Adam had been looking forward to screaming at Jennifer about the bully survey. He wanted to yell real loud for about fifteen minutes until she got down on her knees and admitted in cold blood that she’d been wrong.

But when he actually got the chance, there was no joy in it. Jennifer was as miserable as he was.

“What are we going to do?” she kept saying, and each time, there was a noise that sounded sniffly to Adam.

Adam couldn’t be sure it was sniffly. The boat dock was dark, and with the river lapping against the shore, and the dune grass rattling in the night breeze, he might be mistaken.

He was sure of this: the last thing he needed was a sniffly Jennifer. Jennifer was the rock in these life-or-death situations. She was the one who’d pulled Adam through those bleak days with Marris. She was the one who’d kept her cool when Mrs. Boland cornered them in 306.

“Why didn’t I listen to you?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Adam.

“We never should have done the bully survey.”

“I know,” said Adam.

“You tried to tell me, but did I pay attention?”

“You did not,” said Adam. “Nope.”

“I feel like a total failure.”

“I bet you do,” said Adam.

Adam waited for Jennifer to say the next stupid thing she’d done, but instead, she kicked him hard with her hiking boot.

“Ow!” he shouted. “That hurt.”

“I hope you’re bleeding,” she said. “You’re supposed to be supportive. We’re coeditors. I’m doing my best here.”

“I was being supportive,” said Adam. “Everything you said I agreed with.”

Jennifer was ticked. “You really are an idiot,” she said. She looked at him and how the wind was blowing his hair. “We have a more basic problem here. You know what my mom says about middle-school boys? ‘UPS never delivers the complete package. It can take years before the entire shipment turns up.’”

“We use FedEx,” said Adam.

“I rest my case,” said Jennifer.

Unfortunately, they did agree on one thing: this was an impossible mess. If they printed the bully poll, it would be unfair to Shadow and Tish. But if they didn’t print the poll — it was like they were censoring Harris students, throwing out a fair election because they didn’t like the results.

They needed a plan fast. While the bully poll wouldn’t come out until the combined March/April issue, the Slash staff was demanding to know now. Phoebe alone had written seventeen e-mails marked URGENT RESPONSE REQUESTED. Just finished brushing and flossing and thought I’d check once more before bed, Phoebe wrote in e-mail number fourteen. ANY NEWS??!! And when Jennifer answered, Not yet, Phoebe e-mailed again in twenty minutes. Decided to trim toenails and Q-Tip wax from ears. ANY NEWS??!!

That’s why they were sitting on the dock in the dark. Even Phoebe wouldn’t bother them there. They’d started at Adam’s house, then walked up his street and along the river, stopping at a dock that belonged to summer people who weren’t around.

Everything they considered had a bad side. They thought of destroying the ballots; removing students from the top ten list they felt weren’t real bullies; naming only the first-place bully.

Maybe they could secretly ask Mrs. Quigley to kill the story. Hadn’t she said she might do it on her own? And then they could deny asking her.

They discussed running a story admitting they made a terrible mistake and then not printing the bullies’ names. Or they might admit they made a mistake and print the names.

Every choice had a terrible side. Destroy ballots? Alter results? Lie? That’s what people like Mrs. Boland and Devillio did, not the coeditors of the Slash. Adam and Jennifer were supposed to be good guys. If they started messing with the facts, someone at Harris would have to start a second newspaper just to investigate them.

The Daily Phoebe.

Adam could think of only one way out.

What if he resigned as coeditor?

That alone would cut his To-Do list in half. He could see living the resigned life, full of lazy spring afternoons, running through fields teeming with dandelions and butterflies.

“Maybe I should resign,” said Jennifer.

What? Did he just hear that? Had Jennifer read his mind?

“This bully thing was my idea,” she continued. “You were against it. There’s no reason for you to take the blame. If I resign, it gives us a way out. I could write a story saying I made a terrible mistake; I never dreamed the survey would turn out so mean; and instead of hurting innocent people, we decided to kill the story and I was resigning.”

Adam shivered and it wasn’t the river breeze. Jennifer resign? He’d thought of it first; he just forgot to say it out loud. Things were getting out of hand. One second he was dancing through fields, happily resigned, and now he was alone at the helm of that barge on the river, the rudder gone, fishtailing from bank to bank in the dark.

Run the Slash himself? In a week he’d be in prison for murdering Phoebe.

“Jennifer!” he yelled. She was running up the boardwalk and over the dune. “Jennifer!” Those maybe sniffles were definite sobs. She was ahead of him on the path, barely visible.

Jennifer was fast, but Adam was fast and desperate. He wasn’t going to let her get away without straightening out this resignation mess. He caught her along the path but was so winded, he couldn’t talk. “Wait . . . please . . .” He put up his finger and gulped for air.

She ran off again. Adam was pissed. Jennifer wasn’t like this. He was like this. She was the responsible one. He was supposed to be running off. Adam had no intention of letting everything get switched around. She was going to get back to her responsible self and help him figure a way out of this.

A block from his street he caught up, but this time, he wasn’t getting faked out. He dived, grabbed her knees, and executed a jolting tackle that knocked her off her feet. The two of them rolled, coming to rest against the dune, gasping for air.

