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was supposed to be a regular college student, you know, the kind who eats peanut-butter sandwiches and Ramen noodles, and occasionally goes on a date? Now I cared for one thing only: survival. Okay, maybe just keeping my cool, but still this war was bigger than me now. Had it only been two months since that ill-fated prank call to Byron? Red dye frosted our fingers from pranks gone bad. We never got out of our parking spaces because the guys purposely blocked us in. Anything remotely valuable had gone missing, but nothing could stop me now.
    If I could keep Byron busy with meaningless pranks, it meant fewer broken hearts. The only problem was that Byron was a master at delegating. He never had to lift a finger, just coldly executed orders to his men, leaving him freer than we were now. Even worse, I was buried in homework. As much as I hated to admit it, Byron managed to turn every male in the 73rd ward against me. Well, I might’ve done some of that to myself since I gave dating advice to most of their ex-girlfriends, but still Byron was the mastermind.
    A knock sounded on the frontlines, and I stared at our front door with eyes that had seen too much: lobsters in the bathtub, garlic powder in our toothpaste, cow eyeballs served on plates. And now I was caught in my Lucille Ball pajama bottoms. I put down my physics homework and took a steadying breath. “Would somebody open that?”
    Lizzie lounged on our ugly green-striped couches. She glanced up from her homework. Her hair brushed against the pages of her Shakespeare book. I coveted her hair in a bad way. It was long and wavy and twisted into a million braids. She looked bored. “Are you sure you want to do that, Mad Dog?”
    I grimaced at the nickname. “What? It could be a visitor. Are we just going to let her stand outside in the cold? Fine. If that’s what you want. You’re the Relief Society President. You know best.”
    Lizzie stared at me. Was it possible for her to make someone wait? Crickets chirped inside the house. They were left over from the great cricket sting last week. With a fed-up sigh, Lizzie pushed off the couch. “And who broke your legs?” She trudged to the front door in her bright blue pajamas.
    “The peephole doesn’t work,” I warned her. She gave me a weird look, and I shrugged. “The guys put it in backwards. They can look through it from the outside and see us, so we—”
    Lizzie gave a fed up sigh and jerked the door open. An ugly yellow stuffed animal sat on our porch. I peered closer. It was an ugly duckling, in fact, the ugliest duckling I had ever seen. No, it wasn’t some sad commentary on us. None of Byron’s pranks were that clever. Lizzie didn’t look surprised. “Huh? We’ve been hit again.”
    “What do we do, Captain?” Kali ran out from the back wearing a shirt with a peace sign. Her blonde hair was in pigtails. I gave her an exasperated look. She had picked up the captain thing from Tory.
    I pushed off paper debris from my lap and rushed to the porch. The enemy was nowhere in sight, but they were definitely out there. I gave the ugliest duckling a wide berth. Who knew where they got it. Possibly D.I. I’m sure it was covered in fleas—just another way to get back at us.
    Lizzie fumbled with one of her white canvas flats and put it on, limping forward, a war vet with her share of battle wounds. Her left shoes had all been stolen by Lord Byron’s spies just yesterday. “There’s a message with that stuffed thing. ” She threw it in my hands.
    “ What do you and leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving have in common? ” I read. “ The same thing you have in common with a deer playing on the highway. ” That didn’t even make sense, which made the enemy’s coup even more triumphant. I raked my hands through my black hair. It had a streak of premature white in it—compliments of Lord Byron…and possibly genetic, but whatever. The phone rang and we jumped. I fumbled with it. “Yes?”
    “We have an