“I’m going to kill that Grubinski kid,” Alaska muttered darkly.

“Wouldn’t that go against your Quaker beliefs?” Jonah asked.

Alaska wrinkled her nose. “I’ll convert.”

Alaska and Jonah were playing with Mr. Berning’s tabby cat on a sunny windowsill while they waited for seventh-period biology to begin. Jonah had heard somewhere that cats had a soothing, calming effect on people, but even scratching the purring animal behind the ears didn’t seem to be doing much for Alaska. Two hours after their little meeting with Mr. Pincer and Bull, she was still fuming.

“I can’t believe Mr. Pincer fell for Bull’s story! The little faker.”

“Yeah, well, it was his word against ours,” Jonah said. “And if you were Mr. Pincer, who would you want to believe—your star wrestling champion, or a couple of freshman nobodies like us?”

Bull’s version of events—which Mr. Pincer had relayed to them as they sat in his overheated office—had Alaska and Jonah swearing at Bull’s friends in Shakespearean English, leading to “an exchange of words” (Mr. Pincer’s term) that ended in Jonah shoving Bull back over Alaska’s outstretched leg. According to Mr. Pincer, Bull wouldn’t have complained to the administration, but he had gone to the nurse’s office for a headache, and the nurse had asked about the bump on the back of his head.

Alaska tried telling Mr. Pincer what had really happened, but she may as well have saved her breath. Bull had a bump on his head and a handful of witnesses—his friends from the bus—to back up his story. By the time the gavel fell on their little meeting, Mr. Pincer had judged them both guilty and sentenced them to after-school detention the following day, plus a call to their parents—a punishment he described as “going easy on you this time.” Alaska’s mouth had actually dropped open at the verdict. Jonah guessed she probably had less experience with the general unfairness of life than he did.

Now she scowled out the window broodingly. “Do you think Bull went to the nurse’s office just to get us in trouble?”

Jonah gave her a Well, duh! look. “You think a kid like Bull shows up in the nurse’s office for a little bump on the head? I don’t think so. He must have come up with the idea during that locker room brainstorming session Pelé overheard.”

“Well, it’s totally not fair.”

“Welcome to the story of my life,” Jonah said. “Don’t worry, after a while you get used to it. I just hope the detention hall here is half as lame as the one at my old school.”

The tone marking the start of the period sounded. Mr. Berning, decked out in a white lab coat, clapped his hands together. “Everyone gather around!”

“What were you in detention so much for?” Alaska asked in a low voice as they moved to the front of the classroom. but Jonah pretended not to hear her.

Mr. Berning was waiting for them with a huge smile, bouncing on his toes as he waited for everyone to gather and settle down. When the room had been silent for a long moment, he lifted a glass of cloudy water high above his head.

“I hold in my hand evidence of the most amazing event in the history of the known universe,” he said, bouncing on his toes. “The most amazing event in the history of the known universe. Anyone want to guess what it is?” He moved the glass slowly around for them all to see, but no one spoke up. “Try smelling it,” he suggested, thrusting it in the faces of two unlucky guys in front of him.

“Whatever it is, I wouldn’t drink it,” one said.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Mr. Berning responded.

“Smells exactly like first day of the duck season opener,” the other guy offered.

Mr. Berning pointed a finger at the boy, as excited as if the kid had just discovered a new species of dinosaur. “Yes! And why is that? Because it’s pond water—ordinary pond water. Or is it so ordinary? Take a closer look.”

He set down the glass and placed a slide under a microscope that was hooked up to the Smart Board. Strange little bug-like creatures appeared on the board, wriggling appendages and zipping around.

“Magnify a drop of that pond water one hundred times or so, and what do you find? Life. Protozoa, in fact, from the Greek words meaning ‘first life.’” Mr. Berning pointed at an oval-shaped creature. “I think I’m going to name this guy Fred, after the famous American cell biologist Frederick W. True. Say hello to Fred”—a few kids obliged—“and take a good look. Now, Braeden, if you had gone duck hunting in a primordial pond three point eight billion years ago, not only would you have not seen a single duck, you wouldn’t have experienced the lovely aroma of pond water, either, because Fred and company didn’t exist yet. This entire planet was completely devoid of life—a rocky, watery wasteland in a barren universe.

