Me: Okay, now watch me first. Raise your right arm, move it clockwise up and over your head, and our swords meet in the middle. Try it.

Scott: Like this?

Me: Great! When the tips of our swords are touching, it"s called the top hat position. Now, lower your right arm to your left again and bring the swords together again at our feet.

Scott: How about this?

Me: Okay, but try not to take my arm off, either.

Scott: Sorry.

Me: Try again. By yourself this time. I"ll be . . . stage left. As in far away.

Scott: Ha, ha. Seriously, I can do this. I promise not to poke your green eyes out.

Me: Maybe I should wear protective headgear. Like, a face helmet?

Scott: (Glides tube through air, over head, and down to feet.) Me: That was great. Perfect. Now, we both go at the same time. Top hat position first, then down to our feet. Think of it like a dance.

Scott: Whoa, whoa, wait a second here. You had to say "dance"? Forget it. I"m a horrible dancer.

Me: No way. You danced in Hairspray, and you were fine.

Scott: You remember that? We were, like, seven. All I had to do, pretty much, was stand on some lady"s feet and she twirled me around.

Me: Well, don"t think your big clown feet are coming anywhere near my toes. C"mon. It just takes practice. Try.

Scott: (Raises sword to top hat position, back down to feet.) Me: Perfect! See? Was that so bad?

Scott: You"re a good teacher.

Me: Thanks. Now we"re going to start downstage and move upstage. Just remember, keep a safe distance from me, and never let your sword cross the other person"s face. Your moves should be around me, not at me. Pretend you have an invisible force field around you.

Scott: So, I"m like Superman or Green Lantern or something?

Me: (Laughs.) You know what I mean.

Scott: Okay, no, seriously, I think I got it. Wow. That wasn"t bad. I have to say I was really dreading this part.

Me: One more thing. Tomorrow we add footwork.

Scott: Footwork? (Slaps head.) Aw, you mean dancing! Are you sure I can"t just stand on your feet or something?

Me: Yeah, right. We"re mortal enemies. You hate me.

Scott: That"s gonna be hard, but I"ll try to remember. (Looks at floor.) Me: Then I"ll teach you the lunge, then we"ll add the kill to the high-low sequence.

Scott: Is that a promise?

Me: Okay, you ready?

Scott: Ready. (Clunking of paper tubes ensues.) Me: Good! That"s good!

Scott: (Holds his side in pain.) Oh, no!

Me: What?

Scott: Um, I hate to say anything, but you just stabbed me in the force field.

Me: Romeo, thou art a villain.

Monday. I dreaded the day I would have to go back to school and face Wire Rims, but it came anyway, just as I predicted. Whoever invented Mondays should get sent to permanent detention.

When I got to school, I didn"t see any sign of Wire Rims in the halls. Phew. I was safe until Earth Science.

I made it through morning recess. Still no sign of Wire Rims. But then it was time for Earth Science, and I knew I couldn"t put it off any longer.

"What am I going to do?" I asked Olivia, biting and ripping half the nail off my finger. "I mean, I freaked and just left him there. Just thinking of having to talk to him makes me want to throw up."

"Well, you have to talk to him."

"Easy for you to say."

"Look. I don"t see why you can"t just like him. I mean, it"s obvious he likes you. And you do like him, right?"

"How many times do I have to tell you? Not like that."

"Well, I like him."

"Then you kiss him."

"Gross. I don"t like him that way."

"h.e.l.lo! Me either!"

"So, tell him you hate his guts. Tell him not to come near you again."

"It"s not like that."

"Stevie, you"re driving me bonkers, you know that?"

I tried to tell myself it was going to be fine. But my stomach felt like I"d just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Be strong, I willed myself. You can do this. You recited a poem in front of the entire Language Arts cla.s.s. You sang in front of 457 people onstage. You entered a cupcake contest that was almost all grown-ups.

When I got to Earth Science, I couldn"t help looking directly at the second-to-last chair in the fourth row. Empty. He wasn"t even here!

I took my seat in the back. Maybe I"d been all worried for nothing. Maybe he hadn"t even come to school today. I felt my stomach unclench. I could breathe again.

"Are you looking for that kid Owen?" said the girl next to me.

"Yeah, um, we"re partners for the weather experiment thingie we"re doing."

"It"s weird - I knew he was in this cla.s.s, but I saw him just now heading into the auditorium."

"The auditorium? But . . . that"s where it flooded. It"s all closed down. n.o.body"s supposed to go in there for, like, a month."

"Maybe he"s signing up for Drama Club." She shrugged.

"Now? He"s already late. Mr. Petry"s going to give him det -"

That"s when it hit me. Wire Rims was cutting cla.s.s! He was avoiding me, not the other way around. He must hate my guts for freaking out and running away like that. I was mean to him. What if he never wanted to talk to me again?

I could hardly concentrate all morning. In Earth Science, I made up some lame excuse about why I didn"t have our Weather Lab project. And in Language Arts, Ms. Carter-Dunne pa.s.sed back our persuasive essays. It reminded me of that first day with Wire Rims, when I had to spend detention with him in this very room. It seemed like months ago.

