“A police station?” I echoed. “What are you doing in a police station? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Dauntra said cheerfully. “I’m just under arrest.”

“Arrest?” I nearly dropped the phone. “You mean…you’re calling me from JAIL?”

“Uh-huh,” Dauntra said. “Because I don’t think I’m going to be out in time to make my shift at the store tonight. Can you do it for me? Four to closing? I promise I’ll make it up to you someday!”

I was still in shock over where she was. Also, I was glad neither of my parents or Theresa was around to overhear my end of the conversation. I wasn’t sure how excited they’d be over someone from work calling me from jail.

“What did you get arrested for?” I asked her.

“What?” Dauntra moved the phone away from her mouth and yelled, “You guys, SHUT UP, I can’t hear her.” Then she said, into the receiver, “What’d you say, Sam?”

“I said, What did you get arrested for?”

“Oh, that,” Dauntra said. “A bunch of us did a die-in. In front of the Four Seasons, you know, where your buddy the president is having his big fund-raiser. Boy, was he ever surprised!”

Um, he wasn’t the only one. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, either.

“So, can you take my shift or not?” Dauntra wanted to know. “And if you can’t, can you call around and see if anybody else can? I only get one phone call, and I really don’t want to lose my job.”

“You only get one phone call, and you called me?” I was shocked. “Dauntra, shouldn’t you call a lawyer?” Then I remembered something. “My mom’s a lawyer. Tell me where you are, and I’ll get her to go down there and—”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” Dauntra said. “Somebody’ll be posting my bail soon. But not in time for me to make my shift. So will you do it?”

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, of course. I mean—” I heard someone on Dauntra’s end of the line shout an obscenity. “Oh my God, Dauntra. Be careful!”

“Careful?” Dauntra laughed. “I’m having a blast! Thanks, Sam!”

And then she hung up.

Which was how I found myself, an hour later, manning the cash register at Potomac Video and trying to find a channel on one of the shop’s overhead TVs that was showing the demonstration where Dauntra got herself arrested.

Sadly, the TVs at Potomac Video aren’t hooked up to cable, since they’re just supposed to be used to show whatever movie we’re trying to promote that week. So all I could get was snow. Finally, Stan made me quit and put in the latest Jason Bourne DVD. He hadn’t seemed too surprised when I showed up for Dauntra’s shift.

“I don’t even want to know,” he said, when I attempted to feed him my (made up) excuse for where Dauntra was (visiting a sick aunt). “Just watch out for shoplifters. We get a ton of them Saturday nights. Stupid neighborhood kids with nothing else to do. They think it’s hilarious to rip off an Xbox game or two.”

I was at the cash register watching for stupid neighborhood kids when the overhead bell on the front door to the store tinkled. But instead of Mr. Wade or one of the other regulars coming in to complain about our lack of selection, my sister Lucy walked in.

This was a huge surprise, because so far as I knew, Lucy hadn’t set foot inside Potomac Video for years. Popular people like Lucy don’t have time to watch DVDs, as they are much too busy going to parties and making out with their boyfriends. True, Lucy did spend the occasional Friday night at home, but she always let the video-choosing be done by someone else. Potomac Video, with its life-size cardboard cutouts of Boba Fett and Han Solo, open duct work in the ceiling, and hand-printed signs (RESTROOM FOR EMPLOYEES ONLY. EVERYONE ELSE JUST HAS TO HOLD IT), was hardly Lucy’s kind of place.

You could totally see that she was thinking as much herself as she made her way past the New Releases shelf—attracting the admiration of just about everyone in the place, most of whom were college-age guys in Kiss the Geek T-shirts, arguing over which Star Trek movie to rent. When she finally saw me at the register, her face crumpled in relief, and she came hurrying up to the counter—oblivious of the jaws she caused to slacken along her way—and went, “Hey, Sam.”

“Um,” I said. “Hey. What are you doing here?” Because I would have thought she’d have been out with Jack, or some of her girlfriends, at the very least.

Then I remembered.

“God,” I said, horrified on her behalf. “Did they ground you, too?”

Lucy looked confused. “Who?”

“Mom and Dad,” I said. “You know. For the SAT thing.”

She went, with a laugh, “No, they didn’t ground me.”

I stared down at her. On the TVs all around us, Matt Damon’s image flickered as he said, “They killed the woman that I love!” The geeks over in Sci-Fi, I noticed, were staring at Lucy with the exact same look of intense longing that Matt wore.

“Well, then,” I said, a little confused myself, “what are you doing here?”

“Oh.” Lucy shifted her tiny little Louis Vuitton bag (a gift for her birthday from Grandma) from one shoulder to the other. “I thought I might rent a DVD. You might have heard of it. Something called Hellboy?”