“But then—then! The most amazing event in the history of the known universe occurs: abiogenesis, the beginning of life. At first, organisms even more simple than Fred here. Then, one-celled creatures like Fred; then plants, and fish, and amphibians, and insects, and flowers, and bees,  reptiles, mammals, and—you! And you!” Mr. Berning was pointing enthusiastically at different kids.

He had been shouting, but now his voice dropped to a near-whisper: “Do you know how many times abiogenesis has happened in the history of the Earth—in the history of the universe, as far as we know? How many times in four billion years has life just popped out of the chemical soup?” He held up a finger. “Just once. Every single living thing on the planet, including you and me, can be traced back to that singular event.”

The room was silent. Whether everyone else was mesmerized by the miracle of life or Mr. Berning’s impassioned performance, Jonah couldn’t tell. He only knew that he was suddenly aware of his own heartbeat, and the way it seemed to keep time with the movement of the little animals projected on the board.

Mr. Berning snapped a finger, and Jonah blinked. “For the test at the end of this unit, I’ll be asking you lots of questions about Fred and company—their scientific names, the names of their different parts, what makes them tick, and so on. But there’s also going to be this essay question, which you may answer for extra credit: What is life? We don’t call the chemical soup that covered the planet three point eight billion years ago ‘life,’ but when we look at little guys like Fred, we say that they are very much ‘alive.’ Why? What is the essential difference between living and not living?”

He wasn’t bouncing on his toes anymore, just looking at each of them in turn, smiling. “And while you’re at it, ponder this: If the appearance of a one-celled creature is the single most amazing event in the history of the known universe, then what does that make each of you, my fellow talking, laughing, cogitating members of the species homo sapiens?”

Alaska raised a hand. “Mr. Berning?”

“Yes! Mirabelle! You have an answer to the mysteries of life already?”

“Um, no—I just have bad news.”

“What’s that?”

She pointed at the Smart Board behind him, where a life-and-death drama was unfolding as a large amoebic blob enveloped the oval-shaped creature.

“Fred is dead,” she said.

Everyone broke up laughing, and Mr. Berning threw up his hands in mock horror. “Fred, no!”

As the laughter died down, Mr. Berning shook his head regretfully.

“Rest in peace, Fred. Rest in peace,” he said. “Well, you know what the poets say: Without death, life wouldn’t be half so precious.”

~ ~ ~

By the end of the school day, Jonah was whipped. His whole body had been on high alert since the time he woke up. Now, as he stood at his locker filling his backpack with books and folders, he wanted nothing more than to go home, heat up some leftover pizza, collapse on the couch, maybe play a video game. If he didn’t actually fall asleep first.

He slammed his locker door shut and turned to make his way toward the buses out front. But as he thought about possibly facing Bull and company again, he hesitated. It wasn’t that he was afraid. That must be the silver lining to getting beaten up by Dad all the time when I was little, he thought. After a while, getting hit isn’t such a big deal.

He would have to take care of Bull eventually; at the very least, he needed to show the kid that he had no fear and wasn’t going to back down.

But do I have to do it now? he wondered. Even as he asked the question, his feet were taking him toward a side door. Dealing with Bull was a chore that could just as well wait until t0morrow.

He took a few long strides, slammed into the crash bar, and sent the door flying.

The athletic fields smelled of freshly mown grass, the sky curved bright blue overhead, the sun shone on his face. It would take half an hour to walk home, but he didn’t care.

“Hey! Jonah! Over here!”

Jonah looked and saw that it was Peter, waving him down from across the field, where a handful of guys were standing around throwing a baseball.

No, no, no, Jonah thought with a groan. He’d completely forgotten about his promise to show up for Peter’s unofficial baseball practice. I just want to get out of here.

His mind raced through possible excuses as he walked over to the field:

Sorry, the moving van finally showed up with our furniture and I need to let them in.

Sorry, I have to exercise my pet goldfish.

Sorry, my grandma just started playing World of Warcraft under the alias Duke Gruesome, and I need to take her to an elven guild meeting.

Peter jogged over to meet him. “You showed,” he said. “We’re just warming up.”

“I need to take a rain check,” Jonah told him. “I gotta go home.”

“Why?” Peter asked.

“Uh, because. . . .” Jonah said, quickly reviewing his selection of excuses. “Homework. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

Peter was carrying an extra glove that he tossed way up in the air and caught again one-handed. “Come on,” he urged. “You don’t have to turn it all in tomorrow. We could use an extra man to cover right field.”

