t know myself, but I came up with all sorts of World War II intrigue involving spies and dangerous endeavors, speculating that I might have to put myself in real danger, perhaps bring to justice people who did terrible things during the Holocaust, perhaps right some significant international wrongs. I made it seem like there might be some women in danger.
    I got her, hook, line and sinker. I kept reminding her of my schedule as time went by, sort of putting her on a countdown during the days before I was to leave on my mission. She was pretty intrigued by the way Grandpa had set things up, the idea of having to accomplish one task before going on to the other. She was dying to know what was in the last letter. “That sounds just like him!” she said.
    Shirley found out that I was talking to the Big V a lot more than I used to—I think girls have spy networks—and she wasn’t very pleased. Not that she said much. Shirley isn’t like that. But I wasn’t getting as many kisses as before and they weren’t delivered with nearly as much feeling. I was getting the message, and it bothered me. Like I said, I really like Shirley. Actually, she’s pretty awesome. She’s in good shape, and she’s on the school basketball and volleyball teams even though she isn’t that big, and she has these really kind dark eyes and short dark hair that I’ve heard the other girls tell her is “cute.” Her last name is Sandoval—she has some Spanish in her, which makes her seem kind of exotic. And she’s a great person too. Rarely gives me a hard time and gets even better marks than me in school. She helps me with a guy named Leon Worth who has a degenerative muscle disease and is in a wheelchair. He stopped growing a while ago and is awfully small. His muscles are just fading away. It’s pretty sad, so last year I volunteered to help him out whenever I could by getting him from class to class and making sure he has his meals. I find myself thinking about him a lot, wishing he had a better life. Shirley says she started liking me when she saw me spending so much time with Leon. Now, she probably helps him even more than I do. My parents just love her.
    But we are talking about Vanessa Lincoln here. And I wasn’t actually doing anything with her anyway. I wasn’t even touching her. I certainly didn’t make any commitments—until that last day.

    We had booked our flight for France for the week after school ended, so my last day at McKinley High was a pretty big deal. I’d let all my buddies know what I was doing (though I didn’t tell them as much as I told Vanessa, and I told her that I didn’t tell them as much, which was a smart move, tactically). So I was a pretty popular guy that last day. I’m not proud of the fact that I found a way to elude