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Maybe girls don’t talk to him very much. “Just, um,
building my deck.”
    I sit down on
the bench near him, and Tam circles around to sit on the other side
with Matty’s friend.
    “My name’s Tam,
and this is Mindee,” Tam says. The boys are looking at us like
we’re aliens. Honestly, if you ever feel a little ugly or chubby,
talk to a nervous ninth-grader and suddenly you’re so attractive
that boys shiver in your very presence.
    “How’s it
going?” his friend asks. “I’m John.”
    “Hi John. I
just wanted to talk to Matty, you think you could give us a
minute?” Tam coos.
    “OK,” he says.
He’s running away before she even gets the words out. He leaves his
backpack and lunch kit on the table and runs off toward the vending
machines.
    “Matty, you’re
Mason’s brother right?” she asks. I’m thanking God that Tam’s doing
the talking because I’m not sure I could figure out a way to talk
to this kid.
    “Yeah,” he
says, looking disappointed that girls have come to talk to him, but
it’s about his older brother.
    “He just broke
up with that girl he was dating, right?” Tam probes.
    “I guess.”
    “You
guess?”
    Matty grunts.
“Well, he’s been a total dick for the last week, when he’s not
moping in his room.”
    “So you figure she dumped him ? Not the other way around?” I ask,
even though I already know the answer.
    “Yeah, she
totally crushed him,” he says.
    Tam goes back
to asking the questions: “Was he mad about that?”
    “Hell yeah.
He’s been a total dick ever since.”
    We sit in
silence for a moment, not sure what to ask next. Finally, I see the
logo on his card game and decide to ask the most obvious
question.
    “What are you
guys playing over here?”
    “Magic
cards.”
    “Oh, magic huh?
You know anything else about magic?”
    He looks
confused. “What?”
    “You know,” I’m
trying to phrase this right but I’m terrible with words. “Do you
guys know anything about actual magic? Real magic?”
    He fidgets with
the stack of cards in his hands and seems to blush a little. “Are
you…” he starts. “Are you… hitting on me?”
    Now it’s my
turn to blush. I come here to do a good deed and help Dina, and end
up with a nerdy ninth grader drawing wildly embarrassing
conclusions. “No! Not what I meant!”
    “Oh,” he says,
looking a little disappointed (which is good, right?) “Then what
did you mean?”
    “Nothing. Just
a question for my, um, sociology assignment.”
    “Sociology?” I
think he realizes that there is no sociology class offered in Blue
Ribbon.
    “Thanks for the
help, Matty. Good luck in your card game thing,” Tam says, saving
me from the horrors of having to talk any longer.
    We’re out of
the cafeteria and back in our comfortable upstairs hallway as fast
as we can get there without running. We’re both turning pink from a
combination of stifled laughter and embarrassment, and as we get
closer to our lockers we break down and start laughing out
loud.
    “You are such a
terrible detective,” Tam says between laughs.
    “I wanted to
ask some of the questions,” I say. “I felt bad that you were doing
all the talking.”
    “And then he
thought you were hot for him!” she breaks into laughter again. I
ignore that comment, stare straight ahead, and keep walking.
    Just as we lean
against the lockers and sit on the floor, I get distracted by the
yellow aura entering the hallway. Dina Jennings heads to her
locker, which is about halfway down the hall from us, and I see one
of those tentacles (of which there are now three) reach into the
locker.
    “Hey, watch
out!” I blurt, before I can stop myself. Dina looks at me as she
pulls the locker door open. A textbook falls out, and the corner of
the book hits her in the thigh. She yelps in pain and the book hits
the floor with a loud bang, and the small handful of people in the
hallway all turn to look at her. She looks even worse now, like she
doesn’t sleep at all. The book