“Maybe next time,” Jonah countered.

Peter shrugged and tossed the glove in the air again. “Yeah, all right.”

But Jonah had a feeling it was now or never. That if he walked away, Peter would still be friendly—he seemed too laid-back to be real cliquey—but not in that Slapping-Hands-in-the-Hallway sort of way. Not in that We’re-All-On-The-Same-Team way. It wasn’t like he could ever expect to sit at their lunch table, in other words, if he walked away now.

“Well,” Jonah said, “maybe for just half an hour. Here, give me the glove. Just remember I haven’t played since fifth grade.”

The well-worn glove that Peter handed him was for a right-handed player, and Jonah was left-handed, but he didn’t say anything about it, just slid it on and walked to the backstop to throw down his backpack.

“You met Rusty and Campbell, right?” Peter said, nodding toward the guys they had passed in the hall earlier in the day. They nodded back at Jonah. Rusty looked at Jonah appraisingly and spat. Peter quickly rattled off the names of the other guys, then directed Jonah to right field.

The ball traced quick, straight lines in the air as the guys threw it to one another; it landed in a glove with a thwack and an instant later it was gone again. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Their throws and catches were flawless, like a machine.

Jonah wouldn’t have been nearly as good even if he hadn’t been using the wrong glove. He could catch most of what they sent his way, but his throws kept going wide or high.

The others didn’t seem to mind chasing down the ball, but after a while Rusty looked disgusted. “Yeah, throw it to me. Over here, see? Throw underhand if you have to.”

“Let’s just keep it casual,” Peter said.

“I am. I don’t care if he throws underhand, as long as it gets to me.”

“Sorry,” Jonah said, a little put out. He’d told them he hadn’t played in years.

“Let’s hit a few,” Peter suggested.

Rusty arched his eyebrows at Jonah. “So, can you hit?”

“Yeah, I can hit,” Jonah said.

Each kid took a turn batting while the others fielded. Jonah caught a grounder and a couple fly balls that came his way, and Peter and a few others complimented him. They weren’t complimenting anyone else, he noticed, so it was a little condescending, like he was a little kid who needed fake praise, but what did he care?

Not a bit, he told himself.

But when it was his turn to bat, standing there in the batter’s box with every eye on the field staring at him, he found his hands were maybe a little sweaty.

Rusty was pitching. Jonah just watched the first ball zip past him at what must have been eighty miles an hour.

He cranked at the next pitch, but half a second late.

“Just keep your eye on the ball,” advised Campbell, who was catching.

Jonah glanced back at him. “Really? And all this time I was counting the outfielders’ freckles.”

“I can slow pitch,” Rusty called from the mound.

“No, no—it’s all right,” Jonah shouted back. “Your catcher says keep my eye on the ball, so I should be good now.”

That got a few laughs.

“I was counting the freckles on your nose before, see,” Jonah said. “I’ll just keep my eye on the ball now, though.”

More laughter, which proved the rule that you usually couldn’t go wrong making fun of yourself.

“I’ll pitch slower anyway,” Rusty said.

Jonah shrugged and squared up over the plate. Rusty kicked the mound, looked up, narrowed his eyes. He was just getting set to pitch when Jonah suddenly stepped back from the plate, out of the batter’s box. Rusty rolled his eyes and dropped his arms, but Jonah stared off past Rusty, past the other guys watching him.

It suddenly seemed really important to make contact with the ball right now. Even a tipped-back foul would do. It seemed like it might make a big difference in how things went for him in this new place, like it might be the hinge that the rest of his high school career turned on. How many hours had he spent in therapy? Counselors’ offices? Meetings with teachers? All those thousands of words poured over his head by well-meaning adults didn’t have anywhere near the power to change his life as much as getting one hit right now. Most of the kids standing out there on the green field wanted him to get a hit. All he had to do was swing an aluminum stick through the air within the fraction of an inch and within the fraction of a second necessary to intercept an orb the size of an apple as it passed by him at the speed of a small plane. That’s all.

His eyes found a flock of swallows catching insects in the outfield, and he thought of Mr. Berning and the most amazing event in the universe—things coming together magically, miraculously, just once. Just that once, and all of a sudden what might have been barren rock always and forever was instead a green field swarming with swooping swallows. He followed one as it rode the wind, arcing up and up and hanging there, suspended in mid-air, before breaking forth and bending back to earth, gracefully.

