On the page, there was a very simple handwritten note.

Drew, you are incredibly brave. We believe you! Meet us by Walter's statue after school. Eevie and Tommy.

Drew didn't turn around. In fact, he still felt doubtful that Eevie and Tommy believed him. He liked Eevie—she was incredibly smart and friendly and her eyes were like liquid sunshine. He thought about that for a moment, Eevie gazing.... But then there was Tommy. He didn't really know Tommy too well, but he seemed nice enough. He knew one thing for sure, though: Eevie and Tommy were inseparable.

Swift Creek Middle School had installed a new electronic tone system to denote the beginning and ending of classes. Instead of the clanging of a bell, there was a "tonal beep" that was supposed to enkindle calmness throughout the student body. Psychologists had figured that this soft tone gently persuaded the student body to move peacefully en masse from class to class. The final tone released the beasts into the wild.

The tone theory seemed to work well except for the final departure, where students stampeded out of the school like wildebeests in a National Geographic special. Drew, not wanting to be a part of the pack, surreptitiously slipped out the classroom. He darted through the art department and out the back of the school. Cautiously, he made his way to the corner of the school facing the parking lot.

Peering around the corner of the main building, he patiently waited a good five minutes until most of the students had boarded their buses or been picked up by their parents. He wanted to avoid further public humiliation at all cost. Head hung low, he tried to walk as inconspicuously as possible to the now almost empty bike rack.

Drew pulled his hoodie over his head and looked up at the statue of Walter Emery, founder of Swift Creek Middle School. Walter was a foreboding figure, and in every picture Drew had seen of the man, he looked as if he was bloated and suffering from horrible gas.

Even now, Drew felt as if Walter was staring down at him with a look of disdain, like someone had put a hot herring in his cummerbund, a crime for which there was no acquittal. Drew looked up to the afternoon sky. The gray and black clouds were in a heated argument, threatening to pour down on him at any second.

"Drew! Drew!"

Drew jumped and cautiously peered out from the shelter of his hoodie. His classmate, Eevie, waved to him. He swallowed hard as she and Tommy Prescott approached.

"I never stared at her in class," he blathered, looking from Eevie to Tommy as if pleading for his life, afraid that Tommy would know that the song "All of Me" by John Legend played in his head every time he looked at Eevie.

As Eevie drew closer, she gave him a reassuring smile. "What did you say?"

"Nothing," mumbled Drew, when he realized he wasn't about to become Tommy's personal tackle dummy.