I stared at her. “Hellboy,” I said.

“Yeah.” Lucy looked around the store. As soon as her head moved in the direction of the geeks over in Sci-Fi, they ducked, and pretended to be engrossed in the cover of the new Alien movie. “Do you guys have it?”

“Hellboy,” I repeated. “With Ron Perlman and Selma Blair. Made in 2004. Based on the Dark Horse comic of the same name. THAT Hellboy?”

“I guess so,” Lucy said, looking blank. “I don’t know. Harold recommended it.”

I stared at her even harder. “Harold MINSKY?”

“Yes,” she said. “He said it’s one of his favorite movies of all time. I thought I heard you talking about it, too. Didn’t you like it? I thought so.” She’d reached out to touch one of the Nightmare Before Christmas action figures Dauntra had wrapped around the Need a Penny? Take a Penny. Have a Penny? Give a Penny tray. “So. Do you have it?”

Without taking my eyes off my sister, I said, to the geeks in Sci-Fi, “Hey. One of you grab Hellboy and throw it over here.”

A second later, a copy of Hellboy landed in my hands.

Lucy glanced over at the geeks and smiled. “Oh, thank you,” she said.

The geeks, mortified, scattered for the safety of Documentaries.

“Here you go,” I said, and handed Lucy the DVD.

She looked at the cover and said, “Oh. My. So that’s Hellboy, there, with the bumpy things on his head?”

“They’re horns,” I said. “He files them down.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “Is he, um, nice? Because he looks…not nice.”

“That,” I said, “is the conflict. Hellboy is a demon constantly at odds with his own nature. He is Satan on Earth, yet was raised with loving care by people who had the good of mankind at heart, and now, as an adult, Hellboy has pledged to fight his own nature and save the world from evil. He is redeemed by his love for Liz, who is at odds with her own genetic destiny as a firestarter.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “That’s nice. Okay, well, I’ll take it. How much do I owe you?”

“A buck,” I said. “I’ll give you my employee discount, since you’re family.”

“Great,” Lucy said, and dug around in her purse. As she did so, she asked casually, keeping her gaze on the gum-blackened floor, “You know Harold, right, Sam? I mean, socially?”

I blinked at her. This wasn’t exactly flattering, considering the social circles in which Harold travels. Also…where was this sudden fascination with Harold Minsky coming from?

“Um,” I said. “Not exactly. I mean, he’s my computer lab TA. But we don’t exactly have the same friends. I’m a nerd. But not that big of a nerd.”

“Yeah, but you collect comic books like he does, and stuff,” Lucy said.

“Manga,” I corrected her. “Harold collects manga. I like to draw it.”

“Whatever.” Lucy found her dollar and handed it over. “The point is—have you ever heard about him having a girlfriend?”

I was so shocked, I nearly fell over.

“HAROLD? HAROLD MINSKY?” What girl would touch him? I mean, with that hair? “No. Harold doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“I didn’t think so,” Lucy said, looking thoughtful. “That’s what makes it so weird.”

“What makes what so weird?”

“Well, the fact that he doesn’t seem to like me,” she said. “I mean, he likes me, I guess. But he doesn’t seem to like me. What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean,” I cut her off. “You mean he hasn’t hit on you.”

“Well, yeah,” Lucy said. “It’s just so…weird.”

The thing is, you can’t even get mad at her, really, for saying something like that. She genuinely doesn’t know any better. Lucy is the kind of girl guys always hit on—all guys, except ones who are gay, or taken, like David. Having a guy not hit on her, the way Harold apparently hadn’t, was a whole new experience for her.

And evidently, not one she particularly relished (SAT word meaning “to appreciate or enjoy”).

“Lucy,” I said. “Mom and Dad like Harold because they think he’s the type of boy who won’t hit on you. So unless you want someone even worse”—although to tell the truth, there really isn’t anyone worse than Harold, nerdiness-wise. Except maybe someone from Rebecca and David’s school—“I wouldn’t complain, if I were you.”

“I’m not going to complain,” Lucy said, giving me a look that clearly said, “Are you crazy?” “It’s just weird, is all. I mean, all boys like me. Why doesn’t he?”

Now I felt a burst of irritation with her. True, Lucy can be the coolest of sisters—case in point, the contraceptive foam she’d gotten me.

But she’s also one of the vainest people on the planet.

“Not everybody judges people on how they look, Luce,” I said to her. “I mean, I’m sure in your circle of friends, that’s de rigueur”—(SAT word meaning “conventional or fitting”)—“but Harold has probably learned to judge people more on their insides than their outsides.”