All of this passed through his mind in about ten seconds. Weeks and months later, he would wonder whether the hope borne in those ten seconds had weighed enough to somehow tip the balance in what happened next.

He stepped back into the box. Rusty didn’t waste any time getting rid of the ball. Jonah tracked it all the way to the plate, a plain-as-vanilla fast ball, and he swung the bat and crushed it.

“Whoa,” said Campbell, standing up to watch the ball soar way out into center field, way beyond the outfielders.

“Nice!” Peter called appreciatively.

Jonah stared at the gone ball for an amazed moment before remembering to jog around the bases. He couldn’t kill the smile on his face as he slapped hands with the first baseman, a kid named Luke, and then the hands of the kids playing second and third base, too.

That should have been the end of Jonah’s time at bat; Peter was already jogging in for his turn, but Rusty wanted another go. “I want a re-do. I slow-pitched that one.”

“Nah, nah—he nailed it, no re-do,” Luke said.

“He got lucky,” Rusty complained.

Jonah arched his eyebrows, picked up the bat and walked to the batter’s box. “One pitch?” he suggested to Peter. “Let him get his strikeout, and then it’ll be your turn.”

But Jonah crushed the next pitch, too, even though Rusty had thrown it harder than he had the first one. This time Jonah put more power in the swing, and the ball flew even farther than before.

There was a moment of silence on the field, and then someone laughed, and someone else swore.

“Hey,” Peter said warningly, but he was looking at where the ball had landed and then back at Jonah and back at the ball in a kind of open-mouthed wonder.

“I thought you said you hadn’t played since fifth grade?”

Jonah just shrugged and shook his head. He wasn’t sure how he’d just done that, two homeruns in a row.

Rusty had the ball again. “One more pitch,” he said, but now he didn’t look so much annoyed as curious.

Jonah was holding the bat out to Peter, but Peter waved it off. “Do it again,” he said.

Jonah almost opened his mouth to protest—there was no way he was going to get another hit like that—but he could see Peter wouldn’t hear it, so he walked back to the plate and got set. The swallows he’d been watching before were still skating over the outfield grass.

This time the pitch was a curveball, but it didn’t matter. It was like there was a magnetic attraction between bat and ball, and when Jonah connected, he hit a really hard line-drive into right field.

“That is crazy!” Campbell shouted, tearing his facemask off. “That is just crazy!” He walked up to Jonah and punched him in the shoulder before putting an arm around his neck.

“Ow,” Jonah said, grinning. Everyone else was talking and laughing, too.

“Don’t hurt that arm,” Peter joked. “If this were a real game, that would have to be some kind of record. Luke, run see if coach is around—he should see this.”

Jonah shook his head. “My arm is getting sore.” Which was partly true—his hands were still tingling from the last hit—but more than that, he was beginning to get a little self-conscious.

“Okay, you rest that arm while some of the rest of us hit,” Peter said, picking up the bat and looking at it as if it might be magic. He took a test swing.

Rusty was waiting for the outfielders to find the ball. “Hey,” he called to Jonah from the mound. “You were hitting left-handed. How come? You a lefty?”

“Yeah,” Jonah answered.

Rusty grinned and shook his head. “But you were using a right-throw glove. Shoot, if you can throw left-handed half as well as you hit, I take back everything I said before.”

While they were talking, someone threw the ball to Rusty from the outfield, but it soared over him, bounced past Peter in the batter’s box, and caromed off the backstop.

“I got it,” Jonah said, moving to grab it as it rolled past him. Before his hand got to it, though, his foot accidentally kicked it ahead of him.

“That was just like in The Natural,” Peter was saying. “That was pretty amazing, Wilder, but—”

Jonah wasn’t even listening, he was so focused on chasing down the ball; it would be ironic if he made a fool of himself in front of everyone now. He half-dove for it, grabbed it, nearly fell—

“—I got a feeling we ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Peter finished, taking another practice swing.

Jonah caught himself with his free hand and pushed up triumphantly, just in time to see the aluminum bat headed straight for his head.

