“What’s that?” says Mrs. McClure.

“I’ll give you ten!”

“Oh,” she laughs as she puts down her notes. “Well, I guess I hear ten!”

“Twenty!” calls Miranda Humes from dead center.

“Twenty-five!” It’s Shelly again.

I’m looking around for Jumbo Jenny, praying she’s gone home sick or something, while Shelly and Miranda go up by fives. “Thirty!”

“Thirty-five!”

“Forty!”

Then I spot her. She’s about twenty feet behind Miranda, cleaning her fingernails with her teeth.

“Forty-five!”

“Fifty!”

“Fifty-two.”

“Fifty-two?” interrupts the Booster queen. “Well, this has been lively! And from the looks of this basket, well worth the —”

“Sixty!”

“Sixty-two!” calls Shelly.

Miranda scrambles around trying to beg money off her friends as Mrs. McClure calls, “Going once!” But then Jenny stands up and bellows, “A hundred!”

A hundred. There’s a collective gasp, and then the entire student body turns and stares at Jenny.

“Well!” laughs Mrs. McClure. “We have a hundred! That is certainly an all-time record. And such a generous donation to the Boosters!”

I wanted to boost her, right off the stage. I was doomed. This was something I would never live down.

Then there’s this big commotion, and all of a sudden Shelly and Miranda are standing right next to each other calling, “One-twenty-two… fifty! We’ll give you one-twenty-two fifty!”

“One hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents?” I thought the Booster queen was gonna polka. “You’re pooling your resources to have lunch with this fine young man?”

“Yeah!” they call, then look over Jenny’s way. Everybody looks over Jenny’s way.

Jenny just shrugs and goes back to cleaning a nail.

“Well, then! One hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents going once… One hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents going twice… Sold to those two beautiful young ladies for an all-time record of one hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents!”

“Dude!” Mike whispered when I got back in line. “Shelly and Miranda? How am I supposed to follow that?”

He didn’t even come close. He got Terry Norris for sixteen bucks, and the most anyone else got was forty. And when it was over, all the guys told me, “Dude! You are, like, the man…. Score!” but I didn’t feel like the man. I felt wiped out.

My mom came up and gave me a hug and a kiss like I’d won a gold medal or something, then whispered, “My little baby,” and clickity-clicked off in her high heels, back to work.

So I was wiped out, embarrassed, and then practically dragged to the multi-purpose room by Shelly and Miranda.

The Boosters had outfitted the MPR with little tables for two, all decorated in shades of pink and blue and yellow, with balloons and streamers everywhere. I felt like the Easter bunny with my stupid basket boy lunch clutched in both hands while Miranda held on to one arm and Shelly latched on to the other.

They gave us the biggest table and whisked in an extra chair, and when everyone was seated, Mrs. McClure said, “Boys and girls? I don’t think I need to remind you that you are excused from class for the rest of the day. Enjoy your lunches, enjoy your friendships…. Take your time, relax, and thanks again for supporting your Boosters. We wouldn’t be us without you!”

So there I was, with the two hottest girls on campus, having lunch. I was “the man,” the envy of every other guy in school.

Buddy, I was miserable.

I mean, these two girls may be gorgeous, but what was coming out of their mouths about Jumbo Jenny was embarrassingly ugly. Miranda works herself up to, “What was she thinking? Like you would ever want to go out with her, right, Bryce?”

Well, yeah. That was right. But it seemed really wrong to say so. “Look, can we talk about something else?”

“Sure. Like what?”

“I don’t care. Anything else. You guys going anywhere this summer?”

Miranda shoots off first. “We’re taking a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. We’re supposed to stop in all these cool ports and shop and stuff.” She flutters her eyelids at me and says, “I could bring you something back….”

Shelly scoots her chair in a little and says, “We’re going up to the lake. My dad has a cabin there, and you can get the most outrageous tan. Do you remember what I looked like at the beginning of this year? I was, like, black. I’m going to do that again, only this time I’ve got a schedule all worked out so that it’s even every where.” She giggles and says, “Don’t tell my mom, okay? She would have a ka-nip!”