My mind wandered. I glanced back at the magnetic poetry board behind me. Tons of new similes were spelled out all over the board.

Gossamer as gra.s.shopper wing Sad as he-loves-me-not daisy Groovy as moon in June What was it he"d called me that day with the Seventies magnets? Cellular? Stellular!

At the very bottom of the board, two words caught my eye. Hey Sunshine. Just like that day we"d spelled out silly messages to each other. Was this some kind of secret message Wire Rims had left for me? Wanted me to see? Or just a coincidence?

Hey Sunshine Dark Cloud over me Sorry I M a Cheese Weasel Maybe Wire Rims wasn"t so mad after all. Suddenly, I couldn"t wait for cla.s.s to be over.

As soon as the bell rang, I headed out the door - not to lunch, where I was supposed to be, but all the way to the other end of the building. I ducked under the yellow CAUTION tape and pulled open the door of the auditorium.

The carpet had been ripped up and peeled back in places, and giant fans hummed, working to dry out the whole place. The lights were off, and it was spooky dark except for a crack of light leaking out from beneath the curtain onstage. I raced down the aisle, leapfrogging over heaps of old carpet, and climbed up the stairs to the stage, searching for the opening in the big velvet curtain.

There he was, all alone, hunched against the back wall, dwarfed by towers of upside-down chairs, scaffolding, a broken-down castle from Once Upon a Mattress, and a scarred piano. He had earphones on and was scribbling in a spiral notebook in his lap. An old-fashioned desk lamp plugged in beside him cast a small halo of light.

"Hey," I said softly. I was so nervous it came out like a mouse squeak.

He looked up, and for the first time, I noticed his deep gray eyes, not his gla.s.ses.

"Oh. Hey." He pulled out one ear bud. Then he looked down again, tapping the end of his pencil on his notebook. "Did you know that out of four hundred and fifty-six Bob Dylan songs, the word "cloud" shows up a total of twenty-three times? "Wind" shows up in fifty-five of them. "Rain" is in forty of his songs, and "sky" appears a whopping thirty-six times."

"I did not know that," I said.

"Hurricane, lightning, thunder, and flood are in there a lot too. But I haven"t counted those yet."

He ran out of stuff to say. I just stood there, afraid to speak in case my voice came out all shaky again.

"It"s very scientific," he went on, trying to fill the awkward pause. "I"m making a graph. You know, for my Earth Science report. But I already told you that, didn"t I?"

Finally, I went over and slid my back down the wall next to him, chin on my knees. "So, I had to come find you. I was worried that maybe you had tofu cookie poisoning or something."

Wire Rims let out a laugh. "Nothing like that."

"So, you"re just going to hide out here, huh? Backstage? Until they come to remodel the auditorium and somebody finds you back here all cobwebby and covered in dust bunnies and your face looks all bony like that skeleton from Psycho . . ." I sucked in my cheeks to show him how he"d look as a psycho skeleton from not eating for, like, a year.

"I have three peanut b.u.t.ter crackers." He held up a half-eaten package of bright orange crackers. "Sorry, I ate the Fruit Roll-Up."

"Forget starvation. The artificial coloring or the salmonella will kill you first."

"You"re seriously weird, you know that?"

"I know. You know what else I am? Starving. I"m missing lunch right now." I was hoping he"d want to go to lunch, and everything could go back to being normal.

Instead, he offered me a cracker. "Death cracker?"

I shook my head. "Thanks anyway." For the next few minutes, the only sound was Wire Rims munching on crackers. I couldn"t tell if he was still mad.

"So, how long were you planning on hiding out back here?" I asked.

"At least the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the week. Depends on Bill and Harry."

"Who are Bill and Harry?"

"Work guys. They haven"t busted me yet."

I zipped and unzipped the pocket of my backpack. Nervous habit. "You can"t just keep cutting Earth Science, you know - you"ll end up right smack back in detention."

"Detention"s all right. Detention is for cheese weasels. And I"m, like, the world"s biggest cheese weasel."

"You"re not a cheese weasel. I freaked, okay? It"s me, not you. Don"t be mad. I"m sorry. I"m so embarra.s.sed." I put my head down on my knees. I wasn"t sure what else to say. All I could do was be myself. To thine own self be true.

I stared a hole in the floor in front of me. I couldn"t look at him. "But, I guess, I mean, I like you, Owen." My face turned twenty shades of red. "Can"t we just be friends? Without any weirdness?"

He looked across at me and grinned.

"What?" I couldn"t help smiling. "What"s so funny?"

"Nothing."

"Ya-huh. You"re grinning like the Grinch when he stole Christmas."

"Is that a simile or a metaphor?" he teased.

"I don"t know. I don"t care! Just tell me what I did." I picked up his notebook and swatted him with it. "C"mon. Tell me what"s so funny."

"Nothing, it"s just, um, you called me Owen."

MUSTACHE AND ALL.

Starring Alex Me: (Backstage, dressed as Tybalt.) Scott: (Dressed as Romeo; paces and mouths Shakespeare; rapidly twirls and untwirls cord from his shirt.) Me: Hey, you. How do I look?

Scott: Like I want to kill you!

Me: Ha, ha. Funny. So, dress rehearsal? Can you believe it?