P.S. The description of the swallows was inspired by Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem The Windhover:

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Jonah made his way into the school as quickly as possible without actually breaking into a run, dodging around packs of kids to lose anyone who might have followed him from the bus. By the time he was sure no one was after him, though, he was completely lost. He couldn’t find the green-eyed girl among the hundreds of unfamiliar faces crowding the hallways. He wandered around for ten minutes, map in hand, before the tone for homeroom sounded. Once almost everyone else had disappeared into classrooms, one of the adult hall monitors spotted him and took him to his locker.

By the time he finally figured out his locker, the tone for first period had sounded and the hallways were swirling with kids again. His homeroom teacher, Mr. Berning, was standing in the classroom doorway when Jonah finally arrived.

“Ah, Mr. Wilder,” Mr. Berning said brightly. “You made it. First day, huh?” He clasped Jonah’s hand firmly in his own, smiling enthusiastically.

“Sorry I’m late,” Jonah said, trying to catch his breath. “I couldn’t find my locker, and then—”

“Welcome to James Buchanan Regional High School!” Mr. Berning went on. He was still shaking Jonah’s hand. “You’re going to love it here. We’ve got a great school, a great bunch of kids. Go Eagles! You’re going to love it. What do you play?”

“Um, music or sports?”

“Anything!” Mr. Berning replied, looking intently at Jonah over his black-rimmed glasses.

“Sports, I’m game for just about everything. And I play piano, and a little guitar.”

Mr. Berning finally released Jonah’s hand to strum a few chords on air guitar. “Great, great! What’s your next class?”

Jonah showed him his schedule.

“Ah! Music Theory. That’s all the way across the school, and you’re already late! Here—Peter!”

He grabbed the arm of a giant in a baseball jersey who was slipping into the classroom. “Peter, this is Jonah Wilder. Jonah, meet Peter Porter. Plays baseball and bass, isn’t that right? Jonah is new, Peter—big first day today! Isn’t that exciting? Would you please accompany him to Ms. Affretando’s music studio?”

“Sure,” Peter agreed amiably, and Mr. Berning wrote out a hall pass for them.

“Don’t blow anything up without me, Mr. B!” Peter called as he and Jonah started down the hall.

Mr. Berning laughed. “Tell Jonah about blowing up pumpkins at the end of the month, would you?”

~ ~ ~

As Peter led the way through the labyrinth of corridors, he asked Jonah the usual questions about where he was from and why he had moved. He seemed pretty friendly, which Jonah wouldn’t normally have expected from a hard-core athlete like him. He even waited while Jonah stopped by his locker.

“So, what’s up with Mr. Berning and the, uh, exploding pumpkins?” Jonah asked when they got underway again.

“Last Friday of the month, if the class has enough points, we get to blow things up. Mr. Berning calls it Explosion Day. It’s very educational,” Peter explained with a grin. “You just missed exploding eggs with dry ice. Next time we’re doing exploding pumpkin faces, for Halloween.”

A couple of guys wearing sports jerseys and baseball caps lifted their chins at Peter and held out a hand as they approached.

“Porter,” one of them said.

“Campbell, Rusty,” Peter said back, slapping their hands.

After they’d passed, Peter explained that he was on the baseball team with them. “Do you play?” he asked Jonah.

“Uh, Little League, when I was a kid.” His father had signed him up and then sat in the bleachers offering “encouragement” at every game.

“You can still play, though,” Peter said, sounding more as if he were making a statement than asking a question. “You should come to our practice after school today. It’s not an official practice, so it’s pretty casual.”

“I haven’t played on a team since fifth grade,” Jonah objected.

“Just come. Worst case, you can chase down balls and hang out. It’ll be cool.”

“Okay,” Jonah said.

He agreed partly because he didn’t think Peter was going to take no for an answer, and partly to show his mom that he was actually trying to “thrive,” as she put it—because of course she’d want to know every detail of his day as soon as she got home from work. He could only hope that after-school baseball would be enough to distract her from his nearly getting into a fight before he’d even stepped foot inside the school.

~ ~ ~

Although Jonah met a few more friendly kids in his morning classes, none invited him to sit with them at lunch. As he stood at the edge of the cafeteria, his slightly worse-for-wear sack lunch in hand, that left him in the classic dilemma of new kids everywhere: Did he find a seat by himself and hope someone friendly would sit down near him, or did he find a likely looking table of kids and crash their party?