For a while, they just lay there, catching their breath and gazing at the sky. Finally Adam said, “You’re not running away again?”

“No,” Jennifer said, and she was laughing. “It’s hard running on two broken legs.”

“I only did it because you deserved it.”

They knew what they had to do. They had to write the story and say that the survey was a mistake and apologize. They had to print the best bully stories kids wrote on the ballots. They had to point out that an amazing number of kids got a least one vote — seventy-five altogether — meaning that bullying was more widespread than they’d ever thought and that a person who seemed like a bully to some might be a model human to others. (Adam was sure he was a perfect example of this.)

And then they had to do the hardest part. They had to go to Shadow before they told anyone about the results and give him fair warning. And Tish, too.

And finally — there was no way out — they had to print those stupid results.

It was good to have a plan and for a while they lay there, happily looking at the stars and discovering new constellations. “Those two stars,” Adam said. “That’s Orion tutoring Ursa Major for the state math test.”

Jennifer squinted. “I see it,” she said. “But are you sure it’s math?”

“Absolutely,” said Adam. “That star on the left — that’s a calculator, plus a math review workbook and seven number-two pencils.”

They laughed, but not enough. Orion’s calculator reminded Adam about tabulating the bully results, and he got quiet again.

“Does church help?” he asked.

“Help?” said Jennifer. “Help what?”

“You know, having faith that things will turn out right?”

“You mean like the bully survey?” said Jennifer.

“Well, no. Well kind of, yeah. But just in general,” said Adam. “I guess I wonder if I’m missing something. We don’t go to church like you.”

“So you’re afraid God won’t help you?” said Jennifer. “Is that why you won’t let me resign? You think I’m better connected upstairs?”

Jennifer glanced Adam’s way and caught a small smile, then quickly looked at the stars again. It was the only way to talk about this.

“You make it sound like a joke,” he said. “I’m serious.”

“I know,” said Jennifer. “Do you believe in God?”

Adam took a while to answer. “I only see two explanations for this,” he said, pointing at the spectacular night sky. “Either it’s infinite — there’s always been matter, always will be. Or God got it started. But here’s the weird part I think about — either way, you need faith. I mean, you can explain what infinite is — anyone can memorize Devillio’s definition — but you can’t really comprehend it. You can’t get your brain around this thought that there’s no beginning to the universe, that it’s always been there. So I figure you get your pick: faith in infinity or faith in God.”

“You didn’t answer,” she said. “Which one?”

“I don’t know,” said Adam. “At night I believe in God, or at least I pray. Especially when I’m full of worries. It’s not like a real prayer. I don’t know any real prayers. I just made up this thing thanking God for all the good stuff in my life and asking Him to look after me and my parents and my grandpa Harold, who died. And then, I just . . . well . . . ask for help for whatever mess I’m in.”

“That last part,” said Jennifer. “That must be the longest part of the prayer.”

“You’re a riot,” said Adam.

“Sounds like a real prayer to me,” she said softly.

“Anyway,” Adam continued, “in the morning it feels like I have to get up and do it all by myself. I guess what I’m saying is since I mostly just pray at night when I’m scared and I’m asking for a favor and it’s just a made-up prayer and I don’t go to church —”

“Does it count?” said Jennifer.

“Yeah,” Adam whispered.

“I think so,” she said. “Our minister’s always saying that prayer is not just for Sundays, that coming to church is no guarantee you’ll get your name in the Good Book. He says it’s how you treat people day to day, with kindness and stuff. I personally can’t believe God would be so petty, like there was this one prayer everyone had to memorize and say every minute, or else they go to, you know, rhymes with Taco Bell. I’ve been to lots of churches and temples — there’s definitely not one prayer. But it always feels the same: there’s a power greater than us and we need help.”

“I agree with that,” said Adam.

“Actually,” said Jennifer, “the proper response is, ‘Amen, sister.’”

“I don’t think I’m that advanced,” said Adam.

“Tell me —” Jennifer began, but then screamed and so did Adam.

A blinding light was shining in their eyes. “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE, AS IF I DON’T KNOW?” bellowed a man’s voice. Somewhere behind the voice was the crackling of a police radio. It took Adam’s eyes a minute to adjust, and then he realized it was a flashlight. And the man shining it was wearing the official yellow all-seasons Windbreaker of a civic association security guard.

“Isn’t this cute?” the man said. “My favorite soap opera, Love in the Dunes. Either of you live here in River Path? Or is this a pleasure trip?”

Adam explained he lived down the street.

“You better head home, son,” the guard said. “You know you’re not supposed to be in the dunes after dark.”

Actually, Adam knew that was the kind of rule they made up when they couldn’t think of anything you did wrong.

“You want to tell me what was going on?” the security guard said. “So’s I can write my report. Or should I take a wild guess?”

“If you must know,” said Jennifer, dusting off grass and sand, “we were talking about religion.”

“Religion, oh that’s good,” the guard said. “I’ve caught lots of people in these dunes doing nooky-nooky, hanky-panky, and stinky-winky, but this is the first time anyone blamed religion.”