I didn't blame her for asking. Let's just say that at our old school, back in Brooklyn, I'd been forced to skip class a lot. Well, what do you expect? I'd been the only mediator for all five boroughs of New York. That's a lot of ghosts! Here at least I had Father D to help out once in a while.

I wrote back, Nothing like that. Father Dom is our student council advisor. I had to check with him about some of our recent expenditures.

I thought this would be such a boring topic that Gina would drop it, but she totally didn't.

So? What were they? Gina demanded. Your expenditures, I mean.

Suddenly, the notebook was snatched from my hands. I looked up, and saw Cee Cee, who sat in front of me in homeroom and this class, and who had become my best friend since I'd moved to California, scribbling in it furiously. A few seconds later, she passed it back.

Did you hear? Cee Cee had written in her sprawling cursive. About Michael Meducci, I mean?

I wrote back, I guess not. Who's Michael Meducci?

Cee Cee, when she'd read what I'd written, made a face, and pointed at the kid standing in the front of the room, the pasty-looking one with the Palm Pilot.

Oh, I mouthed. Hey, I'd only started attending the Mission Academy two months earlier, in January. So sue me already if I didn't know everybody by name yet.

Cee Cee bent over the notebook, writing what seemed to be a novel. Gina and I exchanged glances. Gina looked amused. She seemed to find my entire West Coast existence highly entertaining.

Finally Cee Cee surrendered the notebook. In it she had scrawled, Mike was the one driving the other car in that accident on the Pacific Coast Highway Saturday night. You know, the one where those four RLS students died.

Whoa, I thought. It totally pays to be friends with the editor of the school paper. Somehow, Cee Cee always manages to ferret out everything about everyone.

I heard he was coming back from a friend's house, she wrote. There was this fog, and I guess they didn't see each other until the last minute, when everybody swerved. His car went up an embankment, but theirs crashed through the railguard and plunged two hundred feet into the sea. Everyone in the other car died, but Michael escaped with just a couple of sprained ribs from when the air bag deployed.

I looked up and stared at Mike Meducci. He didn't look like a kid who had, only just that weekend, been involved in an accident that had killed four people. He looked like a kid who'd maybe stayed up too late playing video games or participating in a Star Wars chatroom on the Internet. I was sitting too far away to tell if his fingers, holding onto the chart, were shaking, but there was something about the strained expression on his face that suggested to me that they were.

It's especially tragic, Cee Cee scribbled, when you consider the fact that only last month, his little sister – you don't know her; she's in eighth – almost drowned at some pool party and has been in a coma ever since. Talk about a family curse....

"So, in conclusion," Kelly said, not even attempting to make it look like she wasn't reading off an index card, and rushing her words all together so you could hardly tell what she was saying, "America-needs-to-spend-way-more money-building-up-its-military-because-we-have-fallen-way-behind-the-Chinese-and-they-could-attack-us-any-time-they-wanted-to-thank-you."

Mr. Walden had been sitting with his feet propped up on his desk, staring over the tops of our heads at the sea, which you can see quite plainly through the windows of most of the classrooms at the Mission Academy. Now, hearing the sudden hush that fell over the classroom, he started, and dropped his feet to the floor.

"Very nice, Kelly," he said, even though it was obvious he hadn't listened to a word she'd been saying. "Anybody have questions for Kelly? Okay, great, next group – "

Then Mr. Walden blinked at me. "Um," he said, in a strange voice. "Yes?"

Since I hadn't raised my hand, or in any way indicated that I had anything to say, I was somewhat taken aback by this. Then a voice behind me said, "Um, I'm sorry, but that conclusion – that we, as a country, need to start building up our military arsenal in order to compete with the Chinese – sounds grossly ill conceived to me."

I turned around slowly in my chair to stare at Gina. She had a perfectly straight expression on her face. Still, I knew her:

She was bored. This was the kind of thing Gina did when she was bored.

Mr. Walden sat up eagerly in his chair and said, "It seems that Miss Simon's guest disagrees with the conclusion you all have come up with, Group Seven. How would you like to respond?"

"Ill conceived in what way?" Kelly demanded, not consulting with any of the other members of her group.

"Well, I just think the money you're talking about would be better spent on other things," Gina said, "besides making sure we have as many tanks as the Chinese. I mean, who cares if they have more tanks than we do? It's not like they're going to be able to drive them over to the White House and say, 'Okay, surrender now, capitalist pigs.' I mean, there's a pretty big ocean between us, right?"

Mr. Walden was practically clapping his hands with glee. "So how do you suggest the money be better spent, Miss Augustin?"

Gina shrugged. "Well, on education, of course."

"What good," Kelly wanted to know, "is an education, when you've got a tank bearing down on you?"

Adam, standing beside Kelly, rolled his eyes expressively. "Maybe," he ventured, "if we educate future generations better, they'd be able to avoid war altogether, through creative diplomacy and intelligent dialogue with their fellow man."

"Yeah," Gina said. "What he said."

"Excuse me, but are you all on crack?" Kelly wanted to know.

Mr. Walden threw a piece of chalk in Group Seven's direction. It hit their chart with a loud noise, and bounced off. This was not unusual behavior on Mr. Walden's part. He frequently threw chalk when he felt we were not paying proper attention, particularly after lunch when we were all somewhat dazed from having ingested too many corn dogs.

What was not usual, however, was Mike Meducci's reaction when the chalk hit the poster board he was holding. He let go of the chart with a yell, and ducked – actually ducked, with his hands up over his face – as if a Chinese tank was rolling toward him.

Mr. Walden did not notice this. He was still too enraged.

"Your assignment," he bellowed at Kelly, "was to make a persuasive argument. Demanding to know whether detractors of your position are on crack is not arguing persuasively."