The cafeteria was a buzzing hive of unfamiliar faces. Everybody seemed to know somebody; all the round tables were occupied by at least a handful of people, and he didn’t recognize any of them—until he spotted the girl from the bus, sitting at a table with a handful of other kids.

Even from a distance, he could tell that they were the type of kids who had found themselves left standing when the music stopped in that great game of musical chairs that was the high school social scene. Everyone else had a group to belong to: the only thing holding their group together was their shared inability to fit in anywhere else.

He was scanning the room for better prospects when the girl saw him and waved him over. He felt both relieved and doomed as he approached the table.

“Hey, Alaska,” he called.

She looked amused at what he’d called her.

“Well, I don’t know your real name,” he explained. “Just that you’re from Alaska.”

“I know your name: Jonah Wilder!”

“How did you know that?”

“It was written on your backpack.” She grinned, lazily peeling a slice of orange.

Jonah flushed. That must have been his mom’s doing.

“Come on—you can sit with us,” she said. “This is Penny, Franklin, Pelé, and Trudy.”

Jonah took a seat and glanced around the table as he unpacked his lunch. They were a motley bunch. Penny was a small girl whose round face and red overalls made her look about ten years old. Franklin, wide-eyed and surprised-looking under a mess of curly red hair, instantly reminded Jonah of a rooster, while Pelé might have been a mouse, the way his eyes darted around; he even nibbled at his chicken sandwich with quick little bites.

Those three seemed shy or maybe a little wary of Jonah. But Trudy—black-skinned, all arms and legs, hair done up in braids and beads—made a show of giving Jonah the once-over.

“You’ve got something on your cheek,” she said, dropping French fries into her mouth.

Jonah touched a hand to his face, feeling for what it might be.

“Other cheek,” Trudy directed. “Now up a little. Higher. Little higher. Yeah, there.”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “That’s a mole.”

“Oh!” She giggled hysterically. “That’s all right, we like moles. Your mole can sit here, too.”

Pelé shook his head and whirled his finger in the “crazy-loco” sign.

Trudy ignored him. “Where’d you pick up this one, Mirabelle?”

“I think I’m going to go by Alaska from now on, actually,” the green-eyed girl replied. “I kinda like it.”

Trudy made a face. “I’m not calling you Alaska.”

“But I never liked Mirabelle. Alaska is cool.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Hey, get it? ‘Alaska is cool?’”

“Hardee-har-har. Where’d you pick him up, Alaska?”

“I didn’t pick him up anywhere,” Alaska replied, biting into the slice of orange. “We kind of fell in together on the bus this morning. Today’s Jonah’s first day at good old James Buchanan Regional.”

“That right?” Trudy said, giving Jonah another look.

“Our deepest condolences,” Franklin said mournfully.

Jonah shrugged. “It doesn’t seem that bad, actually.”

“Jonah’s in a band,” Penny piped up. Turning to Jonah, she said, “I was in Ms. Affretando’s Music Theory with you this morning.”

Ms. Affretando had asked him a few questions when she was introducing him to the class and the subject of the Panda Banshees came up—although, to his relief, she hadn’t asked him for the band’s name, which Jonah had always been iffy about. It had been Danny’s suggestion.

“A real band? Really?” Alaska asked.

Jonah nodded. “Just a few of us in someone’s garage. We weren’t that good.”

“What was the name of the band?”

Dang. Jonah took a big bite of his ham-and-cheese sandwich and chewed slowly, trying to think up a better name.

On the other hand, what did he care? He swallowed and cleared his throat. “The Panda Banshees.”

As expected, that got snorts and laughs all around the table.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Jonah protested. “I wanted to call us Ghost Opera.”

“That’s not bad,” Alaska said, but Trudy was not impressed.

“Oh, please,” she said. “I can list ten band names cooler than that in sixty seconds.”

Which she then did—or began to, anyway; people kept interrupting her with their own suggestions, which got increasingly outrageous.

“What about—what was it that you called Bull on the bus this morning?” Jonah asked Alaska.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh yeah! That would be a good band name: ‘The Burping, Blasphemous Dogs.’”

Pelé had gone wide-eyed when Jonah mentioned Bull, as if he’d just thought of a really good name—but that wasn’t what came out of his mouth after he gulped down the mouthful he’d been chewing.

“You’re the kid who beat up Bull on the bus this morning!” he said, pointing a finger at Jonah.

That hushed everyone up. Jonah just blinked in surprise.

“How you talk, Pelé!” Trudy exclaimed. “You can tell just by looking at him that he didn’t lay a finger on Bull.”

Penny examined Jonah doubtfully. “You can?”

“No bleeding, no broken bones, no bruises. Ergo and therefore, no fight with Bull.”

“I didn’t say he fought him, I said he beat him up,” Pelé insisted. “I heard it in the locker room. George McLackey and Brian Stoker were all like teasing Bull about getting beat up by a freshman half his size. Like, ‘quickest take-down ever’ and ‘They’re not asking for your wrestling trophy back, are they?’ That kind of stuff.”

“Well, I was there,” Alaska said. “The only person who beat anyone up was me and Mr. Shakespeare. Bull and some other kids were throwing stuff at Jonah and me, but I used my extensive knowledge of Shakespearean insults to fend them off.”

Jonah ducked his head and coughed. “Actually, Bull and I kind of had a second act after you got off the bus.”

“What?!” Alaska exclaimed. “I told you not to fight him!”

“Well, I didn’t,” Jonah snapped. “He grabbed me from behind, like this—” He demonstrated on Franklin, who hunched his shoulders in surprise. “—and he fell on his back when I broke free. End of movie. Roll the credits and all that.”

Alaska narrowed her eyes at him.

“Maybe it’s end of movie for you, but Bull is looking for a sequel,” Pelé said matter-of-factly. “He was saying how he’s gonna get you back.”

Trudy shook her head regretfully and gave Jonah a pitying look. “It all comes of running with the wrong crowd. Mirabelle’s bad enough, but her and Shakespeare are the dog.”

“Alaska,” Alaska corrected her. “But, Pelé, how’d you hear Bull say all that? Bull’s in tenth grade. You don’t have gym with him.”

“Prentiss locked Pelé in a locker after gym again,” Penny said. “We have gym together the period before the tenth graders, so he was still trapped in the locker when Bull and those guys arrived.”

“Oh, Pelé!” Alaska gave him a sympathetic look.

“Those no-good, dirty, rotten scoundrels got me again,” Pelé acknowledged. “But there was a bunch of towels and gym clothes in there, so I kind of took a little nap. When I heard the tenth graders come in, I was going to shout for help, but then I heard Bull and them, so I was like, what’s the point?”

“What’d he say?” Trudy prompted.

“He was mad. At first he was boasting how he’s gonna get this kid and beat him up and all like that kind of talk that those kind of guys do, but then the other guys are like, ‘No, no, you’ll get suspended from the team,’ so then Bull says he’ll do it after school, like take the bus home and get off at your stop and pound the juice out of your gallbladder and break your fingers and stick your tongue to a freezing pole and rip it off and stick bugs in your ears and pine needles under your toenails and—”

“Okay, I get the basic idea,” Jonah interrupted.

“But then those guys are like, ‘No, you’ll still get in trouble, and then the wrestling team won’t go to state, wah, wah, wah,’ so then they start talking about how to do it under the radar—like stealing your homework and egging your house and maybe roughing you up a little every day on the bus, but not enough to get in trouble, stuff like that.”

Trudy fake-yawned. “That is so old school. They should steal his clothes out of his gym locker so he has to wear his gym uniform the rest of the day.”

“Or make up a blog by him,” Franklin said. “Something embarrassing, like bad rhyming love poems to, um, Miss Andrews—”

“—and then spread it on Facebook!” Trudy added.

Penny tapped her chin. “That would be traceable. It would be better if they swiped his phone without him knowing and posted weird Facebook updates on his account. The only problem would be how to swipe his phone.”

Franklin waved a hand. “That would be simple. Someone distracts him while his locker’s open, someone else sticks chewing gum in the lock so it doesn’t quite latch—”

“Or they could just stuff him in the locker,” Pelé suggested. “No one ever gets in trouble for stuffing a kid in a locker.”

Jonah held up his hands. “Uh, yeah, so—excuse me, but whose side are you guys on, anyway?”

“Oh, this is all purely hypothetical,” Penny assured him innocently. She was waving the spoon from her pudding cup around pedantically. “We often have little hypothetical discussions about this and that.”

“Guys, guys!” Alaska waved her hands to get their attention. “We should be thinking of ways to stop them! We have to help Jonah out here.”

