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giant pair of fingers in her mind and mentally crossed them. Just as dorky, true, but at least no one could see it. Nervously, Bethesda undid and then redid her twin pigtails. Her Chuck Taylors, a new pair emblazoned with black-and-gold stars, squeaked rhythmically against the side of her chair.
    Mr. Melville slowly scanned the classroom with his big shaggy head.
Squeak, squeak, squeak,
went Bethesda’s new sneakers.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
    “Let us begin with … Mr. Boyer.”
    Bethesda sighed and uncrossed the fingers in her mind as Mr. Melville settled his stern gaze on Tenny Boyer.
    “All right, Tennyson,” Mr. Melville said. “Knock our socks off.”
    There was a long pause, as there was any time a teacher called on Tenny Boyer. Finally Tenny’s voice, raspy and uncertain, came from the back of the room, and said what it always said.
    “Huh?”
    Mr. Melville launched the Eyebrows of Cruelty upward in feigned surprise and then twisted his lips ironically, as if to say, “I’m not really surprised, myarched eyebrows notwithstanding.”
    “Your Special Project, Mr. Boyer?” Mr. Melville said. “On the great unknown?”
    Long pause.
    “Huh?”
    The Eyebrows of Cruelty ascended even higher up Mr. Melville’s big forehead, like two fuzzy mountain climbers.
    “You have an assignment due today, Tennyson.”
    “I do?”
    “Indeed. Right now, in fact.”
    “Oh, man,” Tenny managed. He was wearing blue jeans, a faded Pearl Jam T-shirt, and a blue-hooded sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up over his mess of dark, unkempt hair. “I, uh …” Tenny trailed off with an awkward half smile. “Huh.”
    Mr. Melville sighed. “Dare I infer from your expression of genial incomprehension that the assignment is not forthcoming? ”
    Long pause.
    “Wait. What?”
    Bethesda glanced over at Suzie Schwartz, and they both smiled and shook their heads. Good ol’ Tenny Boyer.
    There were kids (like Bethesda) who always paid attention and always did the homework and crossed and uncrossed giant mental fingers. There were kids (like Suzie, or like Chester Hu) who sometimes paid attention, and sometimes played video games instead of studying, and sometimes did their homework on the bus, but usually at least
tried
to do it. And then there was Tenny Boyer. The kid who
never
did the homework. Who never raised his hand and never had an answer ready in case he was called on. Who had to go back to his locker at least once a day because he had brought the wrong notebook, or no notebook at all. Who, once, in Home Ec, had sewed his sleeve to a pair of pants—on which occasion Ms. Aarndini had proclaimed Tenny “the king of careless errors.”
    “Well, Tennyson,” concluded Mr. Melville. “I shall move forward, having failed once again in my quixotic effort to plant some small seed of knowledge in your mind.”
    Long pause.
    “Okay, man, sweet.”
    “Yes. Sweet,” Mr. Melville said sternly. “Now let us press on. Ms. Fielding? ”
    Bethesda set up her easel and her record player at the front of the room and took a deep breath. When speaking in front of large groups, Bethesda had a tendency to talk very quickly so that all the words ran together. Her dad said that at such times she sounded like a motorboat:
    “Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”
    You’re not a motorboat,
Bethesda told herself, in her most soothing interior voice.
You’re a person. You’re a person.
    She looked up. Everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to begin.
Okay. Now talk.
    “Our story begins in 1991,” she said.
    Bethesda told first-period Social Studies the story of Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings, just as she had pieced it together. She began with her father’s random memories of seeing the band play live at a basement bar called Bar Tender when he was a college sophomore. Then she moved on to what she had learned from the archives of various music magazines, which she had spent Saturday night and half of Sunday