And this, my friend, is how the Tan Wars began. Miranda told Shelly that she didn’t even notice her tan at the beginning of the year and that the place to really roast is on a cruise ship. Shelly told Miranda that anyone with freckles can’t really get tan and since Miranda had freckles everywhere, the cruise was a guaranteed waste of money. I choked down my third of the lunch and looked around the room, trying to let it all flow past me.

Then I saw Juli. She was two tables away from me, facing my direction. Only she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Jon, her eyes all sparkly and laughing.

My heart lurched. What was she laughing about? What were they talking about? How could she sit there and look so… beautiful?

I felt myself spinning out of control. It was weird. Like I couldn’t even steer my own body. I’d always thought Jon was pretty cool, but right then I wanted to go over and throw him across the room.

Shelly grabbed my arm and said, “Bryce, are you all right? You look… I don’t know… possessed or something.”

“What? Oh.” I tried taking a deep breath. “What are you staring at?” Miranda asked. They both looked over their shoulders, then shrugged and went back to picking at their food.

But I couldn’t stop myself from looking again. And in the back of my mind, I could hear my grandfather’s voice saying, “The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. Do the right thing….”

Do the right thing….

Do the right thing….

Miranda shook me out of it, asking, “Bryce? Are you in there? I asked, what are you going to do this summer?”

“I don’t know,” I snapped.

“Hey, maybe you can spend some time up at the lake with us!” Shelly said.

It was torture. I wanted to scream, Shut up! Leave me alone! I wanted to run out of the building and keep on running until I didn’t feel like this anymore.

“Lunch is really delicious, Bryce.” Miranda’s voice was floating around. “Bryce? Did you hear me? This is really a spectacular lunch.”

A simple little thank you would’ve sufficed. But could I come up with a simple little thank you? No. I turned on her and said, “Can we not talk about food or tans or hair?”

She gave me an uppity little smile. “Well, what do you want to talk about, then?”

I blinked at her, then at Shelly. “How about perpetual motion? Know anything about that?”

“Perpetual what?”

Miranda starts laughing.

“What?” I ask her. “What’s so funny?”

She looks at me a minute, then snickers. “I didn’t realize I’d bid on an intellectual.”

“Hey… I’m plenty smart!”

“Yeah?” Miranda giggles. “Can you spell intellectual?”

“He is too smart, Miranda.”

“Oh, stop kissing up, Shelly. You’re trying to tell me you’re after his brain? God, it’s making me sick to watch you grovel.”

“Grovel? Excuse me?”

“You heard me. He’s not going to take you to the grad dance anyway, so just give it up, why don’t you?”

And with that, it was all over. One of my mom’s flaky apple tarts got ground into Miranda’s hair; the extra ranch dressing got smeared into Shelly’s. And before Mrs. McClure could say, In the name of Boosters! What are you doing? they were rolling on the floor, scratching each other’s makeup off.

I took this opportunity to leave my table and head for Juli’s. I grabbed her by the hand and said, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

She sort of half-stands and says, “What? What’s going on, Bryce? Why are they fighting?”

“Excuse us a minute, would you, Jon?” I pull her away from the table, but there’s no place to go. And I’ve got her hand in mine, and I just can’t think. So I stop right there in the middle of the room and look at her. At that face. I want to touch her cheek and see what it feels like. I want to touch her hair, it looks so incredibly soft.

“Bryce,” she whispers. “What’s wrong?”

I can barely breathe as I ask her, “Do you like him?”

“Do I… you mean Jon?”

“Yes!”

“Well, sure. He’s nice and—”

“No, do you like him?” My heart was pounding through my chest as I took her other hand and waited.

“Well, no. I mean, not like that….”

No! She said no! I didn’t care where I was, I didn’t care who saw. I wanted, just had to kiss her. I leaned in, closed my eyes, and then…

She broke away from me.

Suddenly, the room was dead quiet. Miranda and Shelly stared at me through their slimy hair, everyone was looking at me like I’d blown my entire circuit board, and I just stood there, trying to reel in my lips and pull myself back together.

Mrs. McClure took me by the shoulders, guided me to my chair, and told me, “You sit here, and you stay here!” Then she hauled Miranda and Shelly outside, scolding them and telling them to find separate bathrooms and clean up while she ran down the janitor to mop up their mess.