An awkward silence fell over the group as Alaska looked from face to face for agreement. No one said anything.

And then no one said anything some more.

Franklin slowly raised a tortilla chip to his mouth and bit down.

It made a very loud crunching noise.

“We do?” he said, arching an eyebrow.

“Come on, people!” Alaska pleaded.

Trudy took a swig of water. “Sorry. I’m already lined up for detention this week. I can’t get into any more trouble, and Bull is nothing but.”

“I heard he made a substitute teacher cry once,” Penny said.

Pelé just looked down at his half-empty lunch tray.

Jonah was embarrassed for them. He focused on his apple and chips, all business-like. “I don’t need anyone’s help,” he said. “If Bull touches me again, the next thing he’s going to remember is waking up in the emergency room.”

He said it matter-of-factly, but with enough heat to make the others shift in their seats uncomfortably. In their faces he could see them recalculating their first impressions of him. They were thinking maybe he was a little more dangerous than their usual company.

He wondered if they could somehow tell he’d beaten up other kids before. He counted them all in his head. Six, if you counted the time he’d knocked down that loud-mouthed know-it-all of a sixth grader, Shelley Winter.

Six, if you didn’t count the time he went after his father.

Trudy picked up her tray and stood up to go. “Don’t worry about Bull,” she told Jonah. “He’s full of it. He talks big, but next week he won’t even remember your name. Just lay low, and it’ll blow over.”

The words had barely died on her lips when Jonah noticed the assistant principal—the same guy who had toured Jonah and his mom around the school—working his way over to their table.

He didn’t look like he was making a social call. He looked for all the world like the sheriff in an old Western—the weather-beaten face, the steel-blue eyes, the salt-and-pepper mustache. All he needed was a star and a gun holster.

He laid a firm hand on Jonah’s shoulder.

“Mr. Wilder,” he said. “I need to see you in my office for a few minutes.”

Jonah slid his eyes over to Trudy in a What Were You Saying About It Blowing Over? kind of look.

“All right,” he said, and to himself he was thinking that this had to be a new record for him—half a day between walking through the front doors to walking through the principal’s door.

The assistant principal scanned the lunch table. “And Mirabelle Delacroix?”

Alaska raised her hand, ever so slowly. She looked stunned.

Trudy slapped Alaska’s hand down. “Actually she only answers to Alaska now. Don’t ask me why. I’d trade my old name for ‘Mirabelle’ any day of the week—except for now, since you’re looking for someone named Mirabelle and I think the last time you and I had a little chat in your office we agreed that I’d better not come back anytime soon, right, Mr. Pincer? If it’s someone to discipline you want, Alaska, née Mirabelle, is the gal for you.” And she clapped Alaska on the back.

“That’s fine, Trudy,” Mr. Pincer said dryly. “I only need to borrow your friends for a few minutes—now, please.”

Jonah and Alaska stood and followed Mr. Pincer out of the cafeteria, attracting curious stares and a few not-so-subtle comments. Judging by her pale face, Jonah guessed Alaska was the type of kid who never got in trouble. He wasn’t sure what she had to worry about—she hadn’t touched Bull.

Mr. Pincer led them through the busy administrative suite and ushered them into his small office. Family pictures and posters with inspirational quotes covered the walls. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” So said Mahatma Gandhi, apparently.

“Wait here,” Mr. Pincer said, indicating a couple of orange plastic chairs positioned in front of his desk. He ducked out of the office.

Jonah glanced over at Alaska, who looked like she’d swallowed a stone. Her eyes were glistening, and she bit her lip.

“Hey,” Jonah whispered, “this is no big deal.”

She glared at him contradictorily.

“Look, I’ve been in the hot seat more times than I can count, and I’m telling you, this is no big deal. Just let me do the talking—I’ll say you were an innocent bystander, which you were.”

Before she could reply, though, Mr. Pincer was standing in the doorway again.

“Are these the ones?” he asked, beckoning someone in the hall to come look.

The figure who appeared in the doorway was none other than Bull Grubinski, holding an ice pack to the back of his head.

“Yes, Mr. Pincer,” Bull said, mild as butter on grits. “These are the ones who jumped me.”

P.S. And for the record, exploding pumpkins is actually an honest-to-goodness science geek pastime